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.

Criminal Code

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

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise virtually to speak to Bill C-5, a bill I support, although it does not go far enough in the two areas it proposes to address. Other members today in debate have wished that the bill had been proposed as two separate bills, but in any case, what we have is a bill that deals in the first part, and in the main, with removing certain sentences that are referred to as mandatory minimums, and the second part in dealing with the ongoing crisis of drug poisonings. I do not refer to them as overdoses any longer. The more I learn about what is going on in the opioid crisis with the fentanyl contamination of drug supply, the more I realize this is a poisoning crisis in which many people die.

The bill in this case introduces a second section called “Evidence-based Diversion Measures”. There really is not anything in common between the first part and the second part of Bill C-5. Let me address the first part first. I hope I can fit in all my comments, because there are many.

The use of mandatory minimums, as many Conservatives have pointed out in the debate, is not entirely a legacy of the government under former prime minister Stephen Harper, but I was here in the House during the debates on the omnibus crime bill, Bill C-10, which introduced many more mandatory minimums. Let us say, just to get it out of the way, that former Liberal governments under former prime ministers Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien did bring in some mandatory minimums. Others were brought in under Bill C-10 while I was serving in this place.

Even as we brought in the mandatory minimum sentences that were under Bill C-10, it was well understood that there was no competing literature from experts in criminology and proper sentencing practices about the impacts of mandatory minimums. It was not that there were two different sources of evidences, as there was only one. All studies that looked at mandatory minimums concluded they did not work. All of them concluded that. Jurisdictions around the world that had brought in mandatory minimums, including in the state of Texas, were getting rid of them because they did not affect the crime rate, but they did have many serious negative effects on our criminal justice system. Let us try to walk through some of those.

We certainly know that Canada's crime rate has not been rising dramatically, as has been suggested by some in debate here. The last statistic I could find of our homicide rate is 1.95 homicides per 100,000 people. Obviously that should be zero. It would be ideal not to have any homicides in our society. Our rate is approximately two times the rate of the European Union, but three times lower than our neighbours to the south. The United States has an appalling rate, as we all know, of gun crime and murder. It is something that legislation we will be talking about even later tonight proposes to deal with.

We do not have a crime wave, but we do have a problem that mandatory minimums have exacerbated. Certainly, the courts have been very busy because so many of the mandatory minimum sentences, as we argued in this place as opposition members when Bill C-10 was brought in, violate the charter. We could see that it was going to violate the charter. We argued that at the time.

Currently, there have been hundreds of charter challenges against mandatory minimums in Canada: 69% of such challenges related to drug offences have been found to violate the charter and 48% of those related to firearms have been found to violate the charter. Bill C-5, when I talk about it not going far enough, does not even eliminate all of the mandatory minimums that the courts have already struck down.

Let us look at those negative side effects. We have heard primarily, and I think it is a huge issue, that mandatory minimums are one of the reasons there is a disproportionate number of people of colour and indigenous people in our prisons, which exacerbates systemic racism against members of those communities.

However, that is not the only problem with mandatory minimums. Mandatory minimums clog up our court dockets by removing the incentive for the accused to plead guilty early in the process. Mandatory minimums take away a judge's discretion to look at the person who has committed the crime before him or her and decide that this person would benefit far more from being diverted into a program that helps them with mental health issues. However, under this mandatory minimum, they have to sentence them to, for example, five years.

We know that mandatory minimums and longer incarceration times increase the risk that someone will be coming back. Mandatory minimums and longer incarceration times take someone who may have had one offence that was serious, and that one offence may lead them to basically getting an education in crime from spending time with criminals in prison and not having the opportunity to rehabilitate and get back into normal, civilian, non-criminal life and out of jail.

Prosecutors have a problem with dealing with mandatory minimums in that they are then the ones who take the discretion, taking it away from the judges. There is a lot wrong with mandatory minimums, including overcrowding prisons, and they have a knock-on effect of increasing the costs for the provincial governments that have to deal with prisoners. Overcrowding in our prisons is another big problem.

In the time remaining, I want to turn to the second part of the bill, which is about evidence-based diversion measures. For the first time, this is to say that, for the law enforcement officer who comes upon someone who has a relatively small amount of prohibited drugs, it encourages that law enforcement to think about whether, in that instance, it would be better to divert this person from criminal justice to a different set of programs for mental health and to give them a warning as opposed to prosecuting them.

I have been very educated in this crisis we are facing of deaths due to opioids by one of my constituents who is extraordinarily brave. Her name is Leslie McBain. She lost her son in he opioid crisis, and she is one of the founders of a group called Moms Stop The Harm. There are now hundreds of parents who are active in that group. It breaks my heart every time I talk to someone who has lost a child in the opioid crisis.

This tiny little measure in Bill C-5 is okay but not nearly what is required. In the same way for Bill C-5, I brought forward amendments for which have I been pilloried. Members would not believe the words used against me for introducing amendments to get rid of more mandatory minimums. Let us be clear. Getting rid of mandatory minimums is not about letting prisoners walk free. It is about making our communities safer. It is about ensuring that the punishment fits the crime, and it is up to a judge to decide that.

People are not going to walk free out of prison if they have committed offences without a mandatory minimum, but they will be sent to jail for the time appropriate to their circumstances and the offence they have committed.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure and an honour to rise in the House today to speak to this important bill.

By way of introduction, it is important to note that this bill was reintroduced from the 43rd Parliament. It is an almost identical copy, with no changes except for the omission of coordinating amendments, which made some changes to the Firearms Act and adjusted some penalties for firearms offences. The reason I point out that it has been reintroduced is that this shows how slowly sometimes very important legislation moves in this place. That is particularly regrettable when we see the profound impacts that this legislation has on communities and people in this country.

Bill C-5 is the result of the justice minister's 2021 mandate letter, in which he was instructed to “introduce legislation and make investments that take action to address systemic inequities in the criminal justice system, including to promote enhanced use of pre- and post-charge diversion and to better enable courts to impose sentences appropriate to the circumstances of individual cases.” This bill responds to that, in part, and it does so by proposing to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for all drug offences. It would also remove mandatory minimums for some tobacco and firearms offences. It is important to note that all of these mandatory minimums were added by the Conservatives in their Safe Streets and Communities Act, Bill C-10, in 2011. This bill would also make conditional sentencing orders more widely available by removing the prohibition of using them for more serious offences, and it would make it possible for police and prosecutors to divert more drug cases from the courts.

This bill raises fundamental questions of effective criminal justice in Canada. It is fair to say that all parliamentarians across party lines share a number of goals in this area. We all want to see reduced crime, and we all want to keep people safe. We all want to protect victims, and we recognize that there is much more work to do in that area. We all want to reduce recidivism and make sure that in our criminal justice system, when people transgress and are part of the system, they come out and hopefully do not reoffend. Finally, we all want to address the root causes of crime.

I will pause for a moment and speak about the root causes of crime.

I was part of the public safety committee back in 2009 and 2010, when it conducted a study of mental health and addictions in the federal corrections system. In conducting that study, we toured federal corrections facilities across the country and went into federal penitentiaries to meet a wide variety of stakeholders. Among other facilities, we went into the Kent, Mountain and Pacific institutions in British Columbia. We went into an aboriginal healing lodge in British Columbia, as well as Ferndale. We went to an aboriginal women's corrections facility in Saskatchewan called Okimaw Ohci. We went to Kingston, an infamous Canadian federal penitentiary that is now closed. We went to Dorchester in New Brunswick and Archambault in Quebec. We also, by the way, went to the U.K. and Norway and toured institutions in those countries as well, to get a comparative example.

We talked to everybody in these institutions. We talked to offenders, guards, wardens, nurses, chaplains, families, anybody who had anything whatsoever to do with working inside a federal institution. What is burned into my brain to this day is a shocking number, which is that across all institutions in Canada, the common number we heard was that 70% of offenders in federal institutions suffer from an addiction or a mental health issue. Probingly, we asked everybody, including the guards and wardens, what percentage of those people they thought would not be in prison but for their mental health issues or addictions. The answer we got, again reliably and consistently, was 70%. What that told us was that we are not, by and large, locking up criminals or bad people. We are locking up people with mental health issues and addictions, and most of their crimes are related to those two issues.

I think it is important to pause for a moment and talk about social determinants of crime, because there are highly correlated factors, like poverty, marginalization, childhood trauma and abuse, and others, that go into that prison population. By and large, I did not see a lot of white-collar millionaires in a single one of those institutions. What I saw were a lot of poor, indigenous, racialized, addicted and mentally ill Canadians.

The other thing I think we need to talk about, when we talk about root causes, is how well Canada's justice system and our federal corrections institutions respond to that. At that time, the answer was “not very well”, and worse. At that time, the Conservatives did something that I consider to be politically worthy of condemnation, which is that they politicized the issue of crime for political gain. They pursued a tough-on-crime agenda, because they thought that by preying on people's fears and sense of victimhood, they could gain political points, and they used prisoners and the prison system as pawns in that regard. By doing that, the very small number of rehabilitative services in Canada's correctional system at that time were closed by the Conservatives.

For instance, when I was visiting Kent, I walked into a huge, dark room, and when the lights were turned on, I saw it was full of equipment, such as band saws, Skilsaws and all sorts of construction equipment. There was a program where federal offenders were taught basic vocational skills, and they were making things like furniture, which was then purchased by the federal government at cost. Not only were we teaching marginalized people actual skills that they could use in the workplace when they got out, since more than 95% of offenders in federal institutions come back into society at some point, but the federal government was getting quality furniture at a below-market price. It was a win-win. However, that program was closed by the Conservatives.

When I visited the Kingston penitentiary, and also Dorchester, they had extraordinarily successful prison farm programs whereby the people inside were able to earn credit for good behaviour and gain privileges to work with agricultural projects and farm animals. By the way, there was a prize cow population at Kingston. The bloodlines were fantastic, and it was an absolutely outstanding herd. Members should have seen the impact that these programs had on the emotional and rehabilitative personalities of the people inside. However, those programs were closed by the Conservatives.

To this day, I say that we are doing a terrible job in Canada's correctional institutions of actually responding to the real needs of most offenders and ensuring that when they come out they do not repeat their offence. Here is the bottom line: I am not saying this out of a sense of compassion only; I am saying this because I do not want a single offender in Canada's correctional institutions to come back into society and reoffend, and that is exactly what they are going to do if we do not adjust and respond to their real needs.

I want to talk quickly about mandatory minimums. The bottom line is that I, and my party, oppose mandatory minimums, except for the most serious of crimes, where, of course, they are appropriate. Why? It is because they do not work; they do not have any deterrent effect. It is because they have a discriminatory effect. It is because they are largely unconstitutional. All we have to do is look to the United States, which is the pioneer of using such sentences, to see what effect they have on crime. The United States locks up the largest percentage of its population of any country on the planet.

I support Bill C-5. It is time that we start adopting progressive, rational, effective policies to keep Canadians safe. Punishing and keeping people in prison longer without access to the services they need does not work. It is cruel, and it does not keep Canadians safe. It is time to have policies that actually keep Canadians and victims safe in this country. Let us adopt the bill and take a first step towards that.

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

Madam Speaker, I am so grateful to be acknowledged at this moment, because it allows me to follow up on the question from the hon. member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke and clarify for the hon. member for Fundy Royal that no one voting for Bill C-5 thinks that guilty parties should have no jail time.

What we are arguing for, based on the evidence, is that we do not put an additional cost burden on the provinces by putting more people in jail. The provinces have to pay the costs of what was an omnibus crime bill in a previous Parliament, Bill C-10. We do not want to see people who are innocent get so worried about a mandatory minimum that they take their lawyer's advice and take a plea deal because they do not really want to take the chance of letting the judge use his or her discretion, having heard all the evidence, and we do not want people to get lesser sentences because they did not go through the process where a judge had the discretion to decide how they should go to jail.

The punishment must fit the crime, and the cookie-cutter approach of mandatory minimums is a failure.

[David Lametti, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Madam Speaker, I will pick up where I left off on Bill C-5.

This bill would accomplish important objectives by advancing a series of coordinating sentencing measures and policies in three broad areas. First, it would repeal mandatory minimum penalties for certain offences; second, it would increase the availability of conditional sentences without compromising public safety; and third, it would amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to require police and prosecutors to consider diverting cases of simple drug possession away from courts at the earliest point of contact. I will address each of these important amendments in turn.

With Bill C-5, we are proposing to repeal the mandatory minimum sentences for 14 Criminal Code offences, 13 related to firearms and one related to tobacco. We are also repealing the mandatory minimum sentences for all offences under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. These offences are associated with the overrepresentation of indigenous people, Black Canadians and members of other marginalized communities in our prison system.

These reforms will also repeal the three- and five-year mandatory minimum penalties for illegal possession of a restricted or prohibited firearm and the one-year mandatory minimum penalty for drug trafficking struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Our reasoning is simple. Sentences must be appropriate to the unique circumstances of the crime. All too often, a rigid approach to sentencing results in a grossly disproportionate outcome, particularly when the offence is broad in scope. It has been shown that mandatory minimums have not only failed to protect our communities, but also contributed to the overrepresentation of indigenous people, Black Canadians and members of marginalized communities in our prison system. That is especially true for drug- and firearm-related offences.

I want to pause here for a moment and let the numbers speak for themselves. Data from the Correctional Service of Canada from 2007-2017 reveals that 39% of Black people and 20% of indigenous people incarcerated in a federal institution between those years were there for offences carrying a mandatory minimum penalty. Further, during the same years, the proportion of indigenous offenders admitted to federal custody for an offence punishable by a mandatory minimum penalty almost doubled, from 14% to 26%. During this time frame, indigenous people also represented 40% of all federally incarcerated offenders admitted for a firearm-related offence.

Regrettably, the data does not get better when we look at the experience of Black Canadians and their interaction with the criminal justice system. From 2007-2017, nearly half, more specifically 43% of all federally incarcerated offenders convicted of importing or exporting a controlled substance or possessing controlled substances for exporting under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act were Black adults.

These statistics are a sad testament to policies that focus on incarceration and the increased use of mandatory minimum sentences. Some would have us believe that mandatory minimums are the only way to fight crime. That is simply not true.

Mandatory minimum sentences have been around for decades because the previous Conservative government brought in a whole host of new ones without taking into account what kind of impact they were actually having. We know that a more nuanced approach is needed, and that is exactly what our government is doing.

The data show who is in prison and why. If the mandatory minimum sentences are repealed, as provided for in Bill C-5, people can still be given tough sentences. However, the courts will be able to take into account the unique circumstances of each offence and determine the most appropriate sentence, rather than being limited by the mandatory minimums.

I know that many people are concerned about the rise in gun violence we are seeing now. As a Montrealer, I want to say that I understand them, but I also want to be very clear: When it comes to firearms, serious crimes will continue to receive serious penalties.

The repeal of mandatory minimum sentences for some does not mean that public safety will be compromised. Bill C-5 gives the courts the flexibility to consider alternatives for low-risk offenders. By repealing mandatory minimum sentences, we are reducing these individuals' risk of reoffending and building a safer society.

For example, let us look at the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in R. v. Nur, which struck down mandatory minimum sentences but upheld a sentence above the prescribed minimum.

That is why the repeal of mandatory minimums in the bill is expected to reduce the overall incarceration rate for indigenous and Black Canadians.

Repealing mandatory minimum sentences ensures that an individual convicted of an offence receives a sentence that is proportionate to their degree of responsibility and the seriousness of the offence, taking individual factors into account. These factors could include an indigenous offender's experience with intergenerational trauma or residential schools, or a Black offender's experience with systemic racism.

To this end, the government recognizes that restoring a sentencing court's ability to consider important sentencing principles is only one part of the equation. The other part is getting this important information before the sentencing court, so that it can account for all relative sentencing factors in imposing a fit sentence.

That is where program funding comes in. The government is providing $49.3 million over five years to support the application of Gladue principles and the integration of Gladue reporting writing in the justice system. This is critical to help address systemic barriers for indigenous peoples in the criminal justice system by ensuring that the background and systemic factors that bring them into contact with the justice system are taken into account at sentencing. It is also critical to help inform reasonable alternatives to sentencing for indigenous accused.

What is more, the government is making investments of $6.6 million per year over five years and $1.6 million in ongoing funding in support of the implementation of impact of race and cultural assessments, or IRCAs, which will ensure that a sentencing court can consider the disadvantage and systemic factors that contribute to racialized Canadians' interactions with the criminal justice system.

The government is also investing $21.5 million over five years to support access to legal information and advice for racialized Canadians. This would support organizations that provide free public legal education and information, as well as those that provide legal services and advice to racialized communities.

I want to be very clear about who we are targeting and not targeting with this bill. This bill is about low-risk offenders.

Bill C‑5 does not repeal mandatory minimum sentences for the most serious firearms offences, which of course include offences that result in people being injured, offences committed with a restricted or prohibited weapon and offences involving gangs or organized crime.

We are determined to crack down on the major crimes that make our cities and communities less safe. Let me reiterate: Serious crimes will continue to have serious consequences.

In its platform, our government committed to continuing to combat gender-based violence and fight gun crime with measures we had previously introduced, such as lifetime background checks to prevent those with a history of abuse against their spouse or partner from obtaining a firearms licence; red flag laws that would allow immediate removal of firearms if a person is a threat to themselves or others, particularly to their spouse or partner; increased maximum penalties for firearms trafficking and smuggling from 10 to 14 years of imprisonment; and enhancing the capacity of the RCMP and the CBSA to combat the illegal importation of firearms.

Bill C-5 would make our justice system more fair and more just for young, first-time or non-violent offenders by giving judges back the ability to impose a sentence that fits the crime and the offender. However, nothing in this bill would prevent a judge from imposing a serious sentence where it is warranted.

I would like to turn to the proposed changes in Bill C‑5 regarding the elimination of restrictions on conditional sentences. Bill C‑5 would allow for greater use of conditional sentences so that courts can impose community-based sentences of less than two years when the offender does not pose a threat to public safety. Here too the evidence is clear. Incarceration, especially for low-risk offenders, is associated with higher rates of recidivism. That is not my opinion; that is a fact.

It has also been proven that alternatives to incarceration, such as sentences served in the community, can have a significant positive impact and improve the likelihood of successful reintegration into the community, which also helps reduce the risk of recidivism. Once again, that is a fact, not an opinion.

It has also been proven that recidivism rates among offenders who receive conditional sentences are relatively low. This is according to a large body of research showing that tackling the root causes of delinquency can produce long-term benefits for the individual, improve the efficiency of the justice system and protect society as a whole. It is not hard to see why. Community-based sentencing is an option that eliminates the negative effects of incarceration, thereby promoting offender rehabilitation.

Restrictions enacted by the previous Conservative government in 2007 in former Bill C-9, an act to amend the Criminal Code, and in 2012 by former Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act, made it much harder for a sentencing court to impose these sentences. These reforms made conditional sentences unavailable for all offences punishable by maximum terms of imprisonment of 14 years or more, as well as for some offences prosecuted by indictment and punishable by a maximum of 10 years imprisonment. These laws tied the courts' hands. These amendments to the conditional sentencing regime, coupled with the increased use of mandatory minimum penalties, have produced negative impacts on the criminal justice system as a whole.

This bill would increase the availability of conditional sentence orders when offenders do not pose a risk to public safety and are facing terms of imprisonment that are under two years or less, and where imposing such a sentence would be consistent with the purpose and principles of sentencing. CSOs would be available for all offences that do not carry a minimum mandatory penalty, including those repealed by this bill, with certain exceptions. Conditional sentences of imprisonment would not be available for the serious offences of advocating genocide, torture, attempted murder and any terrorism or criminal organization offences that are prosecuted by way of indictment and for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 10 years or more.

I will turn to the other important amendments being advanced in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act shortly. Before I do, let me speak to the positive impacts that can be expected by repealing MMPs and making conditional sentences of imprisonment more widely available.

First of all, as I have already mentioned, we can expect an overall reduction in incarceration rates, particularly as they relate to the overrepresentation of indigenous people, Black Canadians and members of marginalized communities in federal correctional institutions.

Reducing the number of mandatory minimum sentences should also help our courts. In cases involving mandatory minimum sentences, the evidence demonstrates that trials take longer to complete, accused persons are less likely to plead guilty and there is a stark increase in successful charter challenges before Canadian courts.

This all causes delays in the criminal justice system, and we have to deal with them. The bill would improve that situation.

This brings me to the last set of important reforms proposed in Bill C-5. For the first time, we would enact a declaration of principles in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It is intended to guide police and prosecutors in the exercise of their discretion to divert simple possession of drugs away from the criminal justice system at an early stage.

At the outset, I would like to thank the member for Beaches—East York for his private member's bill in the last Parliament and his leadership in this area. We agree that these changes to treat addiction as a health issue would improve the state of criminal justice in Canada and may well help save lives during the opioid crisis. These principles are consistent with and informed by the large body of research indicating that criminal sanctions imposed for simple possession of drugs can increase the stigma associated with drug use and are not consistent with established public health evidence.

These reforms reinforce the government's ongoing commitment to addressing the opioid crisis and recognize that substance use is a health issue, not a crime. Accordingly, it requires evidence-based interventions to address its causes rather than its effects, with measures such as education, treatment, detox, rehabilitation and social reintegration.

Police forces and Crown prosecutors will be required to consider alternatives to laying or pursuing criminal charges for individuals who are found in simple possession of controlled substances. Possible actions will include doing nothing, issuing a warning, or referring individuals to alternative measures, including treatment programs.

The reforms in this bill align with the August 2020 guideline of the director of public prosecutions. It tells prosecutors to pursue diversion for simple drug possession cases and instead focus on prosecutions for the most serious drug cases that raise public safety concerns. The proposed amendments also align with the advice given by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. They also reflect calls to action made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, calls for justice from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and recent calls by the Parliamentary Black Caucus to address anti-Black racism and systemic bias and to make the criminal justice system more reflective of our diverse society.

Taken together, this package of reforms is an important reset of our approach to criminal justice. It would allow actors in the system, including police, the Crown and courts, to determine the right course of action for each individual before them. That could mean diversion to a treatment program for an offender who committed a crime in order to feed an addiction, or it could mean a long jail sentence for the drug trafficker who is profiting from selling those drugs to our most vulnerable citizens.

It is high time that Canada adopted an approach that works. Our justice system must be fair and equitable for indigenous people, Black Canadians and marginalized people, and it must be effective in punishing serious criminal offences and protecting our communities.

We have enough evidence now to know that reflexive and punitive justice policies do not work. They do not make our communities safer, they hurt people and the people they hurt most are indigenous, Black and marginalized Canadians.

Our government is set to turn the page on the failed policies of the past. Bill C-5 is an important step in that direction, and I urge all hon. members of the House to support its swift passage.

Record Suspension Program

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Motion No. 161, which calls for a study of the impacts on people with a criminal past who seek a record suspension, formerly known as a pardon. It is a term perhaps more familiar to those who are watching the debate at home, but a term that the previous Conservative government removed to reflect that this was not a purging of their past, but rather a recognition of their efforts to change and live productive lives within our communities.

More specific, the motion, if passed, will instruct the public safety committee to undertake an examination of how record suspensions can help those reintegrate into society, to look at the fees associated with the application for record suspensions and whether they should be changed and, finally, a catch-all directive to identify any improvements to better support applicants through this process.

lt is interesting that the motion is being debated in the House rather than being simply moved to the committee itself, which could be a much quicker option.

lt is also interesting that this comes on the heels of the debate on Bill C-83, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

While Bill C-83 and the motion we are discussing today are different in substance, at the heart of these two items is the watering down or perhaps the repeal of the previous Conservative government's Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act. Bill C-10 enhanced victim's rights and enhanced the safety of Canadians, which lengthened the crime-free waiting period to 10 years before a serious offender could apply to suspend indictable convictions and to five years from three for summary offences. It disqualified anyone with more than three convictions for an indictable offence from ever being able to apply and disqualified those convicted of child sex offences from ever being able to apply.

A review of the fees associated with the applications for record suspensions is in order, particularly if the fees are hindering the rehabilitation of individuals back into their community, as the hon. member for Saint John—Rothesay has indicated. However, if this is another attempt by the Liberal government to prioritize the rights of criminals ahead of the rights of victims, that is something Canada's Conservatives will not accept.

Motion No. 161 instructs the public safety committee to look at how suspending a criminal's record would assist in the reintegration into society. The hon. member for Saint John—Rothesay included this in his speech. He also included references to people convicted of minor offences, like theft under. The member mentioned that these people were having difficulty finding jobs because of their criminal records and that they could not afford to apply for record suspensions. This in effect hindered their ability to reintegrate into their community and effectively raise themselves out of poverty.

As I indicated earlier, a review in this narrow context at committee I feel is more appropriate. However, I say narrow because the examples used by the hon. member in his speech are narrow in scope as well. The motion does not say those convicted of minor offences, as we might believe from the examples the member for Saint John—Rothesay has used in his speech.

I refer to the speech by my hon. colleague, the member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, which he gave in the House a short time ago. He said, “Record suspensions should not be something that anyone with a criminal past can get. Some crimes can and should remain forever on someone's record.” He continued, “serious criminals and repeat offenders that are generally the concern, not one-time shoplifters. The fact is that one-time shoplifters are usually dealt with by means of alternative measures.”

Let me be clear. Canada's Conservatives do not want criminals like Terri-Lynne McClintic getting their records suspended for their heinous crimes. We must ensure that those who commit crimes against children will never be able to volunteer at a children's day care centre, for example. The shocking indifference for victims and a disturbing compassion for criminals that the Liberal government has demonstrated over the past weeks needs to be re-examined by the Prime Minister.

As I mentioned earlier, it is interesting that the member chose to raise this matter through a motion in the House, rather than the more expeditious route of presenting a motion to a committee, for example. Obviously, I am not a member of that standing committee. I sit on the natural resources committee. I do not know the public safety committee's agenda, what studies are being conducted and what studies it plans on doing in the future. The committee members themselves are best placed to determine how the study fits within the current pressing public safety or national security issues of, say, gang violence, illegal border crossers, cybersecurity, threats by foreign states or extremist attacks, and yet we are being asked to set the agenda for this committee.

Also, considering this draw, not every MP in this House will have the opportunity to bring forward such legislation. for the benefit of those watching at home, I am referring to the procedure by which we choose the order in which private members can bring private members' business to this House. While I recognize that this motion would impact the hon. member's constituents, it could, as I have said earlier, more appropriately have been dealt with at committee, which would have allowed the member to raise another substantive legislative concern for his constituents.

While it may raise questions for the constituents of Saint John—Rothesay, the member is perfectly within his right to do so. As a result, I have some recommendations for the committee during any review that it may have down the road.

I would encourage the members of the public safety committee to remember that they are the public safety committee, when reviewing this motion.

I recommend that the committee consider the difference between someone who steals a pair of jeans and someone with a record of a serious crime, like sexual assault, child abuse, trafficking, homicide and other violent crimes. It may come as a shock to some of my Liberal colleagues, but there is a difference.

I also recommend that the committee consider the concept that deterrence is also an important factor that could be considered in the prevention of crime. The last message we want to send is that when people steal a pair of jeans and get caught, all they need to do is pay a pittance and there will be no record of their crime. Having a record creates a deterrent and reminds us that crime is not welcome in our communities.

Let us not forget that with every crime there are also multiple victims. I strongly urge the committee not to recommend a reversal of important provisions found in Bill C-10 that put community safety first, and were grounded in a philosophy that victims matter. I recommend not allowing criminals like child predators and repeat offenders with three or more indictable offences to be eligible to receive record suspension. I recommend not altering the required number of years that people with serious criminal convictions, like violent and sexual crimes, have to demonstrate their rehabilitation, before they can apply.

I ask the committee to consider the balance Bill C-10 struck between recognizing the role record suspensions play in facilitating reintegration, ensuring the protection of our communities, particularly the most vulnerable, and placing victims rights at the forefront. We need to ensure that record suspensions do not become a right for criminals. We need to ensure that criminals cannot buy a pass on their criminal behaviour. We need to ensure that a record means something, and we need to ensure that rehabilitation is still the overarching factor in the record suspension process.

The Liberals have demonstrated, in the past few weeks, a concerning preference to coddle criminals rather than champion the safety of the public and respond to the victims. Whether it was giving a convicted cop killer Chris Garnier veterans benefits, despite spending not one second in the Canadian Armed Forces and, something Chris Garnier openly claims, despite the fact that he contracted post-traumatic stress disorder in the process of committing his crime when he murdered a female police officer; whether it was deciding to move a child killer from behind bars to a healing lodge with no fence and with children living inside; or whether it is a lack of transparency in the Liberals' plan on dealing with returning ISIS terrorists, the trend must stop there.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Motion No. 161, which seeks a review of the record suspension program as amended in Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act, enacted by the previous Conservative government. I would like to thank the member for Saint John—Rothesay for introducing the motion and providing me the opportunity to recall some of the excellent work done in the realm of justice and law and order by the previous government.

The Safe Streets and Communities Act introduced many important and necessary changes to how our criminal justice system worked and focused on protecting victims of crime. The bill was thoroughly vetted, with over 200 hours of debate between committee and the House. By the time Bill C-10 was introduced, Conservatives had done much to reform the justice system. We passed mandatory minimum sentences for gang-related murders and drive-by shootings. We eliminated the shameful practice of giving two-for-one credit for time served in pretrial custody. We strengthened the national sex offender registry and passed legislation ensuring that drug dealers were not let out of prison after serving a mere one-sixth of their sentences, not to mention the outstanding track record our government had on crime prevention.

Bill C-10, as just one of the over 25 bills we passed to reform our Justice system, continued in the tradition of those Conservative measures to crack down on crime by legislating many new and improved measures. Some of those measures included increasing the penalties for sexual offences against children. lt targeted organized drug crime by toughening sentences for narcotics trafficking. lt protected foreign workers who were at risk of becoming victims of human trafficking or exploitation. Notably, Bill C-10 enacted the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which allowed the victims of terror attacks to sue both the individual responsible and those who supported that individual. lt granted broader leeway for the Minister of Public Safety to decide if someone who committed crimes overseas, including acts of terror, should be allowed to come back to Canada.

These are points of particular interest now as a comparison to the Liberal government's record on terrorists, their victims and the victims of crime overall. The Liberal government has sought to bring ISIS fighters back into Canada. The Liberals willingly wrote a cheque for $10.5 million to convicted terrorist Omar Khadr. Where is the respect for the victims of terrorist attacks? Where is the respect for their families, for Tabitha Speer?

Compare and contrast the record of the previous Conservative government to the Liberal government on any of these issues and it quickly becomes clear that the previous Conservative government was focused squarely on protecting the rights of victims, while the Liberal government is focused on protecting the rights of criminals. I understand this is a bold statement to make, but I have a hard time seeing the changes the government is making to our justice system in any other way. While the previous Conservative government ensured that criminals faced the consequences of their actions, the Liberal government has introduced Bill C-75, a bill that opens the door to shockingly lenient sentences for crimes such as abducting children, advocating genocide, impaired driving causing bodily harm and even engaging in terrorist activities.

I am bringing these issues into focus in this debate today to make a point. The Liberal government has an appalling track record on this file. It has continually weakened the protections for victims of crime, while making life easier for criminals. I believe it is crucial to remember the government's record while discussing the question underlined in the motion.

There are certain individuals who would be greatly pleased to use this motion as an opportunity to call for the wholesale repeal of Bill C-10. Engaging in that discussion would be a mistake. I am always willing to discuss and debate the merits of particular and fine points of the legislative track record of our former government; however, Bill C-10 was clearly a step in the right direction in that it placed the emphasis on the role of the victim in our justice system and ensured that criminals faced the consequences for their actions.

Let me be clear. I believe it is important to review the impacts of changes to a law. ln fact, I welcome reviews of legislation, as too often governments of all stripes pass laws with the very best of intentions, which may result in an end very different than what the government had in mind.

Given the bill became law nearly six years ago, it may be a good idea to ensure that the changes made to the record suspension program are accomplishing that which they were intended to do. ln fact, my hon. colleague for Saint John—Rothesay states it very clearly in the early part of the motion before us today, which reads:

That the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security be instructed to undertake a study of the Record Suspension Program to: (a) examine the impact of a record suspension to help those with a criminal record reintegrate into society;

There is the line “reintegrate into society”.

The ideal outcome of a prison sentence is not merely for offenders to face the consequences of their bad actions, but for them to reform into productive members of society. However, there must be a clear litmus test to ensure offenders have indeed reformed their ways.

We have a system of criminal records to protect citizens from the possibility of becoming unwitting victims of a previous offender. However, in a just society, a society founded on Judeo-Christian principles, there ought to be an opportunity for redemption. This is why the record suspension program exists, to give another chance to those who have proven themselves reformed.

ln order to access this program, however, the litmus test I alluded to earlier must be met. Bill C-10 set the standard as 10 years lived crime-free for serious crimes or five years for summary offences. lt also disqualified those who proved themselves too dangerous, by including those convicted of sexual offences against children and those convicted of three indictable offences, from ever being eligible to apply. Bill C-10 ensured that offenders would pay their own way through this system and increased the record suspension application fee to reflect that belief.

ln crafting the bill, the previous government believed that this standard would best protect the community, respect the rights of victims and provide those who had proven themselves deserving a second opportunity. Now, perhaps enough time has passed for the results of the these changes to be reviewed.

I am sure that all of us in this place wish to ensure that the process of the record suspension program is not hindering long-rehabilitated individuals from becoming productive members of society. However, let me again state the importance of retaining the focus on this aspect of Bill C-10. The Safe Streets and Communities Act placed the focus squarely on the rights of victims.

Listening to those who wish to repeal the bill would be a step backward for our justice system. I remain cautiously optimistic that the motion before us today will provide the opportunity to further strengthen our justice system.

Opposition Motion—Terrorism

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for bringing up Bill C-10 on victims of terrorism. He and I saw again this past weekend Maureen Basnicki, who was a victim of terrorism. Her husband died in 9/11. She lives in Collingwood, and she has no recourse against those criminals. She is one of the inspirations behind Bill C-10. We brought in Bill S-7 to allow more government tools and more tools for the RCMP and border services so we could get the job done.

What we see from the Liberals is Bill C-75, which would take joining a terrorist organization down to a fine rather than an indictable offence.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my friend from Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman to compare his time in government as a Manitoba MP with the deputy House leader of the Liberal Party. He was part of the government that introduced Bill C-10, which allowed victims of terrorism to sue terrorists internationally, whereas we have seen recently Liberal members actually attack victims of terrorism. It is a totally different approach.

Tougher Penalties for Child Predators Act

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have to ask how the members across the way square the fact that they voted against increased penalties for sexual offences against children when Bill C-10 was here in this Parliament.

Our government has been, as the first in many governments, focused on the victims, focused on the families first. There is a limited amount of resources. We have other programs that do address these other issues as well. However, when we talk about what is important, how in the world can anybody vote against protecting children?

It is a deterrent when people have increased penalties. It is a deterrent when the communities are looking at how they can keep their communities safe. We have people in schools and churches all across this nation who are gathering and talking about how they can have neighbourhood watch and how they can ensure that they know more about where sexual predators are.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles.

It is a honour to speak to Bill C-26, which amends a number of acts that deal with sexual offences against children. I would like to speak as a father, as an uncle, and hopefully someday as a grandfather.

I have two children. Any time the subject of child exploitation comes up, I think all parents across Canada would have zero tolerance for any sort of child exploitation that occurs in our society.

The bill is a good step in the right direction; however, a number of amendments and a number of recommendations from expert witnesses and stakeholders introduced at committee provided very good evidence to amend the bill. As usual, the Conservatives failed to entertain any of them.

That said, when I and all my colleagues talk about our children, there is no doubt that whether one is on this side of the aisle or the other side, every single member of the House is dead set against child exploitation. Not only that, in the last number of years the House has brought in a number of initiatives that have tightened the laws regarding child sexual exploitation, and we were happy to support those initiatives.

Members will remember Bill C-10, an omnibus crime bill introduced by the Conservatives. We actually wanted to fast-track the sections that dealt with child exploitation. One side of the story is to bring in legislation to ensure that our children are safe, and as parliamentarians we should be doing that. I am very proud of the record of the NDP, the official opposition, in supporting initiatives that enhance the safety of our children.

It is one thing to be tough on crime, but we cannot be soft on community safety. That is the record of the Conservative government. The Conservatives have been soft on community safety. If we really want protection, laws alone will not provide it. We need to provide additional resources. Money must be invested into communities to ensure that service providers, other stakeholders, and law enforcement agencies have the tools and resources to ensure that our children are safe from predators. Earlier the member talked about the money that was unspent, and I will talk about that in a second.

I want to quote Steve Sullivan at the committee. He is the former federal ombudsman for victims of crime and he would certainly know something about resources in the community. He wrote:

...the federal government recently announced it was cutting the measly $650,000 in funding Corrections Canada provides. [The Circle of Support and Accountability program] also receives funding from the National Crime Prevention Centre; that's also set to end this fall. In total, the program costs $2.2 million a year.

He went on:

Like most community-based victim services, [Circles of Support and Accountability] is a fairly cheap program. It has 700 volunteers across the country; they meet with offenders after their release, help them find jobs and places to live, meet with them regularly for coffee. They support offenders as they settle into normal lives, ones that don't involve new victims. They hold them accountable.

This program has shown success. Here are some of the statistics that have come out. Circles of support and accountability numbers are impressive. One study found a 70% reduction in sexual offences recidivism for those who participated in circles of support and accountability compared to those who did not. Another study found an 83% reduction in child sexual offences recidivism.

This is the record of the government. If we are really concerned about ensuring safety for our children and safety in our community, why is the government cutting the very programs that have shown success in communities? They provided 700 volunteers. These are Canadian parents that are willing to volunteer their services to ensure that our communities remain safe, yet the government pulled the rug out from underneath this very successful program. We can create all the laws we want. We can say we are tough on crime, but it does not work if we are soft on community safety. That is the record of the government.

We had a couple of cases in Surrey, British Columbia. There was a young lady murdered by a sex offender who was known to the RCMP and who was on the list of those likely to reoffend. My heart goes out to the family. My heart goes out to the parents. What we did as a society, as a government, was let this happen in our community. Where was the support? How are we monitoring these people when they are released into the community?

If we know these people are likely to reoffend, why are they being dropped into the community without some sort of support, whether we provide resources to the RCMP or to the very front line workers who provide these services to monitor these individuals? We had programs in place where the recidivism rates for sexual offences were reduced by 83%, yet the government is cutting these very programs.

In fact, the mayor of the city of Surrey has called for more resources to ensure that once offenders are released, if they are released, that we have proper resources to ensure monitoring and ensuring there is support in place to ensure the safety of our children.

I often talk about this. Facts and research are not something Conservatives believe in because we know where they get their facts from. We have seen them pick their facts from Kijiji rather than relying on science or what works in the community. What works in the community are programs like circles of accountability and support.

I want to talk about the changes. I do not understand this as a parent. I do not understand as a member of Parliament. The government wants to enact a high-risk child sex offender database to establish a publicly accessible database that contains information that a police service or other public authority has previously made accessible to the public with respect to persons who are found guilty of sexual offences against children and who pose a high risk of committing crimes of a sexual nature.

If the offenders pose a high-risk of repeating crimes of a sexual nature, why are they being released into the community in the first place? That is how idiotic the government is.

If we are really concerned about ensuring the safety of our children, we need to provide resources. Bill C-26 does not provide any resources to ensure the safety of our communities.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak in support of Bill C-26, the tougher penalties for child predators act. I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Macleod.

Bill C-26 is a part of the government's continuing effort to ensure that child sexual offences result in sentences of imprisonment that denounce the heinous nature of these crimes. We hear the opposition members question the necessity of this bill in light of amendments that this government made in the past, especially those enacted by Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act.

The Safe Streets and Communities Act was a good step in the right direction, and Bill C-26 proposes to build on those reforms to fully recognize the devastating impact that these crimes have on the lives of victimized children.

We have heard criticism particularly directed at the effectiveness of mandatory minimum penalties in achieving this objective. A brief discussion about the current sentencing regime in the Criminal Code is warranted in order to explain the necessity of the proposed reforms.

The Criminal Code states that the fundamental purpose of sentencing is to contribute, along with crime prevention initiatives, to the respect for the law and the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society.

In order to achieve this fundamental purpose, a sentence may have the following objectives: denunciation, deterrence, separation of the offender from society when necessary; rehabilitation of the offender; providing reparation for the harm done to the victim or community; the promotion of a sense of responsibility in offenders; and the acknowledgement of the harm done to victims and the community.

It is important to note that a just sentence does not have to reflect all of these sentencing objectives, but only those that are essential to achieve the fundamental purpose of sentencing.

In sentencing offenders for sexual offences committed against children, section 718.01 of the Criminal Code directs courts to consider denunciation and deterrence as the paramount sentencing objectives. How can we as legislators ensure that primary importance is also given to these objectives for these types of crimes?

Both social denunciation of a crime and the deterrence of criminals are achieved in our laws in two ways. First, maximum terms of imprisonment send a clear signal of what punishment is proportionate for the worst offender who commits a crime in the worst circumstances. Second, mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment represent the lowest punishment that we as a society consider important for certain serious crimes.

By increasing both minimum terms of imprisonment and maximum terms of imprisonment for certain sexual offences committed against children, Bill C-26 focuses on denunciation and deterrence and thereby ensures that sentences imposed contribute to a just, peaceful and safe society.

The fundamental objective of a sentence can only be achieved if the sentence imposed is just. According to the Criminal Code, a just sentence is one that is proportionate to the degree of responsibility of the offender and the gravity of the offence. In determining a just sentence, a court must consider the sentencing principles described in the Criminal Code. For example, a sentence must be increased to account for any aggravating factors relating to the offender or the offence.

Two of the listed aggravating factors in subsection 718(a) of the Criminal Code play an important role in child sexual cases.

First, paragraph 718.2(a)(ii.1) of the Criminal Code directs courts to treat the fact that an offender, in committing the offence, abused the person under the age of 18 years of age as an aggravating factor for sentencing purposes.

Second, paragraph 718.2(a)(iii) of the Criminal Code directs the fact of the offender in committing the offence abused a position of trust or authority in relation to the victim also be considered an aggravating factor for sentencing purposes.

Both these aggravating factors further indicate that the significant punishment as proposed by Bill C-26 is justifiable for child predators.

Another important contribution of Bill C-26 rests with the proposed reforms that relate to the imposition of concurrent and consecutive sentences. These amendments would clarify and codify applicable rules in situations where an offender would be sentenced for multiple offences, whether committed against the same victim or not.

Apart from the explicit reference to mandatory consecutive sentences in the context of terrorism acts, criminal organization offences and the use of a firearm in the commission of the offence, the general sentencing principles found in subsection 718.3(4) of the Criminal Code regarding consecutive and concurrent sentences only offer limited guidance to courts.

Bill C-26 proposes to improve on this by, among other things, directing courts to consider ordering that the terms of imprisonment for offences arising out of separate events, or a separate series of events, be served consecutively to one another.

This represents a codification of the rules developed by courts over the years. Courts will generally order that sentences be served consecutively unless they are committed as part of the same event or series of events, or as some have described it, as part of a criminal transaction. Where several offences are committed as part of the same criminal transaction, the courts will generally determine what is a proportionate sentence for the most serious offence committed and order that the other offences be served concurrently. However, where an offence committed as part of the same criminal transaction is gratuitous or dangerous, courts will generally consider ordering that the sentences be served consecutively to discourage offenders from committing serious offences with impunity.

This approach is codified in Bill C-26 by directing courts to consider ordering consecutive sentences in situations where one of the offences was committed either on judicial interim release or while the accused was fleeing from a peace officer.

The totality principle represents the final step in the determination of whether sentences of imprisonment should be served consecutively. This sentencing principle, described in paragraph 718.2(c) of the Criminal Code, prevents courts from ordering that terms of imprisonment be served one after the other if the combined sentence is unduly long or harsh. Where the combined sentence is, in the court's opinion, unduly long or harsh, it may order that certain terms of imprisonment be served concurrently instead of one after the other.

I understand that in ordering concurrent sentences in such cases, courts intend to craft a combined sentence that is proportionate to the overall responsibility of the offender. However, in the context of sexual offences committed against children, this approach translates into a sentence discount for the offender.

To address this problem, Bill C-26 proposes that sentences of imprisonment for child pornography offences be served consecutively to any sentence imposed at the same time for a contact child sexual offence, and in cases of multiple victims, that sentences imposed at the same time for contact child sexual offences committed against one victim be served consecutively to those imposed for contact child sexual offences committed against any other victim.

Requiring that these terms of imprisonment be served consecutively to one another would send a clear message that every sexual offence committed against children is serious and is clearly unacceptable. These amendments will also send a clear and unequivocal signal that a proportionate sentence is one that acknowledges that every child victim counts.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to begin my speech on Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, to enact the High Risk Child Sex Offender Database Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

The Conservative government does not have a very good record to start with. We can look at Bill C-10, a piece of legislation that substantially amended the Criminal Code. When that bill passed, the Barreau du Québec said, “Canadian justice is in mourning [and the passage of Bill C-10] is a setback for Canadian criminal law.” Such is the Conservatives' record on changes to the Criminal Code.

If we look at this from a financial perspective, as I was saying earlier, the Quebec minister of intergovernmental affairs announced two days ago that the cost of incarcerating offenders has increased by 11%. That expense was passed on to Quebec without the federal government assuming any of the additional cost, which ultimately was created by criminalizing certain elements that were not criminal before and likely could have been resolved either through prevention or by providing support to the people concerned, to ensure that they did not reoffend.

Finally, we have a different vision of the fundamentals of society than the Conservatives do. We want to live in a safer society, with less crime, and we want to be able to prevent crime before it happens. That is not the case for the Conservatives, who always adopt repressive policies and think that imposing longer prison sentences will resolve the problems associated with crime in Canada.

That brings to mind something that the member for Gatineau often says. When an offender is about to commit a crime, he does not bring the Criminal Code with him to read up on what the maximum penalty will be, whether there is a mandatory minimum sentence and whether the trial judge will be able to have him serve his sentence in the community or not. That way of thinking is is completely absurd and out of touch with reality.

The crime rate is dropping as a result of a number of factors, including demographics. The population is aging so crime is dropping, which makes sense in any society. If we want to reduce crime, we need to invest in prevention and in rehabilitation when a crime has been committed. However, the ideal would be not to have criminals or crime.

With this bill, the Conservatives are falling into the same repetitive cycle of behaviour that they always fall into, which involves a simplistic and very election-minded approach. This approach consists of convincing Canadians that they are going to do away with crime by imposing longer sentences, criminalizing activities that were not crimes before and imposing minimum sentences, or in other words, by not putting any faith in the justice system.

One of the methods used by the Conservatives involves playing on the public's frustration. It is true that we are all sometimes frustrated when criminal convictions are not in line with what we personally think they should be. We may be angry about verdicts that we think are too soft considering the seriousness of the offence. However, the Conservatives always play on people's emotions and hope that they will not have any faith in the justice system.

Along the same lines as imposing mandatory minimum sentences or increasing existing minimums, the Conservatives also discredit the judiciary and undermine judges' ability to evaluate criminals' personal situation and ability to reintegrate into society. They play on people's sense of fear, as they do with other issues, especially safety-related issues.

We will clearly support this bill at second reading, because it contains a number of worthwhile provisions that should be studied. My colleagues on the Standing Committee on Justice will examine the validity of each of these provisions. However, we still need to remember that our objective should be prevention and that the federal government, which is responsible for enforcing and developing the Criminal Code, should also assume the financial costs associated with creating these new crimes.

One recent example was Bill C-36. Unfortunately I did not have an opportunity to speak to that bill because the Conservative government yet again limited the time allocated for members of the House to debate this bill. It was the same thing. Bill C-36 created a criminal offence that had never before existed in Canada's history, in order to give the public the impression that the government was fixing a criminal problem. The problem was one that had never existed before. This bill takes us to the next step in the criminalization of society. The government invented a criminal offence that did not exist before. In a few days, in December, we will see whether police forces enforce this new provision of the Criminal Code that now criminalizes activities that were not crimes previously.

Bill C-36 was one specific example. However, we are seeing the same behavioural pattern here. As was the case with Bill C-36, the government is using children to get the public on board. Of course, the NDP has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to crimes against children. That is a no-brainer, and I think that any Canadian in their right mind would condemn crimes against children. That is a no-brainer. Everyone agrees, and no one opposes virtue. However, the Conservatives always use sensitive issues and bring children into the mix so that their bills will pass. After a more detailed study in committee, the hon. member for Gatineau will tell us whether these provisions are constitutional or not. I leave that to the experts. What I have seen, as someone who is not an expert, is that the Conservative government always wants to criminalize and increase prison sentences instead of focusing on prevention and rehabilitation. Above all, it does not want to assume the related costs.

I will end there and leave it to the experts. It is important that Canadians realize that the government cannot always use children as the justification for getting bills passed. These bills are smoke and mirrors, not a real amendment to the Criminal Code that has been deemed necessary by experts and people who work on these issues.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak on such a serious issue as the subject of Bill C-26.

This bill is a perfectly clear manifestation of the Conservatives' law and order ideology. It also demonstrates the Conservatives' failure to provide the law and order they talk so much about, since sexual offences against children have increased by 6% in the last two years.

We in the NDP have zero tolerance for sexual offences against children, while respecting jurisprudential principles and basic law, an area where the government too often expresses its disdain for judges by reducing their freedom of decision-making and imposing minimum sentences.

I would remind the House that we offered to speed the passage of the parts of former omnibus Bill C-10 that dealt with sexual offences against children. In those parts, the mandatory minimum sentences were more severe. However, today we are debating a bill that would increase the existing mandatory minimums and the maximum sentences for certain sexual offences against children.

This provision gives the impression that the Conservative government is trying to make up for its failures, but I would like the government to tell me how these new mandatory minimum and maximum sentences can succeed when they have failed in the past.

Like the other members of Parliament, I have read the statistics. The number of crimes committed has risen exponentially. As the mother of three children, I find the following figures rather frightening: in 2008, 54 people were charged with luring children by means of the Internet; in 2012 that number was 127; in 2008, 241 people were charged with sexual interference; in 2012 there were 916.

I wonder whether the problem lies with the sentences or with the services provided.

We know that our communities need more resources to combat the sexual abuse of children. The NDP has supported the program called Circles of Support and Accountability or CoSA.

The former federal ombudsman for victims of crime has revealed that funding for this program will end this fall. That is very sad because, like most community services for victims, the CoSA program is not very expensive. Its 700 volunteers across Canada meet with offenders after their release, help them find work and housing, and meet with them regularly over coffee. The former ombudsman said they were helping offenders remake their lives, avoid reoffending and take responsibility.

Harsher prison terms will probably not be enough.

I would like to raise another point I think is dicey in this bill: the creation of a publicly accessible database containing information with respect to persons who are found guilty of sexual offences against children.

A number of elements that need to be clarified come to mind when I read this bill. This database is likely to lead to a false sense of security, as it gives the impression that the threat comes only from strangers, from those sex offenders walking around in our communities and on our streets, even though the vast majority of child molesters are close to the family. The Fondation Marie-Vincent has determined that in 85% of cases of sexual abuse of children under the age of 12, the abuser is a person the child knows.

I am not saying that establishing this kind of database is a bad thing. I am saying that care must be taken and that the database should not be the only tool for making people safer. It has a role to play, of course, but it is not the main way to make our neighbourhoods safer.

There is another point that bothers me: this kind of registry has already been established in the United States, and we can see that the results are not very good. The Chicago-based Journal of Law and Economics conducted a study in 2011 that showed that the highest rates of sex crimes in the United States come from sex offenders who are listed in registries that are available to the public, simply because the offenders whose names are on these public lists have a tendency to hide and comply less with the law. They tend to live in secrecy. They will take longer to reintegrate into society and be rehabilitated. In other words, they will not be monitored as other offenders are by assistance services and they will be more likely to reoffend. I think this is something that should be examined in greater depth, and I am sure that my colleagues will try to raise all of these sensitive issues in committee.

Since 2006, the Conservative government has taken measures that it says are meant to protect children better. We have taken note of this, but considering that the numbers of sex offences against children continue to rise, the government’s repressive measures are clearly not sufficient.

We would like to see measures that will protect children in a tangible way and make our communities safer, not measures that are just intended to make the Conservatives look good in press conferences. We must also examine in depth whether certain of these measures—such as the high-risk child sex offender database, evidence from spouses of accused persons in child pornography cases and the imposition of consecutive sentences on offenders who have committed sexual offences against children—are in compliance with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Finally, it is easy to see that the unilateral and essentially repressive approach by the Conservatives is unlikely to be enough in and of itself and that this strategy must be urgently reviewed in order to fight effectively against child sexual molestation.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, we share the goal of there being fewer victims of child sexual offences. We all share that goal in this House. It is therefore critically important that we seek ways to reduce the number of victims who are affected. The mode of choice for the current government is mandatory minimum sentences.

There were mandatory minimum sentences introduced in Bill C-10, which came into effect in 2012, and since then, the incidence of child sexual offences has increased. The answer in Bill C-26 is to take those mandatory minimums we had in Bill C-10 and increase them. Given that this has not worked, would the member agree with me that we must be more creative in trying to cause there to be fewer victims rather than doing over and over again what is not working?

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-26 as it also gives me an opportunity to talk about our justice system more generally and the approach the Conservatives have been taking since 2006, when they were elected to government for the first time with the current Prime Minister as their leader.

It is hard to know where to start. We have talked about mandatory minimum sentences, about how to make our streets and communities safer, and about how to address issues that our communities are facing. I would like to point out that the Conservatives' policies are a far cry from what we have known in Canada, historically speaking. This is a complete 180. It is more than a 180, it is more like a 360, but that would put us back where we started, so I will stick with 180.

Bill C-10 is a perfect example of the Conservatives' approach to criminal justice issues. I would like talk about what we do in Quebec since my riding, La Pointe-de-l'Île, is located on the Island of Montreal in Quebec. We have a long-standing, deep-rooted tradition of working with victims, in accordance with the reintegration and rehabilitation principles that have guided our criminal justice policies. These are principles that do not rate for the Conservatives, values they may not care about. I am being the devil's advocate here. Is one side more right than the other? I do not think that this debate should be about who is right and who is wrong. It should be about what works on the ground. That is what I am going to talk about in my speech.

This debate is not about adding mandatory minimum sentences, but since my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, talked about that, I feel I can talk about it too. Adding such sentences not only takes away judges' discretionary power, but also makes the system we cherish, a system based on rehabilitation rather than repression, completely ineffective. That might be something we could debate. Some experts will say that it works, and others will say that it does not. If we want to talk about a system that focuses on repression, we can look at statistics from the United States. We know that the American system is one of the most repressive in the world.

I did some research on the Internet. I found articles and speeches given in American legislatures in extremely conservative, Republican states such as Texas, South Carolina and Ohio. These states have adopted the kinds of policies that the Conservatives are trying to sell us. The Conservatives are trying to force Canadians to abandon the fundamental values and principles that we have fought so hard for in favour of an almost biblical vision—the parliamentary secretary actually mentioned the Bible—of the justice system. I would like to quote a few remarks by some extreme right-wing governors in the United States.

In one article, the following is said:

Conservatives in the United States' toughest crime-fighting jurisdiction—Texas—say the Harper government's crime strategy won't work.

The judge in question went on to say:

"You will spend billions and billions and billions on locking people up," says Judge John Creuzot of the Dallas County Court. "And there will come a point in time where the public says, 'Enough!' And you'll wind up letting them out [without any support whatsoever]."

The article continues:

Adds Representative Jerry Madden—a conservative Republican who heads the Texas House Committee on Corrections, “Its a very expensive thing to build prisons and, if you build 'em, I guarantee you they will come. They'll be filled. OK? Because people will send them there.”

He was referring to the American people.

These comments are in line with a coalition of experts in Washington, D.C. who attacked the Harper government's omnibus crime package, Bill C-10--

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for his speech and the work he does on the justice committee.

I want to raise with him a matter that I raised with the minister when he appeared before the committee on the bill. First, I hope it goes without saying that on all sides of the House we absolutely abhor these types of crime and agree that measures that work to reduce them should be taken.

In the the Safe Streets and Communities Act, Bill C-10, there were several mandatory minimum penalties imposed for these types of offences. Bill C-10 took effect in 2012. We heard from the parliamentary secretary that since 2012, incidents of these types of crime have gone up by 6%. I counted eight types of existing offences, and the parliamentary secretary said there were nine. However, we are increasing again the mandatory minimum sentences that were put in place or increased in Bill C-10. If they have not worked, why are we doing it again?

Public Safety

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as we have already said, Bill C-10 is an ineffective, ideological grab bag that will simply inflate prison costs and prison populations, especially in provincial prisons, despite falling crime rates. A study conducted by Le Devoir confirms it: in two years, the prison population rose by 10% in Saskatchewan, 11% in Quebec and 18% in Manitoba.

Will the federal government compensate the provinces, which should not have to pay for the Conservatives' bad decisions, and will it remove the ridiculous six-month minimum sentence for possession of marijuana?

Justice for Animals in Service Act (Quanto's Law)

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

She mentioned omnibus bills. We all remember Bill C-10, which illustrates the points I raised earlier regarding the importance of having a full debate in the House and the opportunity to speak to all the different aspects of the bill.

As for the member's question about mandatory minimums, indeed, this is something we are seeing more and more, and it is one of our two main concerns with this bill. Since I was elected in 2011, we have seen mandatory minimums for every issue associated with the Criminal Code.

The hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan spoke about the chain of decision making; she spoke about prosecutors and judges. That is what is important. Imposing minimum sentencing seems to ignore the existing judicial hierarchy. That is troubling and problematic. Judges and lawyers are there to look at cases one at a time. If we create broad legislation that imposes minimum sentences, we could be looking at some problematic situations. It will also impact the prison system. We need to allow judges to make that distinction instead of having to navigate the murky waters of government legislation. However, as my colleague also noted, despite our support, we also need to be aware of these problems and bring them up in committee.

An Act to Bring Fairness for the Victims of Violent Offenders

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure today to speak about our government's unyielding determination and commitment to support victims of crime in our country.

As members of the House know, we recently took a big step forward in this regard with the introduction of Bill C-32, the victims bill of rights act. This particular legislation, developed and designed to respond to the long-standing concerns of victims of crime would, for the first time, enshrine in law four important rights: the right to information, the right to participation, the right to protection, and the right to restitution.

In fact, many of the concerns expressed earlier by the opposition parties are actually addressed in this particular bill. It is also historic in that it would transform the way in which the criminal justice system interacts with victims of crime. Quite simply, but also quite profoundly, the victims bill of rights act would ensure victims have a greater voice in the criminal justice system. We are grateful for the support we have seen for that legislation and we look forward to further debate about its many merits.

However, today we are here to discuss Bill C-479, the fairness for victims act. It is yet another example of our government's strong commitment to standing up for the victims of crime. It would build on the significant action we have already taken in this regard, including the victims bill of rights act and many other initiatives put forward since we came to power in 2006.

Not only have we instituted and permanently funded the federal victims strategy, but we have also passed several legislative measures to strengthen the parole process and give a greater voice to victims. Indeed, with the passage of the Safe Streets and Communities Act in 2012, we enshrined in law a victim's right to present a statement at parole hearings and ensured a victim's access to timely information from the Correctional Service of Canada about offenders' transfers.

Additionally, we have put in place measures so that the Parole Board can proceed, with some exceptions, to a decision even if an offender withdraws a parole application within 14 days of the scheduled hearing. Before our changes, a victim would have been inconvenienced travelling to a hearing that did not even take place.

Bill C-479 is also in line with the promise our government made to keep Canadians and their families safe. As ever, we remain focused on tackling crime and creating a fair and efficient justice system. Our government has continually placed the interests of victims ahead of those of criminals, and I would hope that the members opposite will start to support these important measures. I am pleased to hear today in the House that both parties will be supporting it.

I would like to take this opportunity to once again commend the hon. member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale for his tireless work for victims and for bringing this important legislation forward.

As members know, there were some amendments adopted at report stage. We are confident that we now have before us the best legislation possible for the good of all victims. We thank members for their support in getting this legislation to where it is today.

Let us discuss the ways in which it would modernize the Corrections and Conditional Release Act as well as how it would help victims.

First I would like to speak to the changes we have proposed in regard to mandatory review periods for parole for offenders convicted of violent offences, including murder. When such offenders are denied parole, the Parole Board is currently required by law to review their case every two years. This legislation would now extend this period of review from two to five years.

We have also proposed to lengthen the mandatory parole review periods when parole is cancelled or terminated for offenders serving at least two years for an offence involving violence. It would increase this mandatory period to within four years in which the Parole Board must review parole, and for later cancellations the mandatory period would be increased to five years.

Why is this so important to victims? Let us not forget that many of them participate in hearings. If we pause and reflect for a moment and try to imagine the anxiety and distress that victims might feel leading up to the process of a Parole Board hearing, it becomes clear why a longer period of time between these hearings is desirable. Indeed, giving victims a longer period of time in which to rebuild their lives and heal from their ordeals is a reasonable, measured change that we can offer them. When we studied the bill at committee and heard from victims who chose to attend hearings as a duty to honour the lives of the loved ones they had lost, this was one of the most critical changes in their minds.

The bill would also require the Parole Board to take a number of further steps to better accommodate victims and respond to their needs.

For example, it would require the Parole Board to provide victims and their families another means to observe hearings remotely if they have not been permitted to observe in person. Similarly, it would obligate the Parole Board to take into account any victim statements presented, especially when considering what conditions may be appropriate to ensure the safety of the victim. We know, because this government has listened to victims, that many wish to lend their voices in a more significant way during this process. These changes would allow this to happen.

Finally, it would obligate the Parole Board to provide more information to victims. This is important, because here again, we have heard from many victims that they want and need to be more informed about a number of issues that relate to the offender. With this bill, we would have an opportunity to allow for some of this information to be provided where it made sense to do so. For example, if a transcript of the parole hearing were available, it would be provided to the victim, barring third-party information and any portion of the hearing that was not open to observers. Similarly, upon the victim's request, it would also provide information within 14 days of the offender's release, where practical, about the date, location, and conditions of an offender's release on parole, statutory release, or temporary absence, but only when it was clear that there would be no negative effect on public safety.

Simply put, this bill would improve the parole process for the sake of victims, making it more compassionate and responsive. I am proud of our government's track record in supporting victims and their families as they navigate the criminal justice system. We are getting closer to where we need to be. We are a government of action. We have listened to victims and their families and to advocates. We have consulted directly with them and have made sure that their concerns are reflected in the legislation and measures we have introduced. We have listened, and we have acted through the federal victims strategy, through the Safe Streets and Communities Act, through the victims bill of rights act, and now through the fairness for victims act. This bill would help us continue on this path and take one more step toward a system that helps victims heal and rebuild.

I once again would like to thank the members opposite for their support, and I urge all other members in the House to support this important piece of legislation.

Tougher Penalties for Child Predators Act

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House tonight to speak to Bill C-26, the tougher penalties for child predators act.

It is often said that the test of a just society is how it treats the most vulnerable of its citizens. Among the most vulnerable are those who cannot always speak up for themselves, namely, our children. In that spirit, the Liberal Party remains steadfastly committed to supporting the protection of children and concrete measures aimed at the prevention of sexual offences against children, as well as appropriate punitive sanctions against those who commit such heinous acts.

Bill C-26 includes no direct measures aimed at preventing sexual offences against children, nor measures to ensure the treatment, rehabilitation, or reintegration of sex offenders. All too often in the debate on these important matters, the opposition is painted as “being soft on crime”. The reality is we need to be a lot smarter on crime. Unfortunately, Bill C-26 just is not a smart bill. In fact, by increasing mandatory minimums, the bill reduces judicial discretion and may result in charter challenges. As parliamentarians, we must ensure that the laws we pass will be effective in reducing the incidence of sexual violence against kids and not merely a symbolic expression likely to be overturned when first implemented.

The last Liberal government made child protection a priority and its first bill, Bill C-2, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Canada Evidence Act, was assented to in 2005. That legislation proposed amendments to the Criminal Code and the Canada Evidence Act to provide further protection for children against abuse and sexual exploitation by broadening the definition of child pornography, prohibiting the advertising of child pornography, increasing maximum sentencing for certain offences related to child pornography, and creating new sexual exploitation offences.

Moreover, the Liberal legislation sought to facilitate testimony by child victims and witnesses by better enabling the use of testimonial aids, including screens, closed-circuit television, and support persons for all child victims and witnesses under the age of 18 years. The reforms also allowed children under 14 to give their evidence if they were able to understand and respond to questions. Such measures were far more concrete in securing the protection of the vulnerable than what we see in Bill C-26. The offences therein captured new behaviour unaddressed by the Criminal Code and also made improvements to the trial process. By contrast, Bill C-26, by and large, only increases penalties that were themselves recently increased, with no evidentiary basis to suggest that the current regime is not working, and without any effort of reducing the incidences of crimes against children.

Perhaps it is worth emphasizing this point another way. Penalties only come into play after an offence has occurred: a child has been victimized, his or her abuser has been apprehended, and the trial process has been completed, with a guilty verdict returned. By addressing only the penalty these criminals receive, we ignore all of the other elements at play. We fail to consider whether the police have adequate resources and tools to apprehend abusers. We fail to address issues at trial that might prevent important evidence from being adduced. In other words, by addressing the end of the process, we ignore the very beginning, which ought to be our goal: reducing incidents in the first place.

Perhaps the biggest concern with Bill C-26 is that the mandatory minimum penalties lack an evidentiary basis. If one goes back to the omnibus crime bill, Bill C-10, one will find that many of these offences had their minimum penalties increased just two short years ago. It begs the question: If these penalties needed to be increased to the lengths in Bill C-26, why did the Conservative government not do so two years ago? Herein lies the problem. With the law amended in 2012, someone imprisoned under the provisions would likely still be serving prison time less than two years later, particularly given the imposition of a mandatory minimum. Thus, we have no idea if Bill C-10's changes were sufficient.

We also have no indication that the changes in Bill C-26 will be beneficial in any way. If anything, we have evidence to the contrary given the constitutional problems of mandatory minimums. Liberals oppose mandatory minimum penalties as a matter of principle and policy. The evidence simply does not support them. Studies show that they are ineffective in deterring behaviour and, indeed, create more problems than they solve.

Indeed, the whole premise that increasing the sentence will somehow cause would-be offenders to change their minds is absurd. When one considers what that entails, it means we seriously think criminals are looking up the Criminal Code online and deciding, based on the number of years indicated in hard-to-read legal provisions, whether they should go forth and do something. This is just not how the world works, and the Conservatives need to wake up to this reality.

It is not only Liberals who oppose mandatory minimums. The former MP for Ottawa West, David Daubney, a Progressive Conservative MP who retired only recently as director of criminal law policy in the Department of Justice after a distinguished career there, was quoted as saying on the way out the door, “The policy is based on fear—fear of criminals and fear of people who are different. I do not think these harsh views are deeply held”. He went on to say at the same time, because he was subject to so much pressure inside the department, that “somebody has to take the risk of talking”.

By imposing mandatory minimums, the government ignores several decades' worth of overwhelming evidence from around the world that longer jail terms do not deter crime and in fact may have the opposite effect: in 1990, a study for the justice department found that:

The evidence shows that long periods served in prison increase the chance that the offender will offend again.

In 1999, research commissioned by the Solicitor General concluded that:

To argue for expanding the use of imprisonment in order to deter criminal behaviour is without any empirical support.

A Massachusetts report from 2004 called mandatory minimums:

...a recipe for recidivism rather than a recipe for effective risk reduction.

Making matters worse, mandatory minimums lead to prison overcrowding. One of the reasons mandatory minimums increase recidivism is that when more people are imprisoned for longer periods of time, prisons become overcrowded and less conducive to rehabilitation.

The Office of the Correctional Investigator has warned the government, documenting an increase in the number of inmates of nearly 7% between March 2010 and March 2012, predicting continued growth in the prison population as the full impact of Conservative policies are felt. The practice of double-bunking is used to accommodate this increase, housing two inmates in a cell designed for one. That practice has grown substantially. In 2004, 6.3% of inmates were double-bunked; by 2012, under the Conservatives, the number had grown to over 17%.

As studies demonstrate repeatedly, mandatory minimums discriminate against aboriginal Canadians and other minorities. The growth of the prison population includes a significant rise in the percentage of aboriginal inmates.

Indeed, mandatory minimums disproportionately impact vulnerable minorities, especially aboriginal Canadians, who have less access to legal counsel and are generally treated more severely by the justice system. For example, aboriginal defendants are often charged with a more serious offence than non-aboriginal defendants who commit the same act. Aboriginal people are already dramatically overrepresented in Canadian prisons, and mandatory minimum sentences exacerbate the problem.

Here is the point: the crime rate among aboriginal Canadians could be reduced much more effectively by education and poverty reduction than by increased incarceration.

Perhaps most importantly, these mandatory minimums are an unjustified attack on judicial discretion. One of the arguments in favour of mandatory minimums is that they remove discretion from judges who are supposedly “soft on crime”; however, there is no evidence, not a shred, to suggest that sentences imposed by judges are unjustifiably light. Serious offenders receive serious sentences already; mandatory minimums serve only to remove discretion from judges in exceptional cases where leniency might be appropriate.

Furthermore, these mandatory minimums do not truly eliminate discussion at all. Rather, they transfer it from judges, whose decisions are public and subject to appeal, to police officers and prosecutors. If a crown attorney feels that the mandatory minimum prescribed by the law would be too severe, he or she might decide to charge for a lesser offence. Such prosecutorial decisions are made behind closed doors, and no appeals process exists to challenge them.

In short, these mandatory minimums waste taxpayer dollars. They invite expensive constitutional challenges on the grounds that they violate section 7, the right to life, liberty and security of the person, or section 9, the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned, or section 12, the right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual treatment or punishment.

Already several of these sentences enacted by the Conservatives have been struck down. Other challenges are currently before the courts. They clog up the court system and require the government to spend millions of taxpayer dollars defending laws that were constitutionally suspect from the outset. This is in the face of the legal responsibility of the minister to ensure that legislation brought to the floor of this House is constitutional.

I will wrap up--

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I felt quite confident that the House would certainly want to hear from the member for Ottawa South, and I appreciate the indulgence of my colleagues for that.

Today it is my honour to stand to speak to Bill C-26, and I want to state from the outset that I am reluctant to support the bill. However, we will vote at second reading to send the bill to committee, and will do so in order to provide the government with an opportunity to present what evidence, if any, has emerged since 2012 that has prompted the introduction of even more mandatory minimum sentences.

It was just two years ago that many of these same provisions were contained in Bill C-10. In the two years since the coming into force of Bill C-10, child sex offences, as we heard from the minister, have risen by 6%. To repeat, in the two years since the coming into force of Bill C-10, child sex offences have risen by 6%.

The House will remember that when the Conservatives introduced Bill C-10, in 2011, they spoke at length about how these measures would combat child sex offences. I think we are still in agreement that reducing child sex offences is a priority that we all share. The government has made much of the fact that it imposed mandatory minimum sentences, stating that this would somehow reduce incidents against children.

Again, that legislation, Bill C-10, came into force in 2012. Since the coming into force of that bill, and despite the rhetoric from the Conservatives, it must be accepted, and indeed it was earlier in debate this evening, with obvious concern, that child sex offences have actually risen.

I want to make it clear that I do not for one minute believe that the Conservatives planned or hoped for this result, but I do believe that they need to accept the idea of being smart on crime.

At the justice committee this past March, I raised this issue with the minister. It was the same issue that I raised with him in the question and answer period following his speech this evening. I wanted to know why the government would introduce further flawed legislation for these offences when very clearly the evidence suggested that its previous approach had not worked.

The same question was posed at the justice committee when these statistics were introduced by the minister at committee, as they were again this evening. I asked him where the statistics came from, and at that point he did not know. He indicated he would get back to me, and I guess that happened tonight. We now know that these statistics came from Justice Canada.

I asked the minister at committee, on March 6 of this year, “Do you not agree that the stats that show that child sexual offences have increased in the last two years indicate that the increases that you put in C-10 haven't worked?”

The minister responded, and not exactly in the same fashion as he did this evening, but his response was:

I'd answer that two ways.First, I would say that C-10 would hardly have had effect in the time period we're looking at. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it indicates to me that we have more to do. It indicates very clearly that we have to take more steps toward prevention, deterrence, and denunciation.

That was, in part, the exchange that I had with the minister this past March at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, a part of which we heard repeated here this evening.

If it were the intent of the government when introducing Bill C-10 to reduce crime as it relates to child sex offences, then it must recognize and accept that its efforts have failed. Some members of the Conservative caucus, including the minister, would argue that not enough time has passed to properly measure the impact of Bill C-10. I assume they believe that with the passage of time, the data will indicate Bill C-10's effectiveness.

If that is the case, why are we here today discussing Bill C-26? Why are we here debating this bill, if, as the minister himself suggested, we need more time to properly assess the impact that Bill C-10 will have in reducing crimes against children? It does not make sense. It has caused many of us on this side of the House to wonder why the government is doing this.

Albert Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”. No one in the House would accuse the Minister of Justice of being Einstein, but the government's behaviour on this issue gives rise to the suspicion that they are playing politics with a very serious issue.

I have said time and again that I find it very troubling that the government would seemingly use sensitive subjects as a potential wedge issue, or worse, to raise money from its base leading up to an election. We have seen this approach to cyberbullying in Bill C-13, presently before the justice committee, where the government is using real victims of cyberbullying to bring in measures that have absolutely nothing to do with cyberbullying. It is using victims to bring in a law that would allow for the widespread invasion of our privacy.

Suffice it to say, though, that on the matter of crimes committed against children, the House is very united. I want to reiterate that no one in this House is immune from heartache when we hear of any child who has suffered because of the actions of an adult. I know that members on all sides share this view.

The Liberal Party remains steadfastly committed to the protection of the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, our children, against the most predatory of practices: child pornography and sexual offences against children. We support concrete measures aimed at the prevention of sexual offences against children as well as appropriate punitive sanctions against those who commit such heinous acts.

I earlier quoted the justice minister, who had indicated in a response to a question I posed that he believed that we need to do more to combat crimes against children. He indicated that we need to do more in the areas of prevention and deterrence and that prevention and deterrence are important elements in reducing crimes against children. This bill, however, includes no measures to prevent sexual offences against children or measures to ensure the treatment, rehabilitation, or reintegration of sex offenders. Again, why this glaring inconsistency?

By increasing mandatory minimums, the bill would reduce judicial discretion and could result in charter challenges.

We need to know that the laws we are passing will be effective in reducing the incidence of sexual violence against children and will not be merely symbolic expressions. That is why we will seek a detailed study and analysis with stakeholders at committee. Liberals will seek to ensure that the policies adopted in this area reflect the best evidence and the latest research available and will not be based on fear and ideology, or worse, on an effort to raise money from a political base using the Criminal Code and this sensitive issue as a way to exploit the fears of Canadians.

We also want an effective law that addresses these issues and not laws that will be met with endless charter challenges defended at taxpayers' expense.

We have some concerns about charter challenges to the sentencing provisions of the bill and about privacy suits that may arise from the offender database. Moreover, travel restrictions may raise concerns as to the mobility rights of Canadians, as guaranteed by the charter. I raise these issues knowing that the government's record on crime legislation is abysmal. Time and again, we see the courts tossing out its legislation, because it is found to be unconstitutional.

Sexual violence, like other forms of violence, is traumatic and devastating. The minister also suggested in committee that along with prevention and deterrence, we need denunciation of those charged and convicted of crimes against children. No one would disagree with that position, but denunciation does not equal deterrence. We must endeavour to find methods of prevention, as well as punishment, while not overlooking the importance of treatment and rehabilitation and the reintegration of offenders.

Evidence-based criminal law policy is a guiding principle of the Liberal Party of Canada. It is through this perspective that we review and critique all legislation.

While we have supported mandatory minimums in this area in the past, we no longer support them as a matter of policy, given that they are ineffective in achieving their stated objectives and may violate the charter. Indeed, mandatory minimums should be the exception, not the rule. Under the current government, they have become the rule, not the exception, despite the fact that mandatory minimums have no basis in evidence pointing to their effectiveness.

There would not be one member of the Conservative caucus who could rise today in his or her place and point to any independent study that would suggest that mandatory minimums work. Indeed, that challenge was advanced to the minister immediately after his speech.

This is not an issue that should divide the House, because we all want to protect children. We in the Liberal Party want to do it in a way that respects the charter, respects evidence and facts, and respects the overwhelming need to be smart on crime.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on that same theme.

The minister would know well that the Safe Streets and Communities Act increased sentences in several areas. In the bill before us, in no fewer than 20 sections, the sentences that were increased either by mandatory minimums or maximum sentences have been increased again.

We see an increase in the sentences from 2012, while at the same time the statistics indicate that the incidence of crime has gone up. Therefore, if the increases that were put into Bill C-10 have resulted in an increase in crime, have we not learned something?

If those increased sentences did not give the desired result of bringing crime down, why does the minister insist on adopting the exact same strategy?

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

moved that Bill C-26, an act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, to enact the High Risk Child Sex Offender Database Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am always pleased to rise in this splendid chamber to be with my colleagues, particularly to speak to such an important bill as Bill C-26, the tougher penalties for child predators act.

The bill, as members know, would touch upon three on three important areas: sentencing reform; the Canada Evidence Act, the evidentiary reforms we believe necessary; and enhancing the practical tracking of sex offenders through our public safety department.

The bill would represent another positive, significant initiative that our government has brought forward to address one of the absolute worst forms of crime: the sexual abuse of children.

As a new father, I must say that in addition to the joy that a child brings to one's life, it is certainly also a stark reminder of the vulnerability of young children and the sacred duty that we all share to protect our youth, particularly, children who are subject to sexual abuse.

It is incumbent upon us to continually assess the current adequacy of the law in that regard. How does our criminal law in fact protect our children and ensure that we are effectively and comprehensively addressing these heinous crimes of sexual abuse?

Sadly, children and youth are far too likely to become victims of sexual offences, more so than adults. For instance, in 2011, police reported that cases had actually gone up. Reported rates indicate that children were five times more likely than adults to be victims of sexual assault. In fact, in 2012, police reported incidents of child sex offences had increased by 3%, and that was up over 3% the year before that. These statistics from Justice Canada indicate, clearly, that the current laws have to be examined and improved. That is what we are attempting to do.

The statistics, of course, do not tell the full story. They do not tell, or speak to, or truly reflect the devastating lifelong impact of a sexual offence on a child.

The amendments to the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Sex Offender Information Registration Act set out in the bill would help to ensure that any offenders who have committed sexual offences against children are fully held to account for crimes committed against the most vulnerable members of our society. These amendments would also serve as a deterrent for these heinous crimes.

The bill would also create a high-risk child sex offender database. Practically speaking, this would assist in protecting society's most vulnerable from those who are known to have offended against them and those who are most likely to do so again: a classic incurable pedophile.

To achieve these important objectives of protection, the bill would maintain several different components. First, maximum and minimum penalties for certain Criminal Code child sexual offences would be increased, building upon the recent reforms that were enacted by the Safe Streets and Communities Act, formerly known as Bill C-10.

The Criminal Code already contains comprehensive provisions protecting children from sexual exploitation, including both general and child-specific sexual offences.

The child sexual offence reforms would ensure that anyone who commits any of these offences against a child faces a mandatory minimum penalty. That means jail time, in all cases, if someone sexually abuses a child.

Yet more can be done. The bill proposes, further, to increase the mandatory minimum penalties and maximum penalties that would apply to child sex offences to better deter and denounce this type of heinous offence. Maximum penalties for breaches of prohibition orders, probation orders, and peace bonds, all of which can be described as supervision orders and aimed at protecting those who are most vulnerable again from an individual who has been released who has arguably already been afforded the opportunity to be back in society, albeit with restrictions.

The intent here is to ensure that when people violate conditions imposed by a court, conditions that were aimed specifically to protect a child, there will be accountability. A stay-away order, for example, from schools, pools, and playgrounds is a classic attempt to keep sex offenders away from children. When those violations of probation occur, there would be a specific offence attached.

These tools would authorize judges to impose conditions on child sex offenders or suspected child sex offenders by prohibiting unsupervised contact with children. Again, that would be a protective order made by a court to hopefully pre-empt any further offence. If those pre-emptive orders were breached, the bill would bring about criminal accountability.

A sentencing judge would have to consider imposing a probation order on an offender convicted of a sexual offence on a child, and probation orders could be imposed on an offender sentenced to two years' imprisonment. A peace bond could also be imposed if there were a reasonable fear that a person would commit a child sex offence.

Strict adherence to the conditions imposed by these supervision orders significantly reduces the risk of reoffending. Many breaches of supervision orders do not involve the commission of a new offence that would warrant a new charge, but any breach of a condition imposed to protect children, we believe, would be a significant indicator of risk to children.

Accordingly, the protection of children and the prevention of sexual offences against them demand significant condemnation of all violations of supervision orders. Importantly, this bill would increase the penalties for breaches of the new probation order proposed by Bill C-13, the protecting Canadians from online crime act, so I would describe this as sister legislation. As the Speaker is aware, this new offence of non-consensual distribution of intimate images very often includes a pre-emptive attempt to stop the spread of the offending material.

We know that in the case of young suicides, it is that devastating feeling of hopelessness that the material on the Internet is being passed around not only in the community but literally around the globe. It has a devastating psychological impact on the individual. This new legislation aims not only to help remove the material but also in some cases to restrict the offender or the accused from having any further contact with that young person, so there is very much a connection between this bill and Bill C-13, I would submit.

This amendment would ensure that penalties for both the new probation order and for child sex offence prohibition orders are consistent. Again, it is important that we have consistency in the legislation.

The bill also proposes sentencing reforms that would clarify and codify the rules regarding the imposition of concurrent and consecutive sentences, something that there has been confusion on in the past. In general, concurrent sentences are imposed and served simultaneously for two or more convictions that arise out of one continuous act or single transaction, often referred to in the courts as the same event or series of events rule.

Conversely, consecutive sentences are imposed and served one on top of the other for multiple convictions for unrelated offences, as they arise out of separate criminal transactions. The concepts of concurrent and consecutive sentences predate Confederation. Amendments over the years have complicated the statement of the rule contained in the Criminal Code to the point that it sometimes offers little guidance to the courts.

To address this deficiency, the proposed amendments would direct courts to consider ordering, where applicable, that sentences of imprisonment be imposed and served consecutively. That is to say that when the court would sentence the offender for multiple offences at the same time, the proposed amendments would direct courts to consider ordering that the terms of imprisonment for offences arising out of separate events or a separate series of events would be served consecutively.

This bill also proposes to codify the approach of the courts when one of the offences was committed either while on judicial interim release—or bail, as it is commonly known—or while the accused was fleeing a police officer. In such cases, in order to discourage offenders from committing offences with impunity, courts would usually order that the offences be served consecutively to other offences for which the court would sentence the offender.

The purpose of these proposed amendments on consecutive versus concurrent sentencing is to try to bring about a greater sense of consistency and understanding as to when and why consecutive sentences apply to certain circumstances and to certain offenders. In particular, for multiple child sex offences, including child pornography offences, we believe that sentences should not receive a sentencing discount, as it is sometimes described, whereby a court directs that the sentences imposed are served concurrently, meaning that the offender only has to serve the longest sentence that is imposed for a series of convictions.

Put another way, this proposed amendment would require that sentences for child pornography offences and others would be served consecutive to any sentence imposed at the same time when there has been what is called a contact child sex offence or when there have been multiple victims. Sentences imposed at the same time for contact sexual offences committed against one victim would be served consecutively to those imposed for contact sexual offences committed against any other victim.

This gives individual recognition in the criminal system for each of those victims in the sentence that is meted out. These reforms end the sentencing discount that is sometimes afforded to child sex offenders who are sentenced at the same time for multiple charges. In particular, they ensure that the law recognizes the devastating impact that sexual abuse has on each individual life.

The bill sends a clear message to child sex offenders that there will be no more discount and that they will serve jail time for each and every victim, each and every offence. We believe this is a just result, given the seriousness of the type of offence and the fundamental injustices that have occurred when there have been multiple victims.

Another important sentencing reform included in this bill is to ensure that any evidence that an offence was committed while the offender was subject to a conditional sentence order—that is, a sentence that was served in the community or while on parole or while on statutory release—is also considered an aggravating factor for sentencing purposes.

These amendments will ensure that the gravity of committing an offence while subject to one of these more lenient orders is better reflected in the sentence that is then imposed.

The bill will also make it possible to ensure that the spouse of the accused can testify in child pornography cases. Under the Canada Evidence Act and common law, unless spouses are irreconcilably separated, for most offences, the spouse of the accused cannot testify for the prosecution even if he or she so desires. One spouse is not competent to testify and cannot be compelled to testify against the other. The spouse of the accused is not compellable.

The Canada Evidence Act contains statutory exceptions to these rules permitting spousal testimony for most child sex offences and offences of violence against young persons, but not for child pornography offences. Again, we hope to bring about a greater sense of consistency when it comes to spouses and their competency and compellability before the courts.

The amendments proposed in this bill add child pornography to the list of exceptions in the Canada Evidence Act, making the spouse of a person accused of any of the child pornography offences competent and compellable to testify for the prosecution. In child pornography cases, as we know well, the evidence of the accused's spouse may be required to prove the guilt of the accused. For example, the spouse's denial of responsibility for child pornography on a shared home computer may be necessary to prove the accused's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Without this amendment, child pornographers may be able to get away with this very disgusting crime, and we must put an end to this legal loophole. I would submit that the current state of the law on this issue is unacceptable. Any form of child pornography we know is taking advantage of and exploiting children.

This bill also includes amendments to the Sex Offender Information Registration Act. These amendments would require registered sex offenders to provide more information regarding their travel abroad and would permit information-sharing on registered sex offenders among officials, those responsible for the national sex offender registry, and the Canada Border Services Agency. All of this reform is aimed to prevent travelling sex offenders from accessing children in foreign jurisdictions and to facilitate holding them to account for their crimes.

My friend the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness will be speaking to this issue. My friend the Minister of Veterans Affairs is a former police officer. I know he shares the desire to break down any barriers to sharing information between agencies to help hold sex offenders accountable. In this day and age, we cannot be seen as a nation that allows those convicted of these heinous crimes in our courts to then go abroad and take advantage of jurisdictions where laws and enforcement may not be as rigorous. We owe a larger duty of care to children in other countries as well. They are equally vulnerable.

Currently, the law as it pertains to registered sex offenders and the reporting of absences of seven days or more for trips within or outside Canada only requires them to report specific designations and addresses for domestic trips. This bill would amend the act to ensure that all registered sex offenders report every address or location at which they expect to stay on a trip for seven days or longer outside Canada, as well as specific travel dates. These amendments would also require registered sex offenders with a child sex offence conviction to report absences of any duration for trips outside Canada and to provide specific dates and locations. These amendments would help facilitate information-sharing with foreign jurisdictions, which I consider to be appropriate.

As well, the bill proposes to authorize national sex offender registry officials to disclose information on registered sex offenders to Canada Border Services Agency officials, particularly in cases of child sex offenders assessed as high risk, who will be placed on their lookout system. CBSA would also be authorized to collect information about these sex offenders upon return from travel outside Canada and to share this information with the national sex offender registry officials.

Given that the national sex offender registry officials and CBSA officials do not currently have the authority to share information on registered sex offenders, we believe these amendments are critical and practical in ensuring that authorities are aware of the activities of sex offenders who travel outside our country. Without this knowledge, it may be impossible to detect and combat this type of criminality.

Last but certainly not least with respect to the importance of this bill, the bill proposes the creation of a high-risk child sex offender database. It would authorize the RCMP to establish and administer a publicly accessible national database of high-risk child sex offenders who have been the subject of a public notification in a province or territory.

All of this, I would submit, is in keeping with previous efforts that we have made to improve our criminal justice system to protect our most vulnerable, particularly our children. We have made numerous amendments and brought forward some 30 criminal justice initiatives in the last eight years, including taking such practical measures as increasing the age of protection, putting in place legislation to make the reporting of child pornography by Internet service providers mandatory, and strengthening the sentencing and monitoring of dangerous offenders. All of this is in keeping with our efforts to make this country safer and to make our justice system more just.

We have also put in place the necessary resources to set up child advocacy centres in 10 locations across the country. We have launched the getcybersafe.gc.ca website for public awareness. We have joined in the Global Alliance against Child Sex Abuse Online. I am proud to say that all of this furthers the intent of this bill.

The fundamental message is clear. We must do everything in our power to protect children. I know this is something you share as a father, Mr. Speaker, and we all share as parents and those who care for children. Accordingly, I would encourage all members to support this important legislation.

Corrections and Conditional Release Act

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I usually say that I am pleased to speak on a bill, but if I am being honest, I am not really pleased to be speaking on Bill C-483 in the fashion it has come forward. My colleague who just spoke mentioned some of those areas.

When the member for Oxford started off, he gave a great rendition of the Safe Streets and Communities Act and the government's tough on crime agenda and all of that. It sounds wonderful when it is talked about that way. However, what are we doing dealing with all these private members' bills coming up one by one? Where is the discussion within the government caucus? Do they not discuss these matters?

I mean, we are talking about the Criminal Code and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. We are talking about very complicated pieces of legislation.

My colleague who spoke earlier talked about the different rules for private members' bills, and it is true. With this kind of mishmash of private members' bills coming forward from the Conservative backbench, we could be complicating the justice system and could end up with results we do not want.

I have a list of private members' bills. There are some 16 related to the Criminal Code that are all coming forward as private members' bills. Let us be honest. Why are they using these bills, like this one from the member for Oxford? It is a real concern. I agree with the concern in terms of the victims, but why is it not coming forward as a comprehensive piece of legislation from the Government of Canada?

Is what we are really seeing from members on the backbench over there, in collusion with the government, a bit of a farce? Are Conservatives having private members come up with bills so they can tout what they have done for victims at home?

The parliamentary secretary got up a moment ago, and it sounds as if she is fully in favour of this proposal. Well, why did it not come forward as a piece of government legislation? This parliamentary secretary is close to the minister. Why did it not come forward as a well-thought-out piece of legislation?

My concern is with the process. If this place is going to work effectively, then the government itself should come forward with legislation such as this in a well-thought-out fashion that is comprehensive, not piecemeal.

I am getting a little heckling, but it is all right. They can heckle, because I know that sometimes the truth hurts.

I think that is what we are seeing from government backbench members in collusion with the government. They are bringing forward bills so they can showcase themselves at home on all they are doing for criminal justice, when really, the government has failed in its responsibility to do it in a comprehensive way.

In terms of this particular bill, we will, regardless of what I have said, support it going to committee for examination. It is our expectation that we may be able to get some answers from the member for Oxford at those committee hearings.

On the issue of severely limiting the ability of individual wardens to grant such temporary releases, I think the committee process will enable us, as members, to raise questions and allow the member to provide evidence to demonstrate a clear need that requires such legislative changes.

My colleague who spoke before talked about the victims, and the member for Oxford talked about the victims. I know that he tries to paint us as not there for victims and being there for the offenders. Nothing could be further from the truth. However, how can it be done in a way that actually enhances public safety and protects the interests of victims?

We are certainly not as likely to do it in this piecemeal approach that we see by the Government of Canada. This is not really a private member's bill. It is a Government of Canada bill by the back door.

The targeting of only those convicted of first and second degree murder in the legislation implies that both in terms of the number of offenders involved and the likelihood of their early release represents a threat to the community. Is that the case? I am asking the member upfront now. Could he provide us some evidence in that regard? We need to hear it.

I have not heard any evidence. I raised this question. Could the member provide us with evidence where offenders have indeed committed an offence when they are released under the escorted temporary release? He did not answer that question. He just went on his attack that we did not like victims. It is not the way to do legislation.

There is no argument that the temporary release programs for all offenders must be well managed and that only those offenders who have met a certain set of criteria should be eligible for such a program. I really do not disagree with the member that the victim's family should have a right to be heard, but I do not necessarily agree that this is the way to do it.

The legislation, as I have said, is not supported by evidence indicating an abuse of the escorted temporary release program, which would justify these kinds of legislative changes.

What remains to be seen is to what degree the legislation is actually addressing an issue, or whether, as I indicated earlier, it is an example of the Conservative Party playing to its base and trying to create an issue. That seems to be where we are at.

The government members had the opportunity in 2011 to seek amendments such as this in Bill C-10, the so-called Safe Streets and Communities Act, but they failed to bring them forward at that time and they certainly failed to bring forward all these other 16 that are on here that are private members' bills. Why was it not done in a comprehensive way?

What C-10 did provide for, according to the legislative summary, was for “The Commissioner of the CSC, Correctional Service Canada, to make rules regarding the circumstances in which the institutional head may authorize escorted temporary releases and work releases”.

Even the former minister of public safety appeared content with the new restrictions imposed with respect to temporary absences when he testified before the justice committee on October 6, 2011, not that long ago.

The question remains this, and I asked the member to come forward to committee with this: what significant public safety issue is being addressed with Bill C-483? Is there any?

I will not go through all the areas for which escorted temporary releases are granted, but indeed, as others before me have said, we are concerned about the families and we have to find a way of addressing that. However, I do not think the approach to find the way to address that is to haphazardly, through private members' bills, change the Corrections and Conditional Release Act or the Criminal Code. It needs to be done in a more comprehensive way.

We just dealt with a private member's bill at committee. It was amended extensively. That work should have been done by the Department of Justice. It should have been done by the government as a whole, showing leadership to make the criminal justice system better in terms of protecting victims' rights and enhancing public safety.

That is my concern, that we are seeing these private members' bills come forward as if they are playing a game when the real issue is, yes, victims' rights and public safety, and the government should be showing the leadership to do so.

Respect for Communities Act

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question from my colleague.

Yes, education is critical. In a community that I represented provincially a number of years ago, I hosted a crystal meth forum in the school gymnasium. We had people who suffered from that addiction and had come through it, as well as psychologists and police officers, speak to the public and talk to the parents and the students who were in the gym about the dangers of crystal meth.

However, that is the very kind of thing for which the government cut funding in its Bill C-10, when the Conservatives decided that their justice system should be about reducing flexibility of judges, having mandatory sentences, and locking people up and throwing away the key. They are actually reducing funding for the very kinds of preventive and educational activities that are so badly needed in communities.

Third Reading

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise before the House for the second time this evening, this time, to speak to Bill C-54.

Bill C-54 is important. It is the latest bill on the Conservative government's crime agenda. Based on the controversial example of Dr. Guy Turcotte in Quebec, the government thinks it is better to impose its ideological measures.

The profound, collective feeling of injustice triggered by the murder of his two children was a completely normal, healthy reaction. Indeed, he made us question the essence of justice and the future of our society and prompted us to ask other important questions of that sort. As parliamentarians, it is our duty to ask whether such a case, which fortunately, is very unusual, requires us to question where the justice system is going.

I would like to quote a senator who was talking about one of her bills dealing with this issue. I think this quotation is quite relevant:

Even though there may be the odd case that concerns us all, Canada has recognized mental health experts and a proven judicial system. Anger and pain should not dictate our courts. Nor should they dictate our laws. It is a mistake to go down this path because instead of building a peaceful society we would create an unstable, harder, less tolerant one. We would fall into a vicious cycle of repression and violence, precisely into which the [Prime Minister's] Conservatives—and Senator Boisvenu—seek to lead us....We are talking about sick people. Punishment will not cure them. Prison does not cure.

That was Senator Hervieux-Payette, and those were her words regarding her own Bill S-214. I am quite certain that she will not mind if I draw a parallel with the current situation.

Is the government outraged that I would dare claim that it is playing politics at the expense of victims? The government is constantly accusing the opposition of siding with pedophiles, murderers and other criminals of that ilk, so I would simply like to try a little experiment.

The government has made several public statements on this bill, as did Senator Boisvenu and the mother of the two murdered children, Isabelle Gaston, whose state of mind I cannot even begin to imagine. The following is an excerpt of the statements of Senator Boisvenu and the Minister of Canadian Heritage at the announcement of Guy Turcotte's release on parole:

We believe that Isabelle Gaston doesn't deserve to live in fear of her children's killer, and neither do other victims...

Such decision is clearly undermining Canadians’ confidence in our justice system.

That's why our Government will shortly introduce legislation to address Canadians’ concerns about high-risk accused persons found Not Criminally Responsible on account of mental disorder who may pose a threat to public safety if released.

Well, if the government is not engaging in petty politics, and if the bill does not apply in any way to Dr. Turcotte's case, why are the Conservatives promoting the bill by using an emotionally charged and high-profile case involving children?

It smacks of demagogy and is very dangerous when the government plays with Canadians’ feelings and keeps them in the dark. The Conservatives know full well that this legislation will give the government an opportunity to capitalize on Canadians’ empathy for Ms. Gaston, while at the same time never clearly pubically admitting that the legislation cannot, and will never, apply to Ms. Gaston even if Mr. Turcotte were to face a second trial. Moreover, when Ms. Gaston was questioned on a Quebec public affairs television program, she admitted to being unaware whether the legislation would even apply in her situation. To quote Ms. Gaston “As far as I am concerned, I do not know, it is perhaps too early to get a sense of whether it will have an impact on my situation—the process is ongoing.”

This proves that all Ms. Gaston really wants is for things to change, and for her children not to have died in vain, which is entirely admirable. However, I seriously doubt that a more rigid position and the criminalization of mental illness will resolve the problem.

I use the word criminalization because, in truth, government members do not really believe in rehabilitation—we realized this when Bill C-10 was adopted. After listening to Senator Boisvenu, the jury is out as to whether he even believes that people genuinely suffer from psychological distress or severe mental illness.

In fact, the senator even wants the government to review the definitions of a number of mental illnesses whereby individuals may be found not criminally responsible.

Why? Simply because Mr. Boisvenu does not think that the incidence of mental illness could have increased so significantly over the past 10 or 15 years.

Why did the number of people found not criminally responsible increase twenty times? I do not think that the incidence of mental illness has increased at such a rate over the past 10 or 15 years. We must find out why there has been such a drastic increase in the number of these cases.

My colleague, the member for Gatineau, our justice critic, explained this during her opening speech. She said:

It is true that the percentage has risen over the years. However, and this is what it does not say, before 1991, if I recall correctly, when the amendment was made to the Criminal Code, the term was changed from “not guilty by reason of insanity” to “not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder”. At that point, summary conviction offences were also added, and this resulted in a lot of cases that had not been covered previously. Obviously that had an impact on the statistics. According to the government's responses, we are talking about a tiny percentage of cases where the individuals were found to be not criminally responsible.

To what point are mentally ill offenders dangerous?

This question was at the heart of an extensive study the Canadian government's Department of Public Safety conducted at the end of the 1990s. It recorded and analyzed more than 60 studies on this subject to properly identify the problems.

These studies looked at more than 15,000 offenders who had been released from prison or specialized hospitals and who were followed in their communities for a period of four to five-and-a-half years, on average. What were the findings?

When compared to offenders who do not have major psychological or psychiatric disorders, mentally disordered offenders are less likely to recidivate violently.

Second, mentally disordered offenders are not always actively psychotic. They may be in remission or their symptoms are being managed by medication.

The study also evaluated the relative importance of different risk factors. Many mental health professionals place considerable emphasis on “clinical” variables. Examples are length of hospitalization and type of mental disorder (e.g., schizophrenia, manic-depression). The meta-analysis found that these variables demonstrate very weak associations with violent re-offending. Much more potent predictors of violent recidivism are the factors typically found to predict violence among non-disordered offenders. Examples of these risk factors are criminal history, unemployment and family problems.

When the Minister of Justice said in his opening speech on second reading that the objective of the proposed reforms was not to impose criminal penalties on individuals found by a court to be not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder, that was only half true, in fact.

In reality, Bill C-54 will divide the clientele into two types of cases: those who meet the criteria in Bill C-54 and those who do not meet those criteria, even though they have all been found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder. This means that accused persons whose cases meet the criteria and who are found to be high-risk accused could be held in custody with no possibility of release by the review board as long as the court has not revoked the finding.

Why place people who are not criminally responsible outside the jurisdiction of the review boards that deal with mental disorders, quasi-judicial tribunals that are composed of psychiatrists, not judges? Only a court could find an accused to be “high-risk” and then revoke that finding, at present. Before revoking it, the court would seek the recommendation of the mental disorder review board, but the final decision would no longer be the board’s.

In Quebec, the mental disorder review board makes decisions concerning individuals who have been found unfit to stand trial or not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder.

As long as the accused is not discharged unconditionally or found fit to stand trial, a review must be held each year. With Bill C-54, that time will be extended to three years, and this could cause a number of problems, according to the experts with the Canadian Forensic Mental Health Network. It would prompt defence counsel to stop pleading not criminally responsible and opt for custodial prison sentences in the traditional prison system. In addition, individuals found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder would not receive proper care, but they would still present a danger when they were released.

The study I referred to earlier also found that the similarities between risk factors for offenders with mental disorders and other offenders suggest that there is a point at which health care services and the criminal justice system could integrate their approaches in order to effectively manage offenders with mental disorders.

There are two specific areas where co-operation between the two systems is possible: risk assessment and rehabilitation of offenders. I am not citing that study to embarrass anyone, but simply to try to make the government members understand the consequences of deinstitutionalization, poverty and the criminalization of mental health problems. Prison does not cure people.

This bill, like so many others, was drafted without much thought to the consequences and without consultation, in order to make the public, and particularly the Conservative base, believe that this government is tough on crime. In reality, this bill would probably not apply to the case of Guy Turcotte.

Clause 12 of Bill C-54 adds a new section to the Criminal Code, section 672.64, which lists the conditions that must be met in order for a person to be considered high-risk:

672.64 (1) On application made by the prosecutor before any disposition to discharge an accused absolutely, the court may, at the conclusion of a hearing, find the accused to be a high-risk accused if the accused has been found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder for a serious personal injury offence, as defined in subsection 672.81(1.3), the accused was 18 years of age or more at the time of the commission of the offence and

(a) the court is satisfied that there is a substantial likelihood that the accused will use violence that could endanger the life or safety of another person; or

(b) the court is of the opinion that the acts that constitute the offence were of such a brutal nature as to indicate a risk of grave physical or psychological harm to another person.

For Guy Turcotte to be declared an assumed high-risk accused, the judge has to be convinced, beyond a doubt, that he would likely seriously harm another person or could endanger the life of another person. Everyone agrees that the murders were both brutal and grotesque. I, too, have children. However, that is not what justice must decide. Rather, it should focus on whether or not there is a chance the accused will reoffend.

Given the decision made, the experts were obviously able to convince the judge that this was not the case. I am going to outline the five criteria that the judge must take into consideration—and he must take all of them into consideration—when determining whether the individual is a high-risk accused.

He must consider the nature and circumstances of the offence, any pattern of repetitive behaviour of which the offence forms a part, the accused’s current mental condition, the past and expected course of the accused’s treatment, including the accused’s willingness to follow treatment, and the opinions of experts who have examined the accused. If one must take into consideration all these criteria, the Turcotte case does not at all fit, given the experts' opinions, his mental condition and the treatments and therapies that he is following.

The nature of the offence is the only criterion that might lead a judge to consider him dangerous. However, given his mental condition at the time, and based on what the judge took into consideration, the risk of reoffending is very low. According to the Conservatives' bill, Guy Turcotte would not be a high-risk accused.

The one thing I agree on is that victims should be at the centre of the process. The problem is that the bill says very little on this aspect.

In closing, I want to reiterate that the government must realize the importance of providing real support to victims of crime, including by following up on more than one recommendation of the report by the ombudsman for victims of crime. It must also understand the whole psychosocial structure surrounding prevention, the study of risk factors, research, health care and rehabilitation.

It is difficult because each case is unique, but experts have tools to try to have everyone make progress. Some are probably beyond redemption, but just like with the concept of high-risk accused or mental disorder, it is certainly not up to politicians, or even the legal profession to establish the foundations. It is up to psychiatrists and doctors.

While referring to the former cardiologist's case, the Minister of Canadian Heritage said that such decision obviously undermines Canadians' confidence in our justice system. However, the minister was not able to say how this desire to put victims at the centre of the process would translate into concrete measures.

That is another contradiction in the Conservatives' logic, and it is the reason why we presented a number of amendments in committee. In fact, one of those amendments was accepted, and it is one of the few that the Conservative government has accepted in any committee.

The amendment would inform victims, at their request, of the address of a person already found to be not criminally responsible for a crime so that the victim can avoid the area for his or her own well-being. It is one of the examples that showed that we do care about the victims. We want to improve this bill so that it reflects this concern.

One of the reasons why we will be supporting this bill is that we were able to have the Conservatives accept a second amendment that would require the government—no matter which party is in power in five years, that is in 2018—to have a committee study and re-examine the situation.

There are still many concerns about this bill, and I have pointed out a few of them. I think it is worthwhile examining them. There are other concerns that I did not have the time to address in my speech. They were brought up by experts, or in committee, and had to do with the possibility that this bill may be unconstitutional.

The validity of such measures is obviously based on the victims' rights, but also the rights of those deemed to be not criminally responsible for the acts committed. These laws must also be protected. In that sense, a contradiction could easily lead to interpretation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The committee was informed of concerns by the media. That is why, five years after the bill becomes law, such a study would be pertinent.

In my speech, I made sure that I talked about the danger of politicizing cases like the Guy Turcotte case. I am certain that other members could cite similar cases that have occurred in their riding or region. These cases are very delicate and they affect us.

I already mentioned that I have children. Anyone who has young children will be emotional about a situation like that. It is the reason why such a delicate and sensitive situation must be handled by parliamentarians in the same manner, that is in a delicate and sensitive manner. These types of cases must not be used to promote a political agenda.

The reference made by the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Senator Boisvenu to what I just mentioned was the second speech made on the same bill. It was announced twice. The government must be very careful, because this kind of issue is very volatile. Again, the politicization of these cases has muddied the waters for the collective debate we should be holding on this issue. This makes it much more difficult to find our way.

In the future, for law and order bills on crime, I would like the government to be much more sensitive to the reactions it causes and the way they interfere with the debate when similar bills are introduced.

On this side of the House, we showed we were willing to work with the government. We will do so by voting for this bill, among other things. In addition, we demonstrated our co-operation by proposing and expediting the passage of Bill C-2, which allows for the group prosecution of biker gangs.

We will continue to work on this issue, but we need the government's co-operation in order to have a healthy and useful debate for Canadians.

Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Nickel Belt for his question. He just raised a point that I unfortunately did not have time to cover in my speech.

With Bill C-10 we saw the Conservative government's tendency to introduce bills without consulting the provinces or considering whether they agreed or not. Bill C-10 has a direct impact on the provinces' administrative costs.

Unfortunately, in this bill, there is no mention of how the government is going to help the provinces. There is no mention of any funding that might be allocated. We are pretty sure there will be none. When we looked at the budget, there was no increase in funding to help the provinces deal with this problem.

Again, we are operating in a vacuum. The government is introducing bills without consulting the provinces or experts. What is more, the government is not allocating any resources for the provinces to cope with these problems.

I thank my colleague for the question because it allowed me to address a point that I did not have time to raise in my speech.

Concurrence in Vote 1—The Senate

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Senate serves as a chamber of sober second thought to review legislation. I just want to highlight three pieces of legislation that have gone through this House over the years that the Senate has defeated, amended or reviewed.

For example, setting aside one's views on the difficult issue of abortion, let us look at what happened to Bill C-43 during the time of Mr. Mulroney's government. It was defeated in the Senate. It was the bill that would have restricted abortion in this country. The Senate defeated Bill C-43. Otherwise, today in Canada we would have had restrictions on abortion. Therefore, I would ask members opposite who have strongly held convictions on this whether that was a role that they would have seen as useful as played by the Senate.

More recently, after the last election, the government introduced, as part of its electoral commitment, Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act. It sailed through this House of Commons, and it got to the Senate. Suddenly the members of government and the senators realized that there were problems with respect to national security in the bill. Therefore, the Senate introduced an amendment which then forced the bill back to this House. The amendment was adopted by this House, the legislation received royal assent. That gap, that shortfall in the bill, was addressed by the Senate of Canada.

More recently, as I mentioned before, Bill C-290, that did not receive a standing vote in this House of Commons and received only one witness at committee, the very proponent of the bill, did not receive sufficient scrutiny and oversight. The Senate is currently doing its work in that regard.

Those are just three examples of the important work that the Senate has done over the years in its role as a chamber of sober second thought to review legislation.

There is a another reason why the Senate serves a useful function. That is, its role as an investigative and research and deliberative body. In the history of the Senate back to the 1960s and 1970s, the investigative work of the Senate into social policy became integral to the development of Canada's modern social safety welfare net. The development of the Canada pension plan and the Canada Health Act and the development of policies involving social transfers to the provinces for health care, education, post-secondary research and development were all influenced by the work that the Senate did over the years. More recently, the work that the Senate did on mental health influenced government and House of Commons decisions on legislation, policy and funding for mental health concerns. The Senate does the same thing as royal commissions, public inquiries and external task forces, but it does so at a lesser cost than those royal commissions and in a much quicker and more timely manner.

There is yet another reason why the Senate serves a useful function. It is the same reason why in over 50 states around the world there are bicameral legislatures: the Senate serves to provide a check and balance, not just on the majoritarianism of the lower chamber in this House of Commons, but also on the executive branch of government.

I would like to quote Sir Clifford Sifton. He was a Canadian minister at the turn of the 20th century who helped open up western Canada for the waves of immigration that settled the great Prairies and produced the powerhouse of energy and agriculture that we see today. Here is what Clifford Sifton said in the book The New Era in Canada in 1917:

No nation should be under unchecked, single-chamber government.... It must also be remembered that, under our system, the power of the Cabinet tends to grow at the expense of the House of Commons.... The Senate is not so much a check on the House of Commons as it is upon the Cabinet, and there can be no doubt that its influence in this respect is salutary.

The check that the upper chamber provides on the executive branch of government, something that many Canadians have been increasingly concerned about over the last 30 or 40 years, is a useful function. In fact, modern North American institutions are based on Montesquieu's doctrine of the division of powers as a way to best achieve outcomes in society, and the way to best achieve justness and fairness in society.

His division of powers principle is quite simple. We needed to move away from the error of the absolute rights of kings and dictators, where they held all the power, to a system of government where power was diffused. We needed a system where power was not concentrated in a single place, in the Prime Minister's Office, the cabinet or the executive branch of government, but diffused among the legislative, executive and judicial branches.

The Senate, in a bicameral system of government, serves that end of the division of power. It serves that end of diffusion of power. It serves that end to provide a check and balance on the concentration of power in one place. That is why, as I said earlier, there are 50 countries around the world with bicameral legislatures.

In addition to these reasons why the Senate serves a useful function, let us talk about the practical, political realities of abolishing the Senate. The reality is that Canada exists today in part because of the Senate. It was the deal that brought the provinces and colonies before Confederation into the federation.

In fact, when we read the Debates on Confederation, it is clear that colonies like Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec would never had joined this federation had it not been for the Senate. They made it clear they were worried about the rapidly growing populations in Canada West, now Ontario. They were worried about being subsumed by the majoritarianism of a rising Ontario. That is why they wanted the upper chamber to serve as a protector of their interests, whether they were regional in nature, reflecting smaller populations, or linguistic, reflecting the francophone realities in many parts of the country.

Many of those provinces, legislatures and national assemblies would not agree to the abolition of the Senate. They would see it as a diminution of their voice here in our nation's capital.

The political and practical reality is that abolition of the Senate is not something that is going to happen. It is not something that we could easily reopen without addressing the other demands that were made during the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords, those divisive debates of the late 1980s and early 1990s. There are many more things on the table. If we went to a Dominion-provincial conference on first ministers to talk about the abolition of the Senate and whether or not we believe that would require the 7/50 amending formula or unanimity amongst Canada's 11 legislatures, the point is this: it would be opening a can of worms that no one in the House would want to open.

In particular, I ask members from Quebec on both sides of the House what they would expect the Province of Quebec to demand, with respect to the recognition of Quebec as a distinct society or the recognition of Quebec's nationhood. What would they expect in terms of the demand for a veto on the part of provinces for any future changes to the Constitution? What would they expect when terms of the original Meech Lake demand completely devolve immigration to the provinces and relinquish federal control about who comes into our country and who is accepted to be a citizen?

It would reopen the debate about who gets the power of appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada. There are all the sorts of issues that certainly would be reopened for those who advocate the abolition of the Senate. Therefore, for a practical reason, abolition is not really something that we can pursue, nor is it something that I support. It is also something that we cannot do through the back door.

The Constitution of this country, with its written and unwritten aspects as they have been interpreted by rulings of the Supreme Court, is the basic law of this country and we must respect that Constitution. We must respect the way it needs to be amended. We should wait until the Supreme Court renders its judgment in the reference case that the government has asked it to consider.

Mr. Speaker, while I believe in a bicameral Parliament, while I believe that we need a lower and upper chamber for the reasons I have just outlined, I also believe that the Senate needs to be reformed. We need to have term limits. My suggestion to my fellow parliamentarians is that we should have term limits based on the life of a Parliament. Therefore, instead of setting a fixed term limit of eight or nine years, we should base it on a Parliament. When a Parliament is dissolved for the purposes of a general election, that is when senators should seek re-election. We might want to go to a system where a senator serves for the life of two or three Parliaments before seeking re-election, but I strongly believe that we need to have a system where there a limit on the length of time a senator can serve. I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will give us some guidance in that respect.

I also believe that we need to have popular consultations or elections of senators. That is incredibly important. That way we can provide Canadian citizens the accountability they are seeking for the upper chamber.

We need to do this thoughtfully. We cannot do it willy-nilly. There are unintended consequences if we proceed too rapidly and too rashly. If we are to proceed with term limits and an election of senators based on the court's ruling, then we also need to strengthen this very House of Commons.

In Ontario, the province from which I come, we have 24 senators. In Ontario, unlike Quebec where senators serve at large, if 24 senators run in province-wide elections we could see up to six million or more voters voting for a senatorial candidate. In that situation it is not inconceivable that a single Senate candidate could win an election with four million, five million or more votes, dwarfing the number of voters and constituents that members of this chamber represent. Accordingly, when those senators who have the legitimacy of being elected with some three million to four million votes confront the House about what should be done with certain pieces of legislation, we need to think about strengthening this House of Commons to ensure that the increase in the power of the Senate, because of term limits and elections, is reflected also in an increase in power of this part of the legislature, the House of Commons. This would ensure that the people's place that is represented by 308 members here today has an effective and continued voice as the primary centre of power in our nation's capital.

For all those reasons I believe the Senate serves a useful role. I believe members should vote to ensure its continued operation. While the institution is not perfect, and while those who have made mistakes should be held to account, let us ensure that our institutions remain strong to respond to the future challenges that Canada faces.

Respecting Families of Murdered and Brutalized Persons Act

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-478.

As my colleagues have already said, this bill amends the Criminal Code to provide that a person convicted of the abduction, sexual assault and murder of one victim is to be sentenced to imprisonment for life without eligibility for parole until the person has served a sentence of between 25 and 40 years as determined by the presiding judge after considering the recommendation, if any, of the jury.

As my Liberal colleague, the member for Halifax West, stated during the last debate on the bill, we Liberals will be supporting this matter at second reading. We support the principle behind the legislation—that is, we agree that those who are convicted of abduction, sexual assault and murder of one victim should not easily receive parole.

Many community organizations, including the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime, also support this bill.

While we are fortunate that such brutality is rare in Canada, we know all too well that this evil does exist. Just this time last year, the nation was gripped with headlines of Luka Magnotta, who is alleged to have killed, raped and dismembered his victim. He is presently awaiting trial on charges including murder and committing an indignity to a body.

Also at this time last year, a sentence was handed down in the case of Michael Rafferty of Woodstock, Ontario, who along with Terri-Lynne McClintic was arrested and charged in the abduction and murder of eight-year-old Victoria Stafford. Both are serving life sentences with no chance of parole for 25 years, Rafferty having been found guilty of first degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping.

These names and these cases, like those of Paul Bernardo, Russell Williams and Clifford Olson, clearly prove that this evil does exist in Canada and force us to evaluate the need to amend our Criminal Code accordingly.

Of course, the question might arise as to whether the existing regime is sufficient. All these individuals I have named have been punished, and many will not be out for parole for quite some time.

The answer is that this bill, as the mover noted, is not about punishment. Indeed, it does not increase penalties for any of the associated offences. What Bill C-478 does, however, is extend the period of parole ineligibility to relieve grieving families of the burden of having to relive their awful torment every two years once the offender becomes eligible to seek parole. Indeed, the bill is about ending the re-victimization of families.

It should be noted that the 40-year period that the bill speaks to is not a requirement. Judges are given necessary discretion on this particular point.

That is not to say that the bill is a flawless piece of legislation. These being private members' bills produced with the limited resources that we have as members of Parliament, there are going to be some flaws. Hopefully, at committee we will work hard to make sure that these are perfect bills when they come out of committee.

My colleagues from the NDP have raised concerns regarding its compliance with the charter and with the Rome statute. I am sure these will be questions put to the technical witnesses at the justice committee for which they will undoubtedly have well-researched answers. Surely amendments could then be moved if needed to clarify both our desire to comply with our domestic and international obligations and our desire to achieve our aim of a longer period of parole ineligibility for certain types of offenders.

It is not often that I am able to address the House on matters of criminal justice policy. I am delighted to do so today and I am delighted that the bill before us is not one of the usual mandatory minimum penalty bills that the Liberal Party opposes on policy grounds.

Much of the discussion in the House on justice policy of late has focused on the idea of victims' rights. I am proud to be part of a party that takes the rights of victims seriously and has matched this commitment in word and in action.

On November 1, 2005, the Government of Canada established the National Office for Victims at Public Safety Canada. This office is a single point of contact for victims who have concerns about offenders and questions about the federal correctional system and Canada's justice system.

The office provides victims with information and provides input on policy and legislative initiatives. It also attempts to educate members of the criminal justice system about victims' issues.

Further, although it has perhaps been overlooked in the current debate over Bill C-54, the Liberals proposed the initial amendments to the not criminally responsible regime that permitted a victim to read a victim impact statement at a review board hearing and required courts or review boards to advise a victim of his or her right to submit a victim impact statement at the initial disposition hearing for the accused.

Before closing, I must address one troublesome aspect of the bill as it is before us, not in substance but in form; namely, it is a piece of private member's business that has been endorsed by the Prime Minister and Minister of Justice as a worthwhile and necessary change to the law, yet it is something that would have been adopted much faster had it been introduced and advanced as government legislation. Indeed, why was this not part of the crime omnibus bill, Bill C-10? Or, more pertinently, why was this amendment not included in 2011 when Parliament debated Bill S-6, the serious time for the most serious crime act? Surely the government will agree these are serious crimes that deserve serious time.

My point is that the government has had ample opportunity to make this change to the law without having to use private members' hour to advance its agenda. It is a troubling trend because the use of private members' bills limits debate and circumvents charter review, something which is completed by the Department of Justice for only government bills and not private members' bills like Bill C-478.

Another troubling trend is that the Conservatives' justice agenda focuses on punishment without bearing in mind as well the need to adopt preventative measures designed to reduce the number of victims in the first place. Wow. For some types of offences, we should focus on root causes of crime, such as poverty, lack of education, and lack of access to affordable housing. For other types of crime, we should be looking at mental health initiatives for early screening and detection such that individuals may be diverted into the treatment programs they need.

Regrettably, changing sentencing and parole rules, however welcome some changes may be, does not prevent victimization. We must ensure a holistic approach is taken to justice, one that seeks to prevent crime, one that seeks to adequately punish the offender, and one that seeks to better reintegrate offenders into society once they have served their sentences.

In short, there is much more to be done, and Bill C-478 is not a magic bullet to solving the problem of crime in this country. However, as I stated at the outset, I believe the principle behind this bill has merit and thus I will be voting to send it to committee for further study and review.

Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1

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

Mr. Speaker, I was surprised to hear my hon. friend from Kootenay—Columbia claim that there was evidence that mandatory minimum sentences worked.

When we went over Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, I searched in vain for any empirical study by any criminologist anywhere in the world that suggested these were anything but a massive failure, particularly now with the evidence coming from Texas. That state has been unsuccessful and has found that mandatory minimums do not reduce the crime rate but do cause increased problems within prisons and increased costs on the taxpayer.

Could my hon. colleague point me in the direction of any study that supports the idea that mandatory minimums are anything but a colossal failure?

Standing Committee on Finance

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

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to the hon. House leader of the official opposition for raising this point of order yesterday, objecting to the unusual procedures that were accepted within the Standing Committee on Finance, in relation to the clause-by-clause treatment of Bill C-60, the 2013 omnibus budget bill.

Prior to his point of order, I was struggling with a dilemma: I was certain there was an effort to undermine my rights as an individual member of Parliament and yet there had been no formal challenge. I was not sure how to approach this, Mr. Speaker, and to put before you the ways in which I found that procedure unacceptable. I really very much appreciate that the official opposition saw fit to raise its concerns that those procedures and the procedures adopted--novel procedures, mind you--before the Standing Committee on Finance did not comport to parliamentary rules and practice and went beyond the mandate of the committee.

I agree with all the points made by the hon. House leader of the official opposition and by the member for Winnipeg North, on behalf of the Liberal Party.

Before getting down to the particulars of the current situation, I wish to review some fundamental principles related to the matter before you, Mr. Speaker.

In essence, what you are asked to adjudicate here is an effort by a powerful government party with the majority of seats in this place to eliminate what few rights exist to influence legislation in the hands of only eight members of Parliament belonging to two recognized national parties, myself, on behalf of the Green Party, and members here for the Bloc Québécois, plus two members currently sitting as independents.

Within this group, the government party's efforts are aimed only at the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois. We are the only members to have submitted amendments at report stage in the 41st Parliament.

The appropriate balance between the majority and the minority in proceedings of the House is, as Speaker Milliken noted, a fundamental issue.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to be providing the written copy of this presentation to you so that I will not have to read out loud all the citations.

The following passage is very apt. Although Speaker Milliken was dealing with a situation with a minority Parliament, the issues before him of balancing the rights of the minority and the majority are the same. I quote from Speaker Milliken's ruling of March 29, 2007:

At the present time, the chair occupants, like our counterparts in House committees, daily face the challenge of dealing with the pressures of a minority government, but neither the political realities of the moment nor the sheer force of numbers should force us to set aside the values inherent in the parliamentary conventions and procedures by which we govern our deliberations.

Continuing:

Unlike the situation faced by committee chairs, a Speaker's decision is not subject to appeal. All the more reason then for the Chair to exercise its awesome responsibility carefully and to ensure that the House does not, in the heat of the moment, veer dangerously off course.

The Speaker must remain ever mindful of the first principles of our great parliamentary tradition, principles best described by John George Bourinot, Clerk of this House from 1890 to 1902, who described these principles thus:

To protect the minority and restrain the improvidence and tyranny of the majority, to secure the transaction of public business in a decent and orderly manner, to enable every member to express his opinions within those limits necessary to preserve decorum and prevent an unnecessary waste of time, to give full opportunity for the consideration of every measure, and to prevent any legislative action being taken heedlessly and upon sudden impulse.

As I noted yesterday, in particular, in your ruling related to the member for Langley's question of privilege, you said:

...[an] unquestionable duty of the Speaker [is] to act as the guardian of the rights and privileges of members and of the House as an institution.

And you cited, with approval, these words from former speaker Fraser:

...we are a parliamentary democracy, not a so-called executive democracy, nor a so-called administrative democracy.

The last quote is from your ruling of December 12, 2012, which bears directly on the matter at hand. In that ruling, Mr. Speaker, you dealt with an objection raised by the hon. Leader of the Government in the House of Commons to, inter alia, my presentation of amendments at report stage. The hon. government House leader presented a proposal that all my amendments at report stage should be grouped and one motion selected as a “test motion”, and only if the test motion was adopted would any of the other amendments be put to the House.

Your ruling was clear, Mr. Speaker. You cited House of Commons Procedure and Practice at page 250, which states:

[I]t remains true that parliamentary procedure is intended to ensure that there is a balance between the government's need to get its business through the House, and the opposition's responsibility to debate that business without completely immobilizing the proceedings of the House.

And you added:

The underlying principles these citations express are the cornerstones of our parliamentary system. They enshrine the ancient democratic tradition of allowing the minority to voice its views and opinions in the public square and, in counterpoint, of allowing the majority to put its legislative program before Parliament and have it voted upon.

You ruled then, Mr. Speaker, that my amendments at report stage on Bill C-45 could stand and be put to a vote in the House. You also set out some circumstances that would provide a potential procedure to provide me and other members in my position with a fair and satisfactory alternative to amendments at report stage.

In my view, the government House leader is now attempting to do indirectly that which he could not do directly. It puts me in mind of the finding of Mr. Justice Dickson in that landmark Supreme Court case of Amax Potash, in which Mr. Dickson said:

To allow moneys collected under compulsion, pursuant to an ultra vires statute, to be retained would be tantamount to allowing the provincial Legislature to do indirectly what it could not do directly, and by covert means to impose illegal burdens.

I again underline that as the hon. House leader of the official opposition has put before us, the actions of the finance committee were ultra vires, and the whole effort here is to do indirectly what it could not do directly. I am speaking of the Conservative Party's efforts to suppress the rights of minority members.

It offends principles of fairness to use the superior clout and power of a majority government to crush the few procedures found within our rules and traditions to which I, as an individual member, have a right to recourse. It is clear that the effort being made by the finance committee on Bill C-60 is a continuation of the strategy-by-stealth of the government House leader's to foreclose the democratic rights of members, which was attempted in November of last year.

For the remainder of my argument, I would like to canvass two areas of facts that are relevant to the specifics of the question before you, Mr. Speaker. First, was the procedure adopted by the finance committee in conformity with your ruling of December 12, 2012? Second, have the amendments I have put forward in the 41st Parliament offended the rules by failing the tests of “repetition, frivolity, vexatiousness and unnecessary prolongation of report stage”?

Dealing with the second point first, I have moved amendments at report stage on the following bills, and I will state how many amendments per bill: Bill C-10, 36 amendments; Bill C-11, 11 amendments; Bill C-13, one amendment; Bill C-18, three amendments; Bill C-19, three amendments; Bill C-31, 23 amendments; Bill C-316, five amendments; Bill C-38, 320 amendments; Bill C-37, one amendment; Bill C-43, 21 amendments; and Bill C-45, 82 amendments.

What is immediately obvious is that the number of my amendments was directly proportionate to the legislation proposed by the government. Only on the two omnibus budget bills, Bill C-45 and Bill C-38, and the omnibus crime bill, Bill C-10, did I propose a relatively large number of amendments. There were many amendments, because the omnibus bills involved changes to multiple laws in a dramatic and transformative fashion. The amendments I proposed were all serious; none were frivolous. They were not of the kind, for example, put forward by the opposition of the day on the Nisga'a treaty, in which multiple amendments were mere changes of punctuation with the goal being slowing passage of the Nisga'a treaty.

The amendments I have put forward have even gained favourable commentary from some government members. On Bill C-31, the hon. Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism said, “I appreciate the member's evident concern”, speaking of me as the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, “and the fact that she takes the deliberative legislative process very seriously”.

On Bill C-11, the copyright modernization act, the hon. Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages said, “I compliment her for her substantive approach to this legislation”.

On Bill C-43, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism stated:

I commend the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands for her constant due diligence. I know it is a particular challenge to effectively be an independent member and yet participate in an informed way in debates on virtually all bills in the House. We all admire her for that even if I do not agree with the substance of her intervention here.

In summary, the amendments I have put forward in the 41st Parliament have never been frivolous. Were they designed to slow passage? Not at all. Even on the day we began the marathon session of votes on the amendments to Bill C-38, I approached the Prime Minister personally and asked if any compromise were possible. I told him I would be at his disposal, that if one or two amendments might pass, perhaps the rest could be withdrawn, and that I was open to suggestion.

My goal throughout was serious and grounded in principle. My constituents care about these issues and these bills. I am working tirelessly in their interest. I have never engaged in preparing and presenting amendments for the sake of, as the government House leader has suggested, political games or delay for the sake of delay.

Having worked in the Mulroney government and in public policy work in Ottawa dealing with federal governments, federal ministers and federal laws since 1978, I have personal experience with what used to be the normal approach to legislating in the Parliament of Canada. This particular administration is the only one in our history to enforce rigid discipline on its members in legislative committees. It is the first administration in Canadian history to resist any changes in its legislative proposals from first reading to royal assent. Even the errors that are discovered prior to passage are protected from amendment until subsequent bills correct earlier drafting errors.

Worsening this abuse of democratic process, virtually every bill in the 41st Parliament has been subject to time allocation. If time allocation were not applied, in the normal round of debates, eventually members in my situation, who are seen as independent for my rights and privileges, although I sit here as a Green Party member, would be recognized and would participate in the debates. However, due to time allocation, there is never an opportunity to speak at second reading, report stage or third reading. With time allocation, there is never an opportunity for members in my position to make a speech unless another party cedes a speaking slot.

As a matter of practical reality, the only way to have a speaking opportunity in such time-constrained circumstances is to have amendments tabled at report stage. This approach of the current Conservative administration of rejecting any and all amendments, while simultaneously abbreviating debate opportunities, is a perversion of Westminster parliamentary tradition. It is a new and hyper-partisan approach to the legislative process.

As a member of Parliament, I believe it is my duty to work to resist this new, contemptuous approach to legislating. The ability to table amendments at report stage and to offer the entire House an opportunity to improve bills before third reading is even more critical when the legislative committee process has ceased to function as it did in all the time of all the speakers before you.

Now I turn to the question, Mr. Speaker, of how the finance committee applied the suggestions contained in your ruling of December 12, 2012. I note that the chair of the finance committee is never anything but personally fair, and I mean nothing personal against all members of the finance committee. I assume that this entire stratagem emerged elsewhere than from the members of the finance committee themselves.

I note that you suggested, Mr. Speaker, that there are “opportunities and mechanisms that are at the House's disposal to resolve these issues to the satisfaction of all members” in a “manner that would balance the rights of all members” and that “...members need only to remember that there are several precedents where independent members were made members of standing committees”. Those are all quotes from your ruling in December.

Finally, you suggested this:

Were a satisfactory mechanism found that would afford independent members an opportunity to move motions to move bills in committee, the Chair has no doubt that its report stage selection process would adapt to the new reality.

From these comments it is clear that your direction suggests that an effort might be made to engage members with rights of independents to enter into a discussion about how arrangements could be reached that would be, in fact, satisfactory. To be “to the satisfaction of all members”, your ruling implicitly requires that the suggested opportunities and mechanisms be discussed and accepted by all concerned. Further, you suggested that temporary membership was possible and that members should be able to “move motions”.

None of that occurred. I am attaching a written copy of all the correspondence between me and the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance, which I will provide to the table. As you will see, there was no discussion or offer of co-operation. The “invitation” contained in a letter of May 7, 2013 left no room for discussion. The attached motion of the committee was supported only by the Conservative members of the finance committee but not by the official opposition or the Liberal Party members.

The letter, and particularly the motion itself, had the tone of a unilateral ultimatum. My response was to ask for temporary committee membership for the duration of clause-by-clause review. This request was rejected in the letter of May 24, 2013.

As the various sections of Bill C-60 had been distributed among several committees, I attempted to attend all the hearings relative to my amendments. However, committees were meeting at the same time in different locations throughout the parliamentary precinct making it impossible to get to each one of them. I did attend meetings of the industry, finance and the foreign affairs committees prior to clause-by-clause study. I asked for permission to ask witnesses questions and was denied in the finance and foreign affairs committees. I was allowed a three-minute opportunity to pose questions in the industry committee. To be blunt, my opportunities were not close to equivalent to the members of those committees.

On Monday, May 27, 2013 as requested by the finance committee, I complied with the committee and attempted to co-operate. I submitted my amendments and attended clause-by-clause study throughout the meeting of the committee on Tuesday, May 28. I asked for time to present my amendments. There were 11 in total. I was given half as much time as my colleague from the Bloc Québécois. I was allowed one minute per amendment. He was allowed two minutes per amendment. I have attached copies of the Hansard from all of these discussions to abbreviate the recitation of the facts.

I prefaced my presentation of amendments with a statement that I had not asked for this opportunity nor invitation and that while I was attempting to co-operate, it was without prejudice to my rights to submit amendments at report stage. Each time I was given the floor for 60 seconds, I repeated that my participation was without prejudice to my rights to present amendments at report stage, when I had the right to move my own amendments, speak to my own amendments, and answer questions about my amendments. At report stage, I have the right to vote on my amendments.

I also supported the point made by the hon. member for Parkdale—High Park that inviting independent members to committee, in her words, “does not conform with parliamentary procedure in that only the House of Commons can appoint committee members”.

I noted that I did not have an equal opportunity to present my amendments. This observation was compounded as we went through clause-by-clause study.

On two occasions, members of the committee suggested amendments to my amendments. I was not allowed to comment on those suggestions. On one occasion, a member of the government benches disagreed with a point I made, but I was not allowed to reply. On another occasion, the NDP members misunderstood the impact of my amendment, but I was not allowed to explain. I was not allowed to move my amendments. The motions were deemed moved. I was not allowed to vote on my amendments. As noted, I was not allowed even the ability to participate in discussions about my amendments.

There is no way the word “satisfactory” can be so twisted of meaning as to apply to the set of circumstances to which I was required to submit. It is a principle of fairness and natural justice that an opportunity that cannot be used is no opportunity at all.

When one considers the circumstances in which speakers have ruled that members did not have an adequate opportunity to submit their amendments, it is clear that this imposed process before the Standing Committee on Finance falls far short of the mark.

For example, in 2001, Speaker Milliken ruled that where a member was on two committees and had difficulty getting to the meeting, he could move amendments at report stage. Speaker Milliken wrote that:

...because...the member maintains that he sits on two committees, both of which were seized with bills at the same time, and therefore had difficulty in moving his amendments, the Chair will give the benefit of the doubt to the member on this occasion.

In a situation where a member of a recognized parliamentary party attended the clause-by-clause consideration at the committee but was not an official member of the committee, Speaker Milliken allowed that member's amendments to be presented at report stage. He noted:

Of course, the Chair recognizes that our parliamentary system is party driven and the positions of the parties are brought forward to committees through its officially designated members. The Chair also recognizes that some members may want to act on their own.

Underscoring this, what an example: a member of a recognized party with rights to participate in standing committees chose to be in the meetings, in clause-by-clause study, and could have handed that member's amendments to another member of his party and ask that they be submitted, but the Speaker of the House supported the right of that member to amendments at report stage because he was not a committee member. I was a long, long way from the rights of that member of a recognized political party sitting in that committee back in 2003 when Speaker Milliken allowed that member's amendments at report stage.

The right of a member to actually move the amendments at committee cannot be perverted through the expedient measure, imposed by a majority party, of demanding all amendments of an independent member be submitted, denying that member the right to move the amendment, speak to the amendment, other than in an inadequate perfunctory fashion, debate or defend the amendment, giving that member no opportunity to speak to other amendments and denying the member any chance to vote on his or her motion.

There may well be some way to accommodate members of Parliament in my position, but clearly, this experiment on Bill C-60 at clause-by-clause consideration in the finance committee was not acceptable. To accept it now, and disallow rights of members of Parliament in the position of independents to submit amendments at report stage, will be to create a precedent that fundamentally abuses our foundational principles of Westminster parliamentary democracy.

Mr. Speaker, I urge you to find in favour of the point of order put forward by the hon. House leader for the official opposition and to set aside the treatment of me and the member from the Bloc Québécois and allow us to submit amendments, move amendments, debate our amendments and vote on them on Bill C-60 at report stage.

Second Reading

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to speak in support of Bill C-54, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the National Defence Act (mental disorder).

The NDP supports sending the bill to committee. As a number of people have said before me, there are some serious flaws in the bill that we want to address there. I have heard some welcoming comments from members across the aisle that they are looking forward to our amendments. I hope they really want to work with the opposition to make the legislation work. With that in mind, I am sure that the NDP representatives on the committee will put their hearts and souls into writing those amendments.

However, it will be the first time since I have been in the House.

I do not think there is anybody in this room who would disagree that public safety is paramount. No matter what part of the country one goes to, whether one has children or not, people really care about their communities and making sure they are safe.

I have strong feelings about the very poor job we are doing as a country and in the provinces addressing mental health issues. Recent reports show that depression is on the increase. The economic and health care costs related to that are huge.

For example, in my province of British Columbia, we saw many institutions that used to house people with mental disabilities and disorders shut down. Where did those people go? They ended up on the streets getting into all kinds of trouble, simply because they are ill and not able to manage on their own.

Bill C-54 is not talking about that larger group. We are talking about a very tiny group. It is a very small percentage of those with mental disorders who commit serious violent crimes. That is the crux of the legislation.

As many members are aware, based on a psychiatric report, even those who commit serious violent crimes can be released. We have examples of that. I have an example in my riding. A mother comes to see me quite regularly because she just cannot understand how that can happen.

We are talking about those who commit serious violent crimes. They would go before a review board, and now the victims would have a right to go to the review board and make impact statements. Not everybody can do that. Not every victim would be able to face the person who did them harm directly or indirectly. However, it is a very important part of the healing process and the social justice process for a person to be able to give an account of the impact a crime has had. I think that is a welcome piece of this legislation.

Of course, when the psychiatric review board made a decision, it would be reviewed by the courts before the accused was released. That is an additional element to ensure public safety and keep our communities safe.

It seems reasonable that before we release somebody, we would want to have that review so the medical and psychiatric professions have their input. A review board takes place at that time, impact statements are made and as a measure to ensure that everything is on track, the court will review that before the person is released. All of that sounds really good.

Then we get to the crux of the matter, which is who will pay for this? If this is more downloading of costs to the provinces, then I will have some serious concerns because we have had so much downloading of costs to them. There is so much they have had to pick up. We know where that ends up in each province. In British Columbia it has led to impacting the education and health care systems and many other programs. Therefore, we want to ensure we look at that.

As I mentioned earlier on, having been a teacher and counsellor in a high school, as well as a counsellor in the community, what hits me hard is that I absolutely believe in our judicial system, which is a rehabilitative system, but I also believe in prevention programs and taking proactive steps. It is high time the federal and provincial parties work together to find ways to address mental health issues as well as the costs associated with that.

Some people would say that we cannot afford to do that. However, the costs of incarceration are eightfold to the cost of quality education. It seems that in many cases we are not willing to spend $8,000 a year on educating a child, but we are willing to spend $60,000 to $100,000 a year to incarcerate people and keep them in prison. If incarceration were a judgment of how safe we are as a society, we just have to look to the south where the U.S. probably has a very high number of people in prisons. It does not make its streets and communities any safer. I would say it is less so.

We are pleased to support this and send it to committee where we will bring in amendments. We are pleased to see that for the very small percentage of people with mental disorders who commit violent crimes there will be an opportunity for victims to make statements. Also, through Bill C-10, there will be a review by the courts for those people to be released.

Bill C-54—Time Allocation Motion

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Mr. Speaker, obviously committees are in charge of their own agenda. I see my parliamentary secretary here and other members of that committee, and they have done an outstanding job in terms of moving forward on these important pieces of legislation.

The hon. member is right when she said what we talked about in the last election. We were very clear in the last election that we would move forward with all the bills that we could not get through because the NDP, the Liberals and their other friends wanted to talk forever on these things and did not want to move forward on them.

Bill C-10 is the bill that cracks down on people who sexually exploit children, that cracks down on drug dealers. We indicated to Canadians in the last election that we were coming forward with this and we would get it passed within 100 days. We were on the right track with that bill, and this is part of that agenda of moving forward, standing up for victims and--

Extention of Sitting Hours

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not very happy about being here. However, I am here because we need to stand up to this government, which believes that Parliament exists only for its benefit and that it is just a place concerned with the government's problems and accountability.

It is almost as if a new party came into the House today, as we listen to the Conservative House leader speak. It certainly is not the party that moved prorogation and killed legislation time and again. This new Conservative Party is suddenly interested in not defeating legislation. It could not be the same Conservative Party that has shut down debate in the House of Commons more than any party in Canadian history. It could not be a member of the same party who was speaking here today, talking about opening up debate. The Conservatives have invented a new world for themselves that is fascinating.

I am reflecting on my friend from Langley, who sought to speak in this House on what they call an S. O. 31 statement, which happens just before question period. It is a statement that lasts for about a minute. Usually members of Parliament get up and make a statement about their ridings about some issue that is important to them. My friend from Langley, who sits in the Conservative Party, was a parliamentary secretary, I remember, for the Minister of the Environment, a chair, a well-respected member of Parliament, and a friend. He sought to stand up and speak to something he thought was important to his constituents.

It was the old Conservative Party that shut down that member of Parliament and every other one who tried to get up and speak, because this new Conservative Party talks about wanting people to speak in the House and wanting to have debate.

While it is refreshing to hear it, I do not believe it, and I do not think Canadians are going to believe that suddenly accountability and democracy have broken out within the Prime Minister's Office. It is the office of this particular Prime Minister who, rather than face any uncomfortable questions from the media or the official opposition members today, or for the rest of this week, has decided that going to South America to sit with other trading partners from other countries we already have established trade deals with to talk about trade deals that already exist is much more important than asking questions about the Senate.

It must be a new Conservative Party that suddenly has on its agenda a legislative directive that the members need to sit longer hours and work hard on something that might be quite topical today, something such as the reform of Canada's Senate, which has been long overdue and long called for by Canadians and New Democrats who said that the place was fundamentally broken. There is no accountability. Unelected and under investigation is the new Senate.

I remember the old Reform Party. You probably do as well, Mr. Speaker. It came in riding from the west, from my part of the world.

I see a member across the way, who was one of the founding members of the Reform Party, calling it a beautiful thing. While I disagreed fundamentally with many of its positions, certainly its social positions, there was something on which I could see some common ground. That was to make Parliament more accountable and to reform the Senate.

The current government has now been in power almost seven long years. Is that right? The time goes slowly. In those six or seven years, the Prime Minister made a promise as one of his fundamental commitments to Canadians. Commitments should be treated sacredly, I believe.

We all get up at elections. We have party platforms and promises we make to Canadians. If we win, that platform and those promises become our agenda. That is what we would seek to do in office. It is simple. One of his promises, one of his agendas, one of his reforms was on the Senate. When the Conservatives were in opposition, they would see those Liberal senators down there taking their money, not really representing anybody, going on trips and maybe even defrauding taxpayers. Who knows? The Reform movement came in and said it was wrong and anti-democratic.

For a party that decided to put “democratic” right in the middle of our name, we take these questions seriously. We feel that it is accountability to the people we on the orange team represent. In a sense, we are watching this Prime Minister now play victim to what is going on in the Senate with senators he appointed exclusively and explicitly to raise money for the Conservative Party of Canada. Now this same Prime Minister claims victimhood and wonders how this happened. How did his chief of staff, who sits to his immediate left every day and knows his deepest, darkest secrets, whom he put in charge of major trade files and negotiations with other countries, cut a $90,000 cheque to a senator he appointed? However, obviously, the Prime Minister's hands are clean, and he has nothing to say about this. He believes that his hands are so clean that he is not going to answer any questions about it. He is going to go to South America to be in trade talks with countries we already have trade deals with. That is the new Conservative Party, which is the old one, the same one that has forgotten its roots.

Dear Mr. Manning is still with us, so he is not spinning in his grave, but he is definitely spinning. He was asked recently whether the Conservatives have lost their principles. He said, no, they have maintained their priorities. It is an interesting dodge of a question. Mr. Speaker, you have been around politics a bit. You know when a question is put directly and someone answers it indirectly.

I find it incredible that we have before us a motion that continues to abuse Parliament. This motion is designed simply to restrict debate and demonstrate to members of the House of Commons that the only reason Parliament exists is so that the government can do what it wants.

I remember a comment made by the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. When we were debating a time allocation motion, he said that their intention was not to put an end to debate or to censure it, but just to control Parliament.

It is incredible that a minister is admitting that the Conservatives just want to control the Parliament of Canada. It also reflects the Conservatives' esprit de corps. They want to control everything, not just the opposition and Parliament, but their members, as well as the media and the public.

The current vision of the Prime Minister and the government leaves the public with no choice and no voice. It is all about the kind of country that the Prime Minister wants to build.

We see a government moving this extraordinary thing, which will see, big deal, members of Parliament sitting until midnight.

New Democrats have been known, sometimes to our detriment, to be willing to force the calendar to the very last minute and sit all night, such as when the government moved anti-worker legislation against a very profitable Canada Post, which, I might add, in a parenthetical way, then lost money.

After the lockout by Canada Post, the government imposed wage contracts on those workers that were less than what the company was willing to offer. Then it said that it needed to shut down Canada Post offices around the country, as Canada Post was losing money because of the lockout it allowed them to do. The logic is inherently twisted on that side.

Remember the omnibus debates and the voting we had. I remember my friend from the Green Party moving a certain number of amendments to the bill, which forced the House to sit all night and vote, hour after hour. I remember some of my friends from Surrey who stayed in their seats for 22 hours.

No one has ever accused New Democrats of not being willing to come to work and work on behalf of our constituents. We may do some things wrong. We may sometimes fall short in some areas, but hard work has not ever been one of those things.

There is such irony in hearing a Conservative House leader who, with his Prime Minister, has prorogued Parliament, shut it down, and killed their government's own legislation time and time again, say to the Speaker that the problem is that they cannot get their legislation through.

It had been there for 12 months. After eight months, they killed it themselves and prorogued the House.

One prorogation was quite notable. The government looked to be in a bit of trouble. It was in a minority position. The world was entering into a very deep recession. The Minister of Finance, who claims to be the best in the world, ignored the recession and introduced what the Conservatives called an austerity budget at the very moment when the rest of the world, realizing that the economy was coming to a virtual standstill, was introducing budgets that did the opposite.

The finance genius we have sitting in the chair said, “Never mind what the rest of the world thinks about what is going on in the global economy; we know that Canada is not going into recession”, even as we were in the midst of a recession. He introduced an austerity budget to cut back billions in job creation, in grants and in all the things the Conservatives take credit for, such as unemployment insurance for a bunch of Canadians who were just being thrown out of work.

The opposition said that it was not a very good budget and suggested that we vote against that budget. The government panicked and prorogued. Canadians got a civil lesson in how Parliament works. They had never heard the word “prorogation” before. Then we got to learn.

The Prime Minister had to go to the Governor General. He sat there for a number of hours, perhaps being lectured about how undemocratic it was, when facing a non-confidence vote, to head down the road to the Queen's representative to ask for permission to shut it all down before he was thrown out of office. He was more worried about his job that day than about Canadians. That is for sure.

That is a government that killed its legislation in order to save itself, and did it time and time again.

Here is the trend that we worry about with today's motion. For a government that has broken the record by shutting down debate more times than any government in Canadian history, it has refused 99.3% of all the amendments that the opposition has brought to its legislation.

Let us look at that for a moment. The way a bill is supposed to work is it comes into the House and gets debated. There is a pro and con and the real coming together or clash of ideas to improve the legislation because no one is perfect. The drafters of legislation do not get it right. They are sometimes hundreds of pages long and very complicated. The House is meant to debate that. Then we send it to committee and hear from experts, not just members of Parliament who are not often experts in these areas, but people who work in the field. They are the social workers, the financial experts, the crime experts and the police. We hear those suggestions and write amendments based on those ideas. That is the way this place is supposed to work.

However, the government is saying that in 99.3% of those cases those experts are wrong and the government is right. It will not change a period, a comma, not a word in any of the legislation. Then lo and behold, time and time again, the legislation is challenged in the courts successfully. The legislation does not fix the problems identified and costs Canada and Canadians billions.

We all remember well Bill C-30, the Internet snooping bill that would allow the state to look in on the Internet searches and emails of Canadians without any warrant. The government decided in its vigour for its tough on crime agenda that it would pass a law that said that at any point, at any time, Canadians anywhere could have their BlackBerrys and iPhones tapped by the government, that web searches on home computers could be looked at by the government and the police. There is no country in the world, outside of Iran and North Korea, that would even consider doing this. The Conservative government thought it was a fantastic idea. In trying to argue the case, it said that if we were not into exposing our Internet searches and our emails then we must be in support of child pornography.

Has any more offensive or stupid an argument ever been made on the floor of the House of Commons? It is offensive to basic civil liberties and decency, to the role of members of Parliament trying to do our jobs and to the Canadians who said that they were not sure they wanted the government looking at their email?

I look at the member for Yukon right now. I do not know what he is searching and I do not want to know. It is his privacy to look on his computer and do as he sees fit. That is a civil liberty I am sure he defends as well, but not his government.

Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, was the flagship. The government rammed it all into one bill and said that it was such important legislation it would shut down debate on it too. Then whole sections of the bill were taken out. Why? It was because they were unconstitutional.

Now we know where that all comes from. Canadians actually pay for a service. Many members of Parliament may not know this, but when a government introduces a bill it goes to constitutional legal experts to determine if the new legislation goes against our constitution, our foundation as a country? If it does, it is a good idea to modify the law to ensure it does not get challenged in the courts, which costs upwards of $3 million to $5 million to taxpayers every time there is one of those challenges. The government did not check on Bill C-10. We know that because the people who work for the Government of Canada, who do this work, are no longer receiving references from the government.

The government is not even asking anymore. It is choosing ignorance. This is incredible. It is saying that it does not want to know whether the laws it writes are constitutional, whether the laws it writes as a government are for or against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is incredible. This is not a mistake. It is by intention. Therefore, we have these lawyers sitting in their offices, being paid every day, waiting for the government to refer the bills it introduces here to ensure they can survive a constitutional challenge. The government does not ask anymore.

Bill C-38, the first omnibus bill and Bill C-45, the second omnibus bill, were both challenged in the courts as unconstitutional. First nations are challenging it. I need to address this because the government House leader mentioned two bills that are being moved, so-called, on behalf of first nations. They are Bill S-2 and Bill S-8. One is matrimonial property rights. It sounds pretty innocuous. Most Canadians would say that matrimonial property rights for first nations women on reserve maybe protects their rights. Who is opposed to it? It is not just us in the opposition, but aboriginal women, every first nation women's group in the country. My friend across the way shakes his head, but I can show him the testimony that says the bill is no good for aboriginal women.

However, the Conservatives know better. With their shameful record on aboriginal rights and title in the country, suddenly they know better than aboriginal women, than first nations women. Bill S-8 is a bill to help first nations have clean drinking water because the record has been shameful.

Government after government has failed first nations communities. Thirty-five per cent of the people I represent in northern British Columbia are in first nations communities. The water conditions there are incredibly bad. We have to do something about it. There are fixes and there are ideas coming from those communities.

Instead the government moves the bill, handing all responsibility down to first nations in terms of cleaning up their own water mess, but none of the resources to do it. Are first nations supportive of it? No. Nor would any municipality or any province in Canada be supportive of legislation that rams down responsibility without any of the support, money or help to get that done.

Most of these first nations communities are living in abject poverty. Where does the government think they are going to get the money from? The government will not settle treaty with them in the west. First nations are having mining, oil and gas exploration and pipelines put everywhere and are receiving none of the royalties, none of the compensation and the government will not move treaty forward.

I was just in Gitxsan territory, speaking with the Gitxsan and the Wet'suwet'en, talking about basic child services, kids who are being abused in their homes and setting up a program that the federal government said that we should enact 20 years ago to allow first nations more rights and responsibilities to rescue those kids and help them kids integrate back into their communities.

Who is not coming to the table? The Conservative government. This is the government that on Bill S-2 and Bill S-8 suddenly said that it had first nations rights and title and priorities at heart, when it did not.

The place can work. Members can sense a certain amount of frustration in my voice, because Parliament can work. It is actually designed to work. I love our system. It is so superior to many other systems I have studied around the world, that have consistent congressional gridlock on legislation and on budgets. We can make things happen here.

However, with the power that is afforded a majority government, which is a lot, comes a certain amount of responsibility to use the power wisely and not abuse it. Yet time and again we have seen the government House leader and other ministers get up and say that they are not looking to limit the debate; they just want to control it. They reject virtually 100% of all the amendments and all the changes and suggestions they hear at committee because they know better and they have the votes to push it forward.

It is at such a point that the control has extended deeply into the government's caucus. Some of the more socially conservative members of the Conservative caucus are no longer free to speak, or are only free to speak on certain things, in certain ways, if the Prime Minister's Office allows for it.

In a small program that we run in northern B.C., initiated a number of years ago, I hold a conference call with all the detachment commanders from all the RCMP outposts that exist in my riding. It is a very large riding facing a lot of tough, difficult situations with policing. Once every two or three months I get on the phone with 12 detachment commanders and we talk about what is going on. We talk about what is happening in crime, what the drug use is like, what legislation is moving through the House that will help or hinder these hard-working, hard-serving officers.

I am not allowed to have that conversation with these RCMP officers anymore. I am not supposed to talk to them. As a sitting member of Parliament, I am not supposed to go to them. A number of them have come to me because they are friends and we have known each other for years. They offer good, on-the-ground advice about what is happening.

They say that they are sorry, that they cannot talk to me. They tell me that I have to phone the Prime Minister's Office in order for them to talk to me about what is going on in Prince Rupert, or what is going on in Dease Lake or Bella Coola.

It is insane. This is wrong. Government officials at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who I have known for years and who I phone just for an update to see what is going on with our fish on the west coast, tell me that I am a member of Parliament from the opposition and that I need to phone the people in the Prime Minister's Office and that they will give me permission as to whether they can tell me what is going on in Canada's fishery.

This is not their government. This is not a Conservative government. This is Canada's government. We pay for these civil servants. We pay their salaries to do work on behalf of Canadians. Whether it is silencing scientists, shutting down access for members of Parliament to basic conversations, or shutting down debate in Parliament, the consistent voice from the government is that it will not be held to account.

This is bad. This is not just about the privilege all members of the House need to do their job. The government says there is some urgency, but there is not. There is no urgency when it comes to the government's mandate or agenda.

It is very strange for the government to say it is very open, when we see what is going on in the Senate.

We have senators like Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau. All current senators have potentially stolen money from Canadians. These are the same senators that the Prime Minister says are very good people. These are the same senators using money from the Canadian people to travel during an election and raise money for the Conservative Party. That is the new Conservative Party. I do not understand.

I remember the Reform Party of Canada and some reforms that Mr. Manning wanted to make. With the current party, it is the same story as with the Liberal Party and the Gomery commission and all the rest. I am both angry and sad.

The majority of Canadians did not vote for this government, which has a majority, but does not have the majority support of Canadians. Close to 60% of Canadians voted against this agenda, against this sort of arrogance. They voted not to have the kind of government that now uses brutal tactics, not against the New Democratic Party, but against Parliament.

Lastly, I think we need to have a referendum, which may not happen until the next election.

It bears some comment, not only with respect to the Senate scandal but even the motion today.

I watched the government House leader and the Prime Minister on television earlier. He actually allowed the media into his caucus room for a second, which was bizarre. The bully turns into the victim, that somehow this is put upon them, that they are somehow being victimized here.

What frustrates me is not just the work that we have to do as parliamentarians that is constantly thwarted by the government at committee stage, and my friend laughs, but how can it be possible that 99.3% of all amendments were rejected? The evidence is clear.

My friend can shake his head and laugh and treat this with disdain or heckle out what seems to be a favourite tactic of some of my friends who cannot win the debate, but can simply sit in their seats and heckle, yell and try to put down a comment that hurts a little too much, that being that 99.3% of all amendments were rejected, that the witnesses were all wrong, that the government was always right and that the courts must be wrong too. Soon the Conservatives will call them activist courts like the Republicans do in the states. Members should watch for it because it is coming.

We believe this motion is fundamentally flawed in its abuse of this place and of all members. I do not speak just for the New Democrats or the folks down the way. I speak for the backbenchers who have been rubbing up against some of the limitations. What is sad about most of it and is most concerning is those who are not agitating against the Conservative government's control over its backbench and accepting it. I lament the most for those who are so comfortable reading the script from the Prime Minister's Office and repeating it like robots, feeling that is their work and whose expectations of what it is to be a member of Parliament are so diminished that they simply accept it, not those the media have called rebels who have stood up and stated that they want to have their own statement but the Prime Minister's Office has shut them down. They run under the blue banner, which is their choice.

I lament for those who seem so happy to get up and repeat the mindless dribble that is put to them by the Prime Minister's Office day after day. When they first ran for office, I wonder if they said that they wanted to be a member of Parliament to represent people and get to Parliament to speak with a strong voice of conviction on behalf of the people they represent and that in order to do they would read whatever was put in front of them by the Prime Minister's Office, written by a 24-year-old intern who types out some sort of nonsense and makes up policies that the NDP does not have, making personal attacks on a regular basis as a substitute for honest and sincere debate? Was that really their expectation?

I wish I had some video evidence from some of those early debates because I know that is not what those members ran on. I know their nomination meetings did not look like that, nor did any of the debates they attended during the campaign. That is not what they said. They said that they would speak on behalf of their constituents, fight for them and still raise their voice, even if that meant it was contrary to what their government suggested.

I am sure that is what my friends across the way said. They are very nice people. I know a lot of these folks, as we have spent some time together. I know some of their inner thoughts about the way Parliament ought to be, and some of them lament it. However, it is the ones who do not who worry me. They are the ones who so comfortably slip into that straitjacket day after day. Maybe they just get used to it, but they are able to rationalize that there is some larger agenda that is more important than their having an independent and free voice.

They can keep yelling and you can allow them to if you wish, Mr. Speaker, but the truth often hurts, and the truth of the matter is that with a majority government, this member and his colleagues have chosen to vote for closure more than any government in Canadian history. With a majority, the Conservative government has refused the evidence, has refused the science time and time again, and that government is bad government.

The Conservative government appointed senators, and I am sure some fundraising went on for some of my friends. Maybe Ms. Wallin, Mr. Duffy or Mr. Brazeau came by and raised a few dollars, shook a few hands and got a few votes for my friends. Maybe there is a little bit of a tarnish on my colleagues, which is why they are calling out and why they are worried. It is because their base hates this. They hate the idea of entitlement and of an insider's game that goes on in Ottawa all the time, and that friends of the Prime Minister's Office get some sort of special treatment.

Talking about special treatment, how about a $90,000 personal cheque just cut off the back and handed over to somebody who may have defrauded taxpayers? Where is the Reform Party now? Where are the original Conservative intentions now? They are gone, bit by bit, eroded piece by piece. That is where it has gone, and it has all been subjugated to some idea that there is a better and bigger cause, that this grand scheme they are involved in somehow makes all of it justifiable.

Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, what these guys would sound like if the roles were reversed? If it were a Liberal government with senators getting cheques from the Prime Minister's chief of staff or a New Democratic government acting the way the Conservatives act, could you imagine the hue and cry and the calls for resignations every second minute? They would be losing their minds.

Now the Conservatives play the victim, saying that these senators were put upon them, that they didn't know what they were doing, that it is terrible. They only have a majority, both here and there. The Prime Minister has appointed more senators than any Prime Minister in Canadian history. How many did he say he would appoint? None, but he had to appoint some, and then it had to be justified. These are small and slow slippages, and this motion is a continuation of that.

This motion says that Parliament matters less and that those Canadians who have grown cynical about the role of MPs are justified in their cynicism. We say that is wrong. How do we turn to the young voters coming up? How do we turn to people who come to us and say that they might want to run for office one day? How can we say that their voices will matter when the government moves motions like this time and time again, shutting down debate?

As my friend the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development said, the Conservatives do not want to shut down debate; they just want to control it. Is this is how one entices people into a life of politics? Is this how one encourages young people to vote? Do we say, “Welcome to Parliament, where we are going to control debate and shut it down time and time again”? This is the Conservatives' call to action.

It is not a call to action, but a call to inaction. It is a call to cynicism. It is calling to people, “Do not look over here; nothing is happening here in government. Go on with your lives and other things that are more important and distracting.” The government is counting on people to have an attention deficit rather than realize that the decisions we make here in Parliament every day affect Canadians in every way.

If members of Parliament cannot do their work, as this motion suggests, and hold the government to account, it is bad government. It is bad government when it cannot find $3 billion that may be under a mattress or in a banana stand or wherever it happens to be, and when senators rip off taxpayers with no consequence whatsoever. We think the RCMP might have a role to play here.

What would happen if any of the Canadians in our gallery today or watching on TV defrauded the Canadian government of $500? They would get charged. However, if it is a Conservative senator, what happens? Oh, they just recuse themselves from caucus. Wow. They still get paid, they still have all of their privileges, but they cannot go to caucus meetings on Wednesday mornings.

Mr. Speaker, do you think that maybe that punishment is a little severe? I mean, having to recuse oneself from a two-hour meeting on Wednesday morning for defrauding taxpayers—boy, that seems pretty harsh.

Why the double standard? We used to call that the culture of entitlement. I remember a colleague of mine in this place, Ed Broadbent, asking a former Liberal minister who became head of the mint and was claiming packets of gum and coffee on his receipts, “Are you entitled to your entitlements, sir?” This person took a moment of authenticity and said, “Yes, I am entitled to my entitlements.”

The Conservatives railed at the Liberal entitlement, the culture of entitlement, the Gomery inquiry and all those terrible things that went down.

History repeats itself if one is not a student of history, and it seems that the Conservative Party has not looked at the history of this place or of other parliaments.

The fact of the matter is that debate in and of itself is not a bad thing. The exchange of ideas is not in and of itself a bad thing. Being wrong from time to time is not of itself a bad thing; learning happens in those moments, and the government needs to learn, because I can read off the list of the bills it had so fundamentally wrong that it had to withdraw them. The Conservatives had to say that they got it so badly wrong because they listened to none of the amendments that they have to fix it now, at the very last minute, or wait until it gets to the Senate and let the unaccountable, unelected and under investigation senators deal with it. That is no form of democracy worth defending, and the Conservatives know it. They know it better than most.

I will move that the motion be amended by deleting all the words after “Fridays” and replacing them with the following: “(b) when oral questions are to be taken up pursuant”—

Points of Order

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize for interrupting my colleague just at the beginning of his speech on the justification for the motion that he has just presented to the House, but we have a point of order that we need to raise because I think it establishes a couple of important things for you, as Speaker, to determine before we get into the context and the particulars of this motion.

Specifically, I will be citing Standing Order 13, which says:

Whenever the Speaker is of the opinion that a motion offered to the House is contrary to the rules and privileges of Parliament, the Speaker shall apprise the House thereof immediately, before putting the question thereon, and quote the Standing Order or authority applicable to the case.

This is the standing order that we cite, because we have looked at the motion the government has presented here today with some notice given last week.

This motion goes against the Standing Orders and certainly the spirit of Parliament. The government is not allowed to break the rules of Parliament that protect the rights of the minority, the opposition and all members of the House of Commons who have to do their jobs for the people they represent. This motion is very clearly contrary to the existing Standing Orders.

I have some good examples to illustrate this. In my opinion, there is no urgency that would justify the government's heavy-handed tactics to prevent members from holding a reasonable debate on its agenda. I say “agenda”, but for a long time now it has been difficult to pin down what this government's agenda is exactly. This is nothing new.

The motion comes to us today at a difficult time, but just because the government held a brief caucus meeting and is facing numerous problems and a few scandals, it is not justified in violating the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. No one would accept those excuses. There is no historical basis for the government to use the Standing Orders in this way. That does not work.

There are a few important things we need to point out. One is that it behooves us to have some explanation of what this motion actually does. For those of us who do not intimately follow the rules and history of Parliament, it can be quite confusing not in terms of the intention of what the government has read but certainly in the implications. It needs some translation, not French to English or English to French, but translation as to what it actually means for the House of Commons. That is why we believe a point of order exists for this motion.

The motion essentially would immediately begin something that would ordinarily begin in a couple of weeks, which is for the House to sit until midnight to review legislation. This is somewhat ironic from a government that has a bad history with respect to moving legislation correctly through the process and allowing us to do our work, which is what we are here to do on behalf of Canadians.

I am not alone in seeing that the government has shown the intention of having some urgency with respect to 23 bills, 14 of which have not even been introduced since the last election. Suddenly there is great urgency, when in fact it is the government that has set the agenda. The urgency is so great that it has to fundamentally change the rules of how we conduct ourselves in this place in response to an urgency that did not exist until this moment.

One has to question the need. Why the panic? Why now, and why over these pieces of legislation? Are they crucial to Canada's economic well-being? Is it to restore the social safety net that the government has brutalized over the last number of years? What is the panic and what is the urgency?

Context sets everything in politics, and the context that the government exists under right now is quite telling. Every time I have had to stand in this place raising points of order and countering the closure and time allocation motions that the government uses, I am often stating and citing that this is a new low standard for Parliament. I have thought at times that there was not much more it could do to this place to further erode the confidence of Canadians or further erode the opportunity for members of Parliament to speak, yet it has again invented something new, and here we are today debating that motion.

That is why we believe that Standing Order 13 needs to be called. It is because it is very clear that when a motion is moved that is contrary to the rules and privileges of Parliament—which is what I would underline, as it is the important part—the Speaker must involve himself or herself in the debate and ask that the debate no longer proceed.

The privileges of members of Parliament are not the privileges that are being talked about by our friends down the hall to falsely claim money that did not exist or privileges of limo rides and trips around the world. The privileges of Parliament that speak constitutionally to the need for Parliament are that members of Parliament have the opportunity to scrutinized and debate government bills.

Just before the riding week, we saw the government introduce another time allocation on a bill that had received exactly 60 minutes of debate. Somehow the Conservatives felt that had exhausted the conversation on a bill they had sat on for years, and suddenly the panic was on. We are seeing this pattern again and again with a government that is facing more scandal.

I was looking through the news today. Every morning I start my day with the news and we consider what we should ask the government in question period. There are some days when the focus can be difficult and one may not be sure what the most important issue of the day is. However, the challenge for us today as the official opposition is that, as there are so many scandals on so many fronts, how do we address them all within the short time we have during question period or in debate on bills.

I listened to my friend for Langley, who has been somewhat in the news of late on his attempt to speak on issues he felt were important to his constituents. We saw him move a new private member's bill today. He withdrew the former bill, and now he is moving one again. The New Democrats will support the bill going to committee for study because we think there are some options and availability for us to look at the legislation and do our job.

Whether it is muzzling of their own MPs and the Conservatives' attempt to muzzle all MPs in the House of Commons, or using private members' bills to avoid the scrutiny that is applied to government legislation, and one important piece of that scrutiny is the charter defence of the legislation and so, in a sense, the Conservatives are using the back door to get government legislation through and move their agenda in another way, or the omnibus legislation, which has received so much controversy in Canada as the government has increasingly abused the use of omnibus legislation, or the F-35 fiasco, or the recent Auditor General's report, or the former parliamentary budget officer who was under much abuse and the new Parliamentary Budget Officer who has asked for the same things he did, or infamously, prorogation, time and time again the pattern is the same. The government has complete disdain for the House.

Whether it be the scandals in the Senate, or the China FIPA accord, or the recent problems with the Prime Minister's former chief of staff, or the employment insurance scandals, or the $3 billion missing, or the 300,000 jobs that have not been replaced, the government keeps trying to avoid proper scrutiny out of embarrassment. However, the House of Commons exists for one thing and one thing alone, which is to hold the government to account.

The government will make some claims that the urgency right now is because there has not been enough progress on legislation. Therefore, the Conservatives have to hit the panic button and would have the House sit until midnight, which has consequences beyond just being a late night, and I will get into those consequences in a moment because they support our notion that it infringes upon the entitlements of members of Parliament to debate legislation properly.

The Conservatives' record shows, and this is not speculation or conspiracy, that when they ram legislation through, they more often than not get it wrong. That is not just expensive for the process of law making, but it is expensive for Canadians. These things often end up in court costing millions and millions of dollars and with victims of their own making. The scandal that exists in the Senate is absolutely one of their own making. The Prime Minister can point the finger where he likes, but he appointed those senators.

Specific to the point of order I am raising, this motion would lower the amount of scrutiny paid to legislation. It would allow the government extended sittings, which are coming in the second week of June anyway, as the Standing Orders currently exist, to allow the government to do that, but the Conservatives want to move the clock up and have more legislation rammed through the House.

Also, as you would know, Mr. Speaker, the order of our day includes concurrence reports from committee, which allow the House to debate something that happened in committee which can sometimes be very critical, and many are moved from all sides. However, they would not get started until midnight under the Conservatives' new rules. Therefore, we would study and give scrutiny on what happened at committee from midnight until two or three o'clock in the morning.

As well, emergency debates would not start until midnight. Just recently we had a debate, Mr. Speaker, that your office agreed to allow happen, which was quite important to those implicated. We were talking about peace and war and Canada's role in the world. It was a critical emergency debate that certainly went into the night. However, the idea is that we would take emergency debates that the Speaker's office and members of Parliament felt were important and start them at midnight and somehow they would be of the same quality as those started at seven o'clock in the evening.

The scrutiny of legislation has become much less important than the government moving its agenda through, which is an infringement on our privilege as members of Parliament. The Conservatives' so-called urgency, their panic, is not a justification for overriding the privileges that members of Parliament hold dear.

As for progress, just recently we moved the nuclear terrorism bill through, Bill S-9.

We also had much debate but an improvement on Bill C-15, the military justice bill, to better serve our men and women in the forces. The original drafting was bad. The Conservatives wanted to force it forward and we resisted. My friend from St. John's worked hard and got an amendment through that would help those in the military who found themselves in front of a tribunal.

We have the divorce in civil marriages act, which has been sitting and sitting. It would allow people in same-sex marriages to file for and seek divorce. All we have offered to the government is one vote and one speaker each. The government refuses to bring the bill forward and I suspect it is because it would require a vote. It is a shame when a government resists the idea that a vote would be a good thing for members of Parliament to declare their intentions on, certainly something as important as civil liberties and rights for gay men and women.

I mentioned earlier why, in the infringement of this privilege, it causes great harm and distress not just to Parliament but to the country.

I asked my team to pull up the list of bills that were so badly written that they had to be either withdrawn or completely rewritten at committee and even in the Senate which, God knows, is a terrible strategy for any legislation.

There was the infamous or famous Bill C-30, the Internet snooping bill, which the Minister of Public Safety said something to the effect that either people were with the government or they were with child pornographers, which may be an example of the worst framing in Canadian political history. There has probably been worse, but that was pretty bad. The Conservatives had to kill the bill.

We have also seen Bill C-10, Bill C-31, Bill C-38 and Bill C-42, all of these bills were so badly written that oftentimes the government had to amend them after having voted for them. After saying they were perfect and ramming them through, invoking closure and shutting down debate, the Conservatives got to committee and heard from people who actually understood the issue and realized the law they had written would be illegal and would not work or fix the problem that was identified, and so they had to rewrite it. That is the point of Parliament. That is the point of the work we do.

We have also seen bills that have been challenged at great expense before the courts. Former Bill C-2, the tackling violent crime act, with huge sections of the government's main anti-crime agenda, was challenged and defeated in court.

Bill C-38, arbitrarily eliminating backlog for skilled workers, was challenged and defeated.

Bill C-7, Senate term limits, was after years just now deferred to the Supreme Court. It is called “kicking it down the road”.

Also, there are Bill C-6, Bill C-33 and others, and there are those that are being crafted and debated right now that are going to have serious problems.

The essential thrust of our intention is in identifying the rules that govern us, and specifically Standing Order 13. The government has time and again talked about accountability before the Canadian people and talked about doing things better than its predecessors in the Liberal Party, the government that became so arrogant and so unaccountable to Canadians that the Conservatives threw it out of office. History repeats itself if one does not learn true lessons from history.

As I mentioned, Standing Order 27(1) already exists, and it allows the government to do exactly what we are talking about, but not starting until the last 10 sitting days. The Conservatives have said that there is so much on their so-called agenda that they have to do this early, allowing for less scrutiny, allowing for emergency debates to start at midnight, allowing for concurrence debates that come from committees to start at midnight and go until two, three or four o'clock in the morning.

This is contrary to the work of parliamentarians. If the Conservatives are in such a rush, why do they not negotiate? Why do they not actually come to the table and do what parliamentarians have done throughout time, which is offer the to and fro of any proper negotiation between reasonable people?

We have moved legislation forward. My friend across the way was moving an important motion commemorating war heroes. We worked with that member and other members to ensure the bill, which came from the Senate, made it through speedy passage.

Parliament can work if the Conservatives let it work, but it cannot work if they keep abusing it. Canadians continue to lose faith and trust in the vigour of our work and the ability to hold government to account. We see it time and again, and I am sure, Mr. Speaker, you have as well, in talking to constituents who say that they are not sure what goes on here anymore, that it just seems like government will not answer questions, that everyday they ask sincere and thoughtful questions and the Conservatives do not answer. Bills get shut down with motions of closure.

Let us look at the current government's record.

Thirty-three times, the Conservatives have moved time allocation on legislation, an all-time high for any government in Canadian history. Through war and peace, through good and bad, no government has shut down debate in Parliaments more than the current one.

Ninety-nine point three per cent of all amendments moved by the opposition have been rejected by the government. Let us take a look at that stat for a moment. That suggests that virtually 100% of the time, the government has been perfectly right on the legislation it moves. All the testimony from witnesses and experts, comments from average Canadians, when moving amendments to the legislation before us, 99.3% of the time the government rejects it out of hand. It ends up in court. It ends up not doing what it was meant to do.

Ten Conservative MPs have never spoken to legislation at all. I will note one in particular. The Minister of Finance, who has not bothered to speak to his own bills, including the omnibus legislation, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, which caused so much controversy. He did not bother to stand and justify his actions. I find it deplorable and it is not just me, Canadians as well, increasingly so.

This is my final argument. We cannot allow this abuse to continue. This pattern has consequences, not just for what happens here today or tomorrow, but in the days, weeks, months and years to come and the Parliaments to come. If we keep allowing for and not standing up in opposition to bad ideas and draconian measures, we in a sense condone them.

We say that Parliament should become less irrelevant. We think that is wrong. We think what the government is doing is fundamentally wrong. It is not right and left; it is right and wrong. When the government is wrong in its treatment and abuse of Canada's Parliament, that affects all Canadians, whatever their political persuasion. We built this place out of bricks and mortar to do one thing: to allow the voice of Canadians to be represented, to speak on behalf of those who did not have a voice and to hold the government of the day to account. Lord knows the government needs that more than anything. It needs a little adult supervision from time to time to take some of those suggestions and put a little, as we say, water in its wine.

It has the majority. This is the irony of what the government is doing. In moving more time allocation than any government in history and shutting down debate more than any government in history and using what it is today, it speaks to weakness not strength. The Conservatives have the numbers to move legislation through if they saw fit, but they do not. They move legislation, they say it is an agenda and they hold up a raft of bills.

Criminal Code

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the debate on Bill C-394 and the issue of gang recruitment. I had the privilege of sitting in on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights while it considered this legislation, and I will expand on some of the issues discussed in those meetings.

I speak, I believe, for all members of the Liberal Party when I say that I want to deter youths from joining gangs. Indeed, if this legislation served any preventive end, we would gladly endorse it. However, not only does Bill C-394 fail to address the fundamental reasons that youths join gangs—the root causes, if I dare say that—but it also would employ a mandatory minimum penalty, which the Liberal Party opposes in principle.

I raise the root causes of youth gang involvement as an issue, because the government acknowledges the problems but it fails to provide solutions either in Bill C-394 or elsewhere. For example, the website of the Department of Public Safety lists risk factors relative to youth gang involvement and includes the following as major risks: limited attachment to the community, over-reliance on anti-social peers, poor parental supervision, alcohol and drug abuse, poor educational or employment potential and a need for recognition and belonging, yet Bill C-394 does not address any of these. In fact, the government is missing in action on things like youth unemployment and access to education, things it could take proactive measures to correct.

With regard to violence among aboriginals, public safety's website explains:

The increase in gang violence and crime in some Aboriginal communities has been attributed in part to an increasing youth population, inadequate housing, drug and alcohol abuse, a high unemployment rate, lack of education, poverty, poor parenting skills, the loss of culture, language and identity and a sense of exclusion.

As Idle No More and similar movements demonstrate, the government is out of touch with the needs of aboriginal communities. If it took those needs seriously, we could begin the process of reconciliation. We could address the social problems plaguing first nations. We could give aboriginal youth access to education and opportunity. Instead, by ignoring these problems, we further the cycle of despair that makes gang life attractive to youth.

It is interesting to have this discussion in light of the Conservatives' attack ad on the member for Papineau. They criticize him for being a camp counsellor, a rafting instructor and a drama teacher. If we want kids to feel included in their communities, to have a sense of belonging and purpose, we ought to have more camp counsellors, more rafting instructors, more teachers seeking to make a difference in the life of a child, not attacking these sorts of things as useless pursuits unbecoming of a leader. However, the government buries its head in the sand and refuses to acknowledge that preventing crime involves addressing tough issues beyond the Criminal Code.

I can assure the House that youths are not joining gangs because they believe their activities are lawful, nor do gangs recruit because they believe it is legal to do so. This is the problem with the Conservative approach to crime. Everything is a matter for the criminal law, and every incident provides a pretext to legislate.

As was said by the member for Toronto Centre, “when the only tool we have in our toolbox is a sledgehammer, everything starts to look like a rock”. For Conservatives, criminal law is all about punishment. By adding new offences and penalties and, in some cases, duplicating existing offences and penalties, the Conservatives attempt to regulate on the back end, after the crimes have been committed. This ignores the fact that there are other elements to criminal justice such as prevention, rehabilitation of the offender and reintegration into society, let alone addressing the underlying causes of crime.

As I mentioned, I may be accused of perhaps committing sociology on this. Let there be no mistake. Bill C-394 deals with gang recruitment only on the back end once it has occurred. I submit that by then, it is way too late.

As I have indicated, this issue is already addressed by the Criminal Code. Former justice minister Anne McLellan said in this place, upon the introduction of what is currently in the Criminal Code that we are seeking to amend today, the following:

We know that successful recruitment enhances the threat posed to society by criminal organizations. It allows them to grow and to more effectively achieve their harmful criminal objectives. Those who act as recruiters for criminal organizations contribute to these ends both when they recruit for specific crimes and when they recruit simply to expand the organization's human capital.

In other words, we knew when introducing what was already in the code that recruitment was an issue, is an issue, and we put in place offence language that captured it. Thus, while the regime in the code at present may not use the word “recruitment”, the intention is clear in the record and there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that prosecutions for recruitment are not happening because of some legislative loophole.

Indeed, as it is proposed, the bill will actually add to the problem by putting in a mandatory minimum penalty. International studies corroborate what even Justice Canada has found, that mandatory minimums do not deter crime. Among other things, mandatory minimums remove prosecutorial and judicial discretion. They lead to prison overcrowding. They lead to more crimes in prison and more crimes outside of prison. They contribute to a clogging of the courts, resulting in accused persons being set free. They are, as I indicated in my question to the member earlier, constitutionally suspect. Mandatory minimums have prejudicial consequences, particularly on aboriginal peoples and minority communities.

I know colleagues in the NDP have argued that the mandatory minimum in this bill is light and, therefore, acceptable, in their view. We take a different approach, which is that there is no need for adding something that could lead, in the right fact situation, to this legislation being overturned. This just is not smart legislating.

However, if I were to address the Conservatives' inability to legislate intelligently, I would certainly run out of time. In fact, we might be here all night. Instead, I will focus on one shortcoming relevant here, which is the failure to vet bills for constitutionality. Much has been made of that in the House and, in particular, by my colleague, the member for Mount Royal, of the obligation of the Minister of Justice, under the Department of Justice Act, to review government legislation for compliance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Bill of Rights.

The minister, time and time again, has said that his bills are constitutional, yet time and time again the provisions are struck down and the government is called to account for its failure to comply with the supreme law of the land. Not only does legislating in such a reckless way risk the statute being struck, it also clogs up the courts with challenges that could have been avoided. It also costs the taxpayers, who bear the burden of defending the government. For a government that claims accountability, why is it not accountable to the charter and its statutory obligations? For a government that prides itself on fiscal restraint, why is it wasting taxpayer money?

One may wonder why I am raising this issue when the obligation for a charter check is only on government bills, not on private members' bills like Bill C-394. The answer is that the government has been increasingly using private members' bills to legislate through the back door. If this bill was so important, why was it not included in the omnibus crime bill, Bill C-10? Why has the minister not introduced it on his own accord? Surely, if it were so necessary, the minister could have made this change to a government bill and it would have passed through the House much faster. Indeed, by using the private member bill route, the government minimizes House debate and circumvents the required charter review.

We must address the cycle of poverty and homelessness that affects too many children in the country. Where is the government on that? We must say to ourselves that if children are to be the priority, maybe we need more camp councillors, rafting instructors and drama teachers. What they do not need is a government that says it cares, throws a Band-Aid on the problem that will not hold and then pats itself on the back for having done anything at all. Bill C-394 would be just that, and that is why the Liberal Party will vote no on this bill.

Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to join my colleagues who have spoken so eloquently for equality for those individuals in the military who serve Canadians. This particular legislation purports to update our military criminal justice system, but in fact has some significant gaps.

It is always good to review our laws to make sure that they reflect present realities and that they are equitable, appropriate and consistent with our Constitution. The military criminal justice system is no exception. This legislation has been worked on for a long time but the Liberal Party of Canada believes it is not where it needs to be in order to get our support. The members for Winnipeg North, Halifax West and York West made that case in quite a specific and compelling way. We are being asked to support something that still has so many flaws; that is politics.

Clearly, many aspects of the military justice system remain inexplicably unchanged or give unnecessary powers in this bill. For instance, the bill enshrines in law a list of military offences that will carry a criminal record in the future, which is not necessary in many cases.

Given that the pardon system was recently revoked and that summary trials are what they are—with no record and no means of meaningful appeal—the members of the Armed Forces will find themselves with criminal records and unable to find employment upon release.

Clearly there are some flaws in the bill. The one I want to focus on in particular is the issue of human rights and equality. It really boils down to what kind of society we want to have in Canada, and I think Canadians are clear. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada is widely supported right across the country and is a very proud part of our framework for protecting rights but also for enshrining responsibilities in our country, to make sure those who are vulnerable have the law on their side to protect their right to equality.

It has been shameful and disappointing that the Conservative Party of Canada has chosen to minimize the importance of this very important part of our Constitution, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, essentially dismissing and not celebrating its great anniversaries. Last year was the 30th anniversary, and there was not much of a murmur from the government, but hundreds of millions of dollars went into celebrating the anniversary of a war.

That goes down to what kind of society we want to have. Do we want to have one that protects rights and freedoms, or do we want to have one that is all about punishment? We see changes to immigration. We see in Bill C-10, that grab bag of bad public policy, that the Conservative government is much more focused on punishment than on equality. That is reflected in this bill as well.

In his testimony before committee, retired Colonel Michel Drapeau noted:

...someone accused before a summary trial has no right to appeal either the verdict or the sentence. This is despite the fact that the verdict and sentence are imposed without any regard to the minimum standards of procedural rights in criminal proceedings, such as the right to counsel, the presence of rules of evidence, and the right to appeal.

In Canada, these rights do not exist in summary trials, not even for a decorated veteran, yet a Canadian charged with a summary conviction offence in civilian court... enjoys all of these rights. So does someone appearing in a small claims court or in a traffic court.

He goes on to say:

I find it very odd that those who put their lives at risk to protect the rights of Canadians are themselves deprived of some of these charter rights when facing a quasi-criminal process with the possibility of loss of liberty through detention in a military barracks.

Clear questions of inequality have arisen here. There are problems with the bill that are fundamental to the kind of society we want to have, not just a few tweaks that we could have put into the bill and that the government has not done. This does go down to fundamentally what kind of society we want to have. This kind of inequality is being unfortunately cemented into other bills and other laws brought forward by the Conservative government.

I want to refer to some comments made by my colleague from Mount Royal recently on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

According to Justice Létourneau, soldiers are citizens and they should enjoy the same constitutional rights guaranteed by the charter as any other citizen.

This is what he said:

“We as a society have forgotten, with harsh consequences for the members of the armed forces, that a soldier is before all a Canadian citizen, a Canadian citizen in uniform.”

In other words, they should be able to count on all of the rights and protections that citizens enjoy in our country.

Referring to our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the member for Mount Royal raised a question of privilege in the House this past March and expressed concern that the government is failing to live up to its own statutory obligation, which is expressed in section 4.1 of the Department of Justice Act.

In law, this is requiring that the government, that the Minister of Justice, examine each and every government bill introduced in the House to ensure it is consistent with the charter. That would seem like a simple step to respect our fundamental constitutional obligations as parliamentarians and as government in law-making and public policy-making.

How often has the government actually done that? How often has the government checked and done a review to ensure that its bills introduced in the House are consistent with the charter and receive the constitutional seal of approval? How often has the government reported any inconsistencies, or otherwise, to the House?

Does anybody have an answer to that question?

Response to the Supreme Court of Canada Decision in R. v. Tse Act

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rose in the House yesterday to address the question of privilege raised by my colleague from Winnipeg Centre.

I cannot speak for everyone, but I think something is clear. We have recently heard a lot about Bill C-30 and other bills, including certain aspects of Bill C-10. Time will tell if I am right or not. Some legislation that is before the courts has already been overturned. This legislation did not all originate with the current government. I am laying it on thick. I am even laying it on the heads of our Liberal friends.

Even the member for Mount Royal said that, when he became Minister of Justice, he had some concerns about how this test was conducted.

Certainly, my trust level is at about 1%. Every time I read a bill now, I do not just read the content to find out if it will fulfill its purpose. Now, I am practically obliged to put on my hat as a lawyer specializing in constitutional law and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In fact, I must do the work that I did not think I had to do, because I had the minister's assurance. When a bill is introduced in the House, if it is not flagged as problematic, we assume it is okay. We can no longer make that assumption. Something has tarnished this assumption, and what we are going through with Bill C-30 proves it every day. This should worry all members of the House, in all parties.

Motions in Amendment

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to address Bill C-55.

I did not work directly on this bill as a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights because I unfortunately left that committee, although I fortunately have the great privilege of sitting on the Standing Committee on Finance. However, I have excellent memories of my time on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, despite the problems the members the New Democratic Party are facing on that committee.

In reference to the question I put to my colleague who previously spoke with regard to the rule of law and basic protections, we have moved a motion in the context of Bill C-55. That is why the member for Mount Royal spoke on the subject. He shared the same concerns when he was Minister of Justice. This is an excellent example of the reconciliation of imperatives. We can reconcile certain imperatives even though we belong to different parties. I remember some good exchanges I had with the member for Mount Royal over the fact that he approved of a number of measures we had taken.

Like all of my NDP colleagues, I support Bill C-55. However, I am going to be quite harsh. Objectively, Bill C-55 was a pleasant surprise. I think the government was compelled to respond to the Supreme Court’s decision. Yet, even today, as reported in The Globe and Mail, the justice minister continues to reiterate his full support for Bill C-10, the omnibus bill that unfortunately was passed and will create many problems.

Portions of certain sections of the Criminal Code and other acts that were amended by Bill C-10 could eventually be invalidated. Moreover, this bill has created an excessive amount of work for Parliament. This situation could have been avoided if the government had been open and much more rigorous that it generally is. I would remind the House that Bill C-55 is the exception.

Of course, reinventing the wheel or showing too much originality was not possible, because the decision was very clear and compelled the government to find solutions that meshed perfectly with the Supreme Court’s observations.

This brings us back to our duty as elected representatives and as members of these important and fundamental committees known as the standing committees of the House of Commons.

We have a responsibility to stay informed and adapt to today’s realities on an ongoing basis, all the while complying with immutable principles. We have a responsibility when it comes to passing legislation.

In this regard, I hope that Bill C-55 will serve as a model for the government and will prompt it to be more disciplined and especially to show more respect for all of our country’s institutions. The government must start by showing respect for the Canadian justice system, for Canada’s Parliament, a fundamental institution, and more especially for the House of Commons.

Understandably, there can be differences of opinion, and the government may not always agree with the views expressed by members of the opposition parties. However, the government has a responsibility to respect these views and the fact that people have different opinions. It also has a duty to respect the principle of accountability, which unfortunately is too easily flouted.

In the case of the committee that I had the privilege to serve on last fall, too often the government denied the obvious and rejected the opinions of experts whose positions were quite clear. It is truly a shame. After all, while it may be possible to some extent to defend ideological stances, these have absolutely no place when it comes to governing and establishing conditions for a just and fair society.

The government has made that mistake over and over again.

I repeat, Bill C-55 is a pleasant surprise. In the wake of what my hon. colleague from Gatineau said, I will come back to some important points related to section 184.4. They may seem like minor details, but these changes are important. They do not affect the essence of section 184.4.

The bill defines the term “police officer”, which applies to section 184.4. The bill then continues:

A police officer may intercept, by means of any electro-magnetic, acoustic, mechanical or other device, a private communication if the police officer has reasonable grounds to believe that (a) the urgency of the situation is such that an authorization could not, with reasonable diligence, be obtained under any other provision of this Part; (b) the interception is immediately necessary to prevent an offence that would cause serious harm to any person or to property; and (c) either the originator of the private communication or the person intended by the originator to receive it is the person who would commit the offence that is likely to cause the harm or is the victim, or intended victim, of the harm.

My colleague from Gatineau accurately explained the special nature of section 184.4. Let us not forget that sections 186 and 188 cover virtually every case that would justify a warrant to breach a person's privacy. There are, of course, cases in which the imminence or urgency of the situation, when it is a matter of minutes or hours, would permit someone in authority under the Criminal Code to act quickly without permission to provide genuine assistance and intervene to prevent mischief or a crime.

This is perfectly reasonable. The only problem is with the consequences of such an action. The amendments made to the various parts of section 195 are particularly important. We strongly support them simply because they provide a form of transparency and openness that allows for self-discipline and generally avoids any abuse of police power. First of all, no one wants abuse of this kind from the police. Police officers who possess this extraordinary power ought not to be exposed to situations of potential abuse by themselves or others against anyone here in Canada because it could lead to serious breaches and the public's loss of confidence in police departments.

We believe that section 195 is a step in the right direction in terms of accountability, and that it would set out clear guidelines for the application of section 184.4. In my view, this constitutes significant progress. It is a fundamental and necessary improvement. It would deal with the problems inherent in R. v. Tse that were before the Supreme Court.

I would like to end by saying that it was a pleasure to be able to comment on Bill C-55. I think, and especially I hope, that it will be passed relatively quickly. It is nevertheless deplorable that the government took so long to allow us to review it in this House.

Nuclear Terrorism Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to Bill S-9, now before the House. It is called an act to amend the Criminal Code, but it is very directly related to the short title, which is nuclear terrorism act. It is an important piece of legislation on which my colleague, and dare I say friend, from Mount Royal, has said there is a consensus and probably has been a consensus for six or seven years in this country.

Therefore, it is quite a surprise that it has not been brought forward. As he pointed out, there are many instances where there can be a consensus on matters that could come before the House and be dealt with expeditiously, and some are, but there ought to be more of that. If we are going to be combative about certain things, I think that is the nature of politics. However, where there is a consensus, there can be a great deal more co-operation.

An ironic example of that was last year when the justice bill, Bill C-10, was before the House. It went to committee. The member for Mount Royal moved six or seven amendments at committee. They were defeated at committee. The government had to bring them into the House, but they were ruled out of order because they could have been done at committee. The Conservatives had to use the other place to deal with the passage of those amendments. It was quite embarrassing, I should think, that they showed their nature in terms of dealing with legislation and dealing with the opposition. However, that is one example of many.

Mr. Speaker, I was supposed to say at the beginning of my speech that I am sharing my time with the hon. member for Beaches—East York.

The substance of the bill is something that we support. The bill has a number of objectives. It amends the Criminal Code in adding four new offences.The bill was introduced in the Senate a year ago. It could have been brought here earlier than this, but, once again, that is a sign of not moving as quickly as one would have thought on something as important as this.

The bill adds four new offences to the Criminal Code, having to do with possession, use or disposing of nuclear radioactive material with the intention to cause death, serious bodily harm or substantial damage to property or the environment. That is an act against a nuclear facility or any of its operations. One has to do with using or altering a radioactive material or a nuclear or radioactive device with the intent to compel a person or government organization to do or refrain from doing any act being guilty of an indictable offence. That is a classic example of terrorism. Then, there's committing an indictable offence under a federal law for the purpose of obtaining nuclear radioactive material or a radioactive device or to control a facility, or to threaten to commit any of those other three offences.

These are significant crimes and would be given significant penalties in the Criminal Code as a result of the bill. It would be life imprisonment for the first three, as a maximum penalty, and 14 years as a maximum penalty for the threat to do any of these three things.

It is an important part of following through on two conventions that were agreed upon internationally: the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism and the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. Both of these conventions were an important part of a regime to attempt to control nuclear materials throughout the world.

As we were debating the bill this morning, I recalled growing up in an era where there was a real threat of nuclear war and nuclear annihilation. I grew up in the fifties and sixties, and in 1962 we all know there was a Cuban missile crisis.

I distinctly remember hearing air raid sirens being tested occasionally to remind us what they sounded like, and we had instructions. Some people were building fallout shelters in their back gardens in the event of a nuclear war. That was the reality. In schools, children were being told that if they heard the air raid sirens, they should get under their desks or under the stairs in their homes, and so forth. That was the way we thought about the world when we were children.

Happily, that is not something that children think about today, or have to think about, because the world is not in a state in which that is a likelihood or even a remote possibility at this point.

However, we do see proliferation. States such as Pakistan and India, with certain historic difficulties and disagreements that have not been resolved, are becoming nuclear powers. North Korea is attempting to engage in the development of nuclear weapons, as is Iran, as the member from Mount Royal has pointed out. Therefore, there are significant threats.

It is important to note that among the signatories to this convention are some important players, including the United States of America, China, India, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. Obviously we would like to see more. However, it is a framework that can be used to control international terrorism or attempts to use these materials for nefarious purposes.

More can and should be done. The area of prevention is extremely important. Canada and the countries who are signatories can play a role in assisting countries to ensure the protection of nuclear materials, because there are countries that do not necessarily have the technical ability to control those activities within their own borders.

Importantly, the 2005 amendments to the treaties made to deal with interstate transport and usage of these materials extended the scope to also cover domestic use, storage and transport and nuclear facilities used for peaceful purposes.

Historically, Canada ratified one of these conventions in 1980. Canada only signed the agreement, which does not make us a party until it has actually been ratified. This step is one of ratification of both these treaties.

What is also interesting as well is that this piece of legislation is called Bill S-9 for a reason. It was started in what we are required to call “the other place”. I think we are allowed to say “senators” and we are allowed to talk about people by name over there, but what are we doing? Are we now the chamber of sober second thought? Have we reversed the constitutional roles? Do we have legislation coming out of the Senate? Is that where we start?

The Senate has looked at this legislation and has fixed it by adding one of the measures that was in the convention but not in the bill. I am sure it could have been fixed here easily before it was sent over there, but the government wants to legitimize the other place somehow, and even though senators are unelected, unaccountable and unapologetic, as we have found out in the last long while, the government seems to rely on the Senate as some sort of an institution where it can start legislation and have it come over here. Are we here to ratify what the Senate has done? Is that the expectation?

I think we support the bill, but it should have been brought here five or six years ago, when the government came into power.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill S-9, the nuclear terrorism act, which would amend the Criminal Code to implement Canada's obligations pursuant to the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, which I will refer to as the “suppression convention”, and the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, which I will refer to as the “amendment”.

The suppression convention is a multilateral treaty, as has been described. It is intended to harmonize the criminalization of acts related to nuclear terrorism across all state parties. Regrettably, Canada has still not ratified this convention, though we originally signed it in 2005. I appreciate that we are finally getting to the point where we can now move to ratify it, but I regret the delay in this regard.

The Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, which Canada signed in 1980, established legally binding undertakings on state parties in the area of the physical protection of nuclear material and also established measures relating to the prevention, detection and punishment of related criminal offences.

In 2005, Canada, along with 87 other state parties to the original convention, convened to amend and strengthen its provisions. At this conference, the amendment was adopted by consensus, and it will soon begin to enter into force, though it is yet to be ratified by a sufficient number of signatories, including Canada. We need to move forward in that regard.

Both the suppression convention and the amendment are fundamental components of the international community's approach to the prevention and detection of acts related to nuclear terrorism. Consequently, Bill S-9 would constitute necessary implementing legislation for the suppression convention and the amendment, thereby strengthening this international regime. The bill has been thoroughly debated in the House, studied extensively at committee and thoroughly debated in the other chamber. It represents a positive step forward in this regard.

Moreover, the safeguarding of nuclear material and facilities exists within the domestic implementing legislation, and it must never be forgotten that it exists within the context of the overall threat of expanding nuclear proliferation, as represented by the proliferation activities with respect to Iran and North Korea, and the ultimate imperative, therefore, of achieving nuclear disarmament, for which Canada must be at the forefront.

Because members in this place are by now quite familiar with this bill, and reference was made to it by the parliamentary secretary, as well, in his remarks, I will briefly describe its contents and significance.

Indeed, the prevention of nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation will require an internationally coordinated response. Canada must continue to take a leadership role in this regard.

Following preliminary discussion of the contents of the bill, I will then address what has just been raised in this House as the particular issue posed by the proliferation threat of Iran, which also has to been seen in the context of its overall, four-fold threat. It was the subject of an exchange between a previous speaker and the parliamentary secretary. I will address that issue, as well.

Let me very quickly move us to the contents of the bill.

First, Bill S-9 would make it an indictable offence to make a device or to possess, use, transfer, export, import, alter or dispose of nuclear material or device with the intent to cause death, serious bodily harm or substantial damage to property or the environment. It would also criminalize the commission of an act against a nuclear facility or an act that causes serious interference or disruption of a nuclear facility's operation.

Second, Bill S-9 would make it an indictable offence to do any of these acts with the intent to compel a person, government or international organization to do or refrain from doing something.

Third, Bill S-9 would make it a separate indictable offence to commit any indictable offence with the intent to obtain nuclear or radioactive material or to obtain access to a nuclear facility.

All three of the offences are punishable by a maximum of life in prison.

Fourth, Bill S-9 would make it an indictable offence to threaten to commit any of the aforementioned offences, which is punishable by a maximum of 14 years in prison.

Moreover, the bill would classify these new offences as terrorist activities, pursuant to section 83.01 of the Criminal Code, such that the commission of these offences would trigger other provisions of the Criminal Code relating, for example, to electronic surveillance and DNA collection.

It will also implement extraterritorial jurisdiction in relation to these new offences, such that Canadian courts will have jurisdiction over individuals prosecuted for the violation of these offences, even where the particular offence did not occur within Canadian territory. These are relevant steps, as they represent an internationally coordinated approach to the problem of nuclear terrorism.

Indeed, based on the debate that has occurred already, both in this House and in the other chamber, the bill appears to enjoy widespread support in both chambers.

The members in this place all recognize the importance of criminal law enforcement and the international harmonization of the criminalization of acts related to nuclear terrorism. It is precisely for this reason that the absence of any action on this matter for the last eight years, since the conventions were signed in 2005, is particularly regrettable.

In February, just one month ago, my colleague from St. Paul's had the opportunity to ask the Minister of Justice about the reasons for this delay when he testified at the justice and human rights committee. Indeed, the minister's explanation warrants referencing here. It is a lesson about the government's generally inverted approach to the setting of legislative priorities.

My colleague from St. Paul's asked the minister a very direct question to this effect: Since everybody seems to be in favour of this legislation, why did it take so long for the government to introduce the necessary domestic implementing legislation that is now finally being done eight years later?

Indeed, the minister answered that he was dissuaded from pursuing the bill because of what he described as the threat of filibuster in this House in matters relating to the criminal justice agenda. In particular, characterizing the debate on these bills as being a filibuster by the opposition, the minister stated at the justice committee:

...it was very difficult...to try to get any legislation through in the criminal justice area. ...dozens of bills...introduced into the House...opposed by one of the three parties, there was a desire many times by the opposition parties to talk about them incessantly, to go on and on....

The minister's explanation is itself objectionable insofar as it appears to imply that there is something wrong with the opposition parties seeking to address legislation before them, particularly important legislation in the matter of the criminal justice agenda, and particularly when that agenda of more crime and punishment emerges as a priority in the government's legislative agenda as a whole.

It is both wrong and, indeed in this instance, diversionary to equate thorough discussion and debate on the government's criminal law agenda to filibustering and use that as a reason that he did not introduce domestic implementing legislation regarding Bill S-9. I submit that, on both of these counts, the government has it upside down, as I said.

Number one, in the matter of the government's legislative agenda, members of this House have a responsibility to address this legislation, to vet this legislation. It is part of our responsibility of public oversight, as we sought to do whether it was to get costs of Bill C-10 or address an omnibus bill. In fact we could not even filibuster, because in most of these pieces of legislation, we had time allocation introduced in any case.

Leaving that aside, what relationship does the debate on the government's crime and punishment agenda have to do with a delay of eight years before we move to introduce domestic implementing legislation? I suggest that this cannot and should not have accounted for the delay in the introduction of this legislation.

Moving on to the issue of the nuclear threat and now moving to the question of the Iranian situation, which I said I would take up and is a part of the questions and answers, let me just say what we find with regard to what we are witnessing in Khamenei's Iran today—and I use that term because I want to distinguish it from the people and public of Iran, who are otherwise the object of massive domestic repression.

What we are finding in Khamenei's, Iran is really a fourfold threat, but a fourfold threat that is interrelated.

There is the nuclear threat; there is the genocidal incitement threat; there is the international terrorism threat, where the Iranian footprints are replete and evidence has come forward with respect to some 22 terrorist attacks in 2012 alone, spanning five continents with the Iranian Hezbollah connection in that regard; and finally, there is the massive domestic repression, which frankly will be leveraged if Iran should become a nuclear power. There is an interrelationship with all of these matters, because should Iran become a nuclear power, this will enhance the international terrorist threat. It will also leverage its domestic repression activity, let alone the problem of the incitement threat that underpins nuclear proliferation as a whole.

Let me move to the particular role Canada could play with regard to the Iranian fourfold threat. I am speaking about the P5-plus-1 negotiations that have just concluded in Almaty but will be re-engaged again. I want to commend the government's position in this regard, as stated most recently by the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

I want to put forth in particular a number of requirements that should underpin the negotiating position of the P5-plus-1 and, because of our chairperson role at the International Atomic Energy Agency as well as our linkage in that regard to the P5-plus-1 negotiations, how we can help frame the negotiations and combat what our own Minister of Foreign Affairs has referred to as the Iranian position of deception, denial and delay and using negotiations as a basis for delay and the period in between the negotiations not only as a pretext for delaying what has to be done, but where the acceleration of the nuclear weaponization program actually takes place in the context of the delay between negotiations, sometimes within the negotiation period itself.

Since I last spoke to Bill S-9 in the House, there has been, as the International Atomic Energy Agency reported, an acceleration of the nuclear capabilities in the Iran program in the installation of advanced centrifuges. All of this has been set out in the IAEA report, so I will not go further in that regard, but will only say that the intensification of the nuclear capability with respect to Iran is bringing us closer to Iran's becoming a nuclear power, with less capacity on our part to not only prevent it but even to detect it happening.

Let me close by making reference to what particular approach we should have to the P5-plus-1 negotiations.

First, Iran must, as a threshold requirement, verifiably suspend its uranium enrichment program, therefore allowing the international community to combat the three Ds of delay, denial and deception, which as I said, Iran has used to accelerate its nuclear weaponization program rather than, in fact, move toward disarmament.

Second, Iran must ship its supply of enriched uranium, and there is more enriched uranium at a higher level, out of the country, where it can be reprocessed and then made available to Iran under appropriate inspection and monitoring for use in civil nuclear programs. We have no objection to the Iranian civil nuclear program. Iran has the right like any other state with respect to civil nuclear program, medical isotopes use of uranium and the like. The objection we have here is to the weaponization program.

Third, Iran must therefore verifiably close and dismantle its nuclear enrichment plant at Fordow, embedded in a mountain near Qom, which Iranians initially denied even existed but where a zone of impenetrability will soon develop unless that facility is in fact dismantled. Iran has delayed any inspection of those facilities, let alone its dismantling as a whole.

Fourth, Iran must suspend its heavy water production facilities at Arak, because it is sometimes forgotten that an essential component for producing plutonium involved in nuclear programs could also be water, which is a nuclear component that North Korea uses for its own nuclear weapons. Simply put, the path to nuclear weaponization need not be travelled by uranium enrichment alone. The suspension of uranium enrichment, however necessary, will not alone ensure that Iran is verifiably abandoning its nuclear weaponization program.

Fifth, Iran must allow, as it is not, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors immediate and unfettered access to any suspected nuclear site, as is required, as Iran is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Iran is thereby bound by its obligations not only not to pursue nuclear weapons but also to open its nuclear sites and installations.

Sixth, Iranian authorities need to grant the IAEA access to the parts and military complex near Tehran, where it has been reported that Iran has conducted high explosives testing, and I am referring to the Parchin complex, possibly in conjunction with the development of a nuclear weapon.

Finally, Iran needs to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency—and again I mention Canada's particular role with respect to IAEA, our chairmanship now—to install devices on centrifuges to monitor Iran’s uranium enrichment levels.

These are the kinds of threshold approaches that Canada can assist in framing and thereby assist in combating proliferation and help to underpin the P5-plus-1 negotiations, which are about to be re-engaged next month.

I also want to mention the question of the incitement threat, because the state-sanctioned incitement to genocide is inextricably bound up with the nuclear proliferation program. In fact, an all-party committee of the foreign affairs committee in the House determined already in 2010, and I am really citing from that committee's report, that Iran has already committed the crime of incitement to genocide prohibited under the genocide convention. That all-party committee thereby recommended that state parties to the genocide convention have an obligation—not a policy option, but an obligation—to undertake the mandated legal remedies under the genocide convention to bring Iran to account.

Regrettably, as I speak in the chamber, not one state party to the genocide convention—not our country, not the United States, not any of the European countries—has undertaken any of these mandated legal remedies, which I will briefly summarize in my final remarks. Again, I remind everyone that this comes out of an all-party report.

First, Canada could be among the countries that could seek to simply refer the matter of this state-sanctioned incitement to genocide, the standing prohibition of the genocide convention I mentioned, to the UN Security Council for deliberation and accountability. It is a modest initiative. Certainly we should be able to do that.

Second, Canada could initiate tomorrow an interstate complaint before the International Court of Justice against Iran, which is also a state party to the genocide convention, for its violations of its own undertakings.

Third, Canada could ask the UN Security Council to refer the matter of the state-sanctioned incitement to genocide to the International Criminal Court for prospective investigation and prosecution of Iranian leaders engaged in the violation of this treaty.

Finally, I want to mention the human rights situation. We need to sanction the Iranian leaders not only with respect to the nuclear weaponization program, but we need to sanction Iranian leaders engaged in the massive domestic repression and hold them to account, as well as holding to account those involved in the proliferation of international terrorism.

These four threats, the nuclear threat, the genocidal incitement threat, the human rights violations and the international terrorism threat, are all finding expression in Khamenei's Iran. We need a comprehensive approach to the fourfold threat. The government has identified that fourfold threat. In fact, it referenced the fourfold threat as the basis for closing the Iranian embassy here and ours in Iran. I would like to suggest that the government undertake these particular juridical remedies in the implementation of our international responsibilities.

Department of Justice

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

Mr. Speaker, I completely support what we have just heard from the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre. What we have been forced to see is bill after bill, and those of us who have practised at all in the law who are watching recent court proceedings have a grand sense of misgiving that the legislation that has come before us has not been adequately scrutinized.

I am not going to put myself in a position that the hon. government House leader wants us to of making any personal aspersions toward any individual. However, I actually attempted to raise this as a point of order. I certainly appreciate that the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre made it a question of personal privilege. I also feel that my personal privileges have been violated by having legislation brought to this place that clearly has not taken into account the charter implications.

I raised this on March 7, 2012 on the subject of the omnibus crime bill, so-called Bill C-10, because we just had seen the Ontario Superior Court rule on the matter of R. v. Smikle, and it was quite clear that the legislation before us might be, in fact, non-compliant with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is an offence to all of our roles, individually, severally and as a body, to have legislation brought before us forced through by majority vote, which is a disservice to the people of Canada and a disservice to our traditions of law and respect for the rule of law by having legislation here that has not been thoroughly reviewed to ensure its constitutionality.

I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for this opportunity to support the question of privilege that has been raised and to subscribe myself to it. My personal privileges have been violated.

Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-54, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the National Defence Act (mental disorder).

I will first provide a little background. The bill proposes three major amendments. The proposed amendments are intended to make public safety the priority, to create a finding that a person who is not criminally responsible is a high-risk accused, and to enhance the involvement of victims.

At present, it is often forgotten that section 672.54 of the Criminal Code provides that the court or review boards shall take into consideration “the need to protect the public from dangerous persons, the mental condition of the accused, the reintegration of the accused into society and the other needs of the accused”.

As some of my colleagues have already said, we will support the bill at second reading, so that it can be examined in greater depth in committee. That said, measures already exist for making public safety the priority. That is something we consider to be very important, and we support it. We want to hear what the experts have to tell us about that.

The legislative amendments to the mental disorder regime in the Criminal Code that are proposed in the Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act would clearly make public safety the paramount concern in the courts and in the decision-making processes of review boards in relation to persons declared NCR—not criminally responsible—or unfit to stand trial.

I will explain that a little more. At present, at the trial of a person with a mental disorder, there are three possible verdicts: absolute discharge, if the person is not a significant threat to public safety; conditional discharge, and that is what we will be discussing here; and detention in custody in a hospital, which is not changing. So there are really two things. First, a person may be charged. However, if the person has a relatively severe disorder and is unable to stand trial immediately, they will not stand trial right away. The person will therefore have permission not to stand trial. They will be treated and will stand trial later. Here we are talking about someone who could be a threat to public safety. What is done then is that the person is offered treatment. The bill ensures that while receiving treatment, the person will not be dangerous to public safety.

My colleague from Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques told us about a problem: the fact that the timing of the Conservative government’s introduction of the bill seems a little suspicious. That is unfortunate, because it is a very good bill. We will allow the bill to proceed, but we are a little afraid that the Conservatives would like to score political points with this bill. They announced it on the day Quebec learned that Dr. Turcotte might be released. That trial received extensive media coverage. The Conservatives immediately came and told us they would be putting forward a bill to protect the public. So they came in on their big horses with their swords at the ready, to say they were protecting the public. That is something we hear a lot from the Conservative side: that they are the best when it comes to protecting the public. That said, this is actually what the bill does, by strengthening the protection of the public, but one does wonder why the Conservatives introduced it at this time. Why did they make the announcement at a point when the bill was still only at the draft stage or did not even exist yet?

My second concern about the bill is that the Conservatives are attempting to download costs to the provinces. In an interview with Global News, Carole Saindon, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, said the provinces would have to foot the bill for this new policy. This seems to be increasingly the case with Conservative bills.

The federal government passes laws and downloads the costs of implementing them to the provincial governments. It did so, for example, when it increased the age of eligibility for OAS. It did so again with Bill C-10 on minimum sentences. This bill we have before us, which is a good bill, will also have to be paid for by the provinces. What is more, we do not know if the provinces and territories were consulted. We do not know what will happen if a province does not have the necessary funds to fully implement the bill.

There is an organization in Ontario that deals with mentally ill people who get in trouble with the law. It is currently working at 104% capacity. The bill is a step in the right direction, but we do not know if we will have the means to implement it.

My second point concerns the creation of the high-risk NCR accused designation. This bill would amend the Criminal Code by creating a process to designate accused persons as high-risk NCR. They could be designated NCR because of serious personal injury offences committed against other persons and because there is a substantial likelihood of further violence that would endanger the public. The designation might also apply in cases in which the acts were of such a brutal nature as to indicate a risk of grave harm to the public. High-risk NCR accused would be ineligible for a conditional or absolute discharge. The designation could only be revoked by the court following a recommendation of the review board. This designation would apply only to NCR accused, not to persons found unfit to stand trial.

Persons found unfit to stand trial are persons who are unable to undergo a trial but who were not unfit at the time of the crime.

The third amendment I discussed earlier concerns enhancing victims' involvement. I would like to emphasize this point. Victims often appear to be forgotten by the Conservative Party. This is what troubles me. The government always tables law and order legislation, but it often forgets the victims. I used to work in a prison. I was a teacher at a detention centre. Social reintegration is key to ensuring that things go well in society. I understand that there must be laws and punishment—no one is opposed to that—but we are lacking a reintegration aspect.

As a number of my colleagues have said, we had trouble obtaining data from the government on this subject. Some members had to place questions on the order paper to get answers. We wanted to get some of the case law and statistics gathered by the government on persons found not criminally responsible. We wanted to know how much time each person found not criminally responsible spent in treatment before being discharged. We wanted to know exactly how many people this legislation would affect.

I think it is appropriate to talk about enhancing victims' involvement. Victims are often disregarded in Conservative legislation. This bill would ensure that victims are notified, upon request, when the accused is discharged. The bill provides for non-communications orders between the accused and the victim. It will also ensure that the safety of victims is considered when decisions are made about an accused person. However, I find this last point somewhat vague. This information does not tell me how that would be done or how victims' safety would be guaranteed.

To sum up, I think this is a bill that will enhance an existing act. I hope the Conservative Party is not playing a game so that it can make a lot of political hay out of this issue.

This is not the point of the exercise. The objective is to come up with a better law that respects human rights.

I hope that we will have the bill before us in committee long enough to study it carefully, that witnesses from all sides of the House will appear and that we will go through the whole process in order to pass this bill.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to discuss Bill C-54, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the National Defence Act (mental disorder) at second reading.

I am very pleased to be the first member to speak for the official opposition after our justice critic, who is also the member for Gatineau. She gave an excellent speech. I would like to talk about the aspects that I think are the most important in relation to the position we will be taking as the official opposition. Before going any further, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Lachine.

Basically, Bill C-54 presents three major amendments. The first is that the safety of the public will be the paramount consideration in the decision-making process relating to the accused or those found not criminally responsible for an offence. Second, it creates a scheme for finding that certain persons who have been found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder are high-risk accused. Finally, the bill enhances the involvement of victims. The victim will be informed when the person found not criminally responsible for a crime against the victim is released. There may also be a disposition that communications between the not criminally responsible accused and the victim be prohibited. The bill also provides that the victim’s safety must be considered in decisions made with regard to the release of the person found not criminally responsible for a crime.

When we talk about making public safety a priority, we should point out something that is often ignored: the issue of public safety is already taken into account in decisions made either by a judge or by review boards. This includes cases involving mental disorders. This can be found in Criminal Code section 672.54, which provides that the courts or the review boards must consider the need to protect the public from dangerous persons. The mental condition of the accused, the reintegration of the accused into society and the other needs of the accused are also discussed. Therefore, the Criminal Code already has provisions that oblige the court and the review boards to consider the issue of public safety in the decisions they are making.

With regard to findings that certain accused persons are not criminally responsible but that they are high risk, a different category is proposed. Anyone who has been accused and found not criminally responsible may currently receive one of three verdicts from the court.

The first is an absolute discharge. Here again, the Criminal Code clearly states that an absolute discharge is given if the person is not considered to be a threat to public safety. This newly created category does not affect the matter of absolute discharge. There is also the possibility of a conditional discharge that includes a number of conditions. If a person found not criminally responsible is considered high risk, he cannot be given a conditional discharge. The third possibility, which already existed for not criminally responsible people who might be a risk or a threat, is detention in custody in a hospital.

So, ultimately, this new category of not criminally responsible but high-risk accused affects only one of three possible verdicts. Even before, a high-risk person could not get an absolute discharge and could be kept in custody in a hospital. Now, that person will no longer have the possibility of getting a conditional discharge.

The third question is an issue to which we are sensitive, and that is to increase victim participation in the process. Of course, in many cases, the mental disorder review board—I am familiar with the one in Quebec—must really think about the impact on the victim. We are concerned about this issue because there have been a few cases in Quebec, including one in particular to which the hon. member for Gatineau referred, which is that of Dr. Turcotte.

Before discussing this case, I want to mention a concern that we have, not necessarily regarding the bill and its content but, rather, the Conservative government's approach to these issues and, more specifically, this legislation.

There is really a desire to play political games for populist motives. I am concerned about the government's approach to this bill. We have known for a number of months that the government wanted to propose a bill to deal with accused persons found not criminally responsible. We knew that because the government had already announced its intention, last fall if I am not mistaken.

When it was announced that the Quebec mental disorder review board would conditionally discharge Dr. Turcotte, who was being detained at Institut-Philippe-Pinel, it generated debates, particularly in Quebec. Immediately, on the same day, the government held a press conference to announce once again that it would soon introduce this bill, which was still not ready or drafted.

Therefore, I am very concerned about this government's desire to make political hay with very important issues that should be dealt with in a responsible and reasoned fashion, with a cool head and without using very sensitive situations that stir emotions.

I say this as a person, as a parent, as a father of a four-year-old boy and a one-year-old girl who finds the crime committed by Dr. Turcotte extremely disturbing and traumatic. In that regard, I am thinking about my own children.

However, we are here to represent society and our constituencies. Despite the horror of the actions that are sometimes taken and highly publicized, we must deal with these issues in a reasoned way and with a cool head.

We have another problem, which is the issue of political gains. If this bill is passed—and it probably will, given the Conservative majority—the government could go everywhere in Canada, and particularly in Quebec with, among others, a well-known senator who often speaks for the government on these issues. That senator would meet with victims of acts committed by people found not criminally responsible and tell them that he listened to them and solved their problem. That is not really the perspective we should have on this issue. I am asking the government to be very careful in the way it deals with this issue, whether here in the House or in committee.

We do want to work and help victims be more involved in the process. They must see that the system meets their expectations and needs. However, we want to achieve that result in a balanced fashion that also meets the imperatives of our system, which is a system of law and order, a system based on the rule of law.

The hon. member for Gatineau, who is the justice critic for the official opposition, also mentioned the government's usual approach, which is of great concern to us and which we witnessed, particularly with Bill C-10. That was the omnibus crime bill that imposed a number of measures without consultation with the provinces and territories. Moreover, the government did not provide any impact studies on the ramifications of this bill, including the need for statistics.

For example, in this specific case, what are the recidivism rates? What are the numbers for crime and recidivism by accused found not criminally responsible? We do not have answers. The question was put to the Minister of Justice, but we did not get an answer. These are important issues that will have to be dealt with, and we want answers from the government on this sensitive matter.

In conclusion, I also asked the Minister of Justice if the provinces had been consulted to see if they were prepared to bear the costs. Again, I did not get an answer. There was no prior consultation on the issue of minimum sentences in Bill C-10. This bill will generate additional costs, not only for the system, but also for the institutions that must treat these people.

Let us not forget that, in Ontario, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health is currently operating at 104% of its capacity. If Ontario is not able to provide adequate resources, this bill will unfortunately fail to address a significant part of the problem.

I look forward to questions from my colleagues.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would agree. The whole approach of this legislation regrettably fits a pattern whereby one addresses the issue through the lens of punishment rather than through the lens of prevention. Since we are dealing, in particular, with the issue of the mentally disordered, this becomes crucial in terms of approaches with regard to prevention.

Again, I regret that when I submitted amendments on Bill C-10 that would have addressed the approach to the mentally ill through treatment rather than incarceration and through prevention rather than punishment, they were rejected by the government, although they were designed for the sole purpose of simply improving that which the government was ostensibly concerned with in Bill C-10, and that was the promotion and protection of public safety.

Through prevention we would, in fact, end up protecting public safety, ensuring that there are fewer victims, better treating offenders with respect to their reintegration into society, and treating those, particularly in the NCR regime, who are not regarded as offenders and have not been deemed criminally responsible with the appropriate approach.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in my speech, we agree with the intent of the legislation. There are likely some important discussions to be had in committee.

I would like to ask the Minister of Justice about administration. The proposed measure will increase costs for the provinces, which are responsible for administering justice. Judging by what we hear from the justice department, the provinces will not be compensated.

Can the minister confirm that the provinces will not receive compensation for the additional costs that will be imposed on them for the administration of justice? Have there been negotiations and discussions with the provinces about that?

We were deeply troubled by that issue in the case of other bills, such as Bill C-10. I would like to know if that is the case for this bill.

Safer Witnesses Act

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her support of this bill.

We have heard a couple of times, and again in the member's speech, that resources are going to be an important factor in dealing with this program. However, there is one thing that has been missed in all the presentations by members of the opposition. That is that appropriate sanctioning and sentencing is also a key element. While our government has moved forward in Bill C-10 to put in meaningful sentences and sanctions for people who commit crimes, the faster removal of foreign criminals act and other like legislation, those are the kinds of things, partnered with resources, that encourage witnesses to come out.

I know, as a front-line police officer dealing with victims and witnesses, that if I am a witness, and I do not think there is a substantial likelihood of the person getting any meaningful conviction, I am not likely to move forward as a witness to testify. It is not solely the resources that need to be put forward; it is meaningful sentences. Our government is doing that.

Instead of continually pounding on the government to throw more money at it, I wonder if the member will support future bills our government puts forward to make sure that this important element of protecting witnesses and victims is covered and that we actually complete the circle by providing meaningful, appropriate sentences for people committing crimes, .

Criminal Code

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to address Bill C-444, the private member's bill put forward by the member for Red Deer, which seeks to increase penalties for offenders convicted of personating a peace officer for the purpose of facilitating the commission of another offence. I will be supporting the bill going to committee, and I thank the member for Red Deer for once again bringing this important issue to the attention of the House and to me personally in this regard.

The member for Red Deer has been engaged in this issue for some time, and his concern is as genuine as it is warranted. I share his concern and his outrage in this matter with respect to offenders who disguise themselves as police officers to facilitate their crimes, thereby undermining public trust in the police and other authorities. It is important that Parliament address this problem in as principled and effective way as possible.

Regrettably, while the principle underlying the private member's bill is important, the bill before us is unlikely to have the significant effect that the member himself seeks or that the House would seek. However laudable its intent, Bill C-444 emerges as yet another variation of a Conservative crime bill that attempts to deal with crime, as the member for Red Deer himself acknowledged, at the sentencing stage after the crime has been committed, after the investigation has been carried out and after the offender has been arrested, tried and convicted. In other words, after the very fact that it seeks to prevent and regrettably after it is already too late.

However to its credit, and this bears mention, it does not seek to attach mandatory minimums in the matter of sentencing. It does not seek to eliminate or circumscribe judicial discretion.

It has a laudable underlying objective. My concern is whether this particular legislation would seek the laudable objective that the member for Red Deer himself has in mind.

Accordingly, while I am prepared to send the bill to committee for further study, I expect that such further study may be less effectual than it might otherwise be. Therefore, I will use the remainder of my time to set forth certain considerations in respect of this contention. First, I will examine why the bill is unlikely to increase the length of prison terms for people convicted of personating a peace officer. Second, I will discuss why, even if it did lead to longer prison terms, it would not reduce the occurrence of this crime, which is the member's principal objective, with which I concur. Finally, I will explore other measures that might prove to be more effective and that will help underpin the very principle that underlines the bill.

As I said, Bill C-444 is not likely to have a major impact on the severity of sentences. To begin with, it should be noted that in cases of personation of a peace officer, Canada currently allows for sentences more severe than in many other jurisdictions. In 2009 the House unanimously passed Bill S-4, which established a five-year maximum prison term for personation as opposed to U.S. states like New York or Michigan, where the maximum is four years, or the United Kingdom, which allows only for a sentence of six months.

Canada's sentencing regime already takes this crime very seriously, and there is no reason to think that judges are overlooking important factors such as the purpose of the personation when handing down sentences. For example, in 2009 and 2010 a Winnipeg man dressed up as a police officer in order to gain access to crime scenes, without committing any further offence. He was sentenced to four and a half months. By contrast, in the case of the man who posed as an officer in the member's riding of Red Deer in order to kidnap and abuse a teenaged girl, the judge handed down a total sentence of 18 years, including the maximum sentence for personation permitted at the time.

Simply put, it appears that judges have been making appropriate use of their discretion in such cases. The additional guidance offered by Bill C-444 is therefore unlikely to result in penalties for personation that are more severe.

However, even assuming the bill were to result in longer sentences for personation of a peace officer for the purpose of committing another offence, it is unlikely that offenders would spend more time in jail as a consequence. While judges may generally issue concurrent or consecutive sentences as they see fit, sentences for offences that are part of the same criminal act tend to be served concurrently, and it is difficult to conceive of a scenario in which a judge would issue a longer sentence for personation than for the offence that the personation was intended to facilitate.

In other words, if an offender receives an 18-year sentence for aggravated sexual assault, it does not much matter to him or her whether his or her simultaneous offence for personation is a year or two or five.

This bill would therefore be unlikely to achieve the member's legitimate objective of having people who personate peace officers spend more time behind bars.

Of course, I appreciate that the member's ultimate objective is not longer prison terms for people who commit this crime, but, rather, fewer personations of peace officers in the first place and that this is his principal objective, which I share.

This brings me to my second point, which is that the deterrent effect of longer prison terms has been repeatedly shown to be minimal. Therefore, even if a judge were to be moved by this legislation to issue a longer sentence for personation than he or she would otherwise have done and even in the unusual circumstance that such a sentence were served consecutive to the sentence for the related offence, there would still be no reason to believe that the occurrence of the crime of personation in Canada would be reduced.

As was pointed out by Michael Jackson of the Canadian Bar Association at the justice committee's hearing on Bill C-10:

The evidence is overwhelming...in every jurisdiction where it's been studied, that putting more people in prison for longer periods of time has no salutary effect upon public safety...

In fact, a research summary on the Public Safety Department's own website, which compiles 50 studies involving over 300,000 offenders, finds that, “To argue for expanding the use of imprisonment in order to deter criminal behaviour is without empirical support”.

That is a conclusion that has been reached time and again by studies in Canada and jurisdictions around the world.

For example, in 2010 a man used a police officer's costume to commit a home invasion and robbery in Toronto. Do we truly believe that he spent the night before consulting the Criminal Code, poring over the jurisprudence and parsing the sentencing guidelines and had the guidelines been different, would have chosen not to proceed or to forego the outfit? Or in the case of the 2000 tragic kidnapping and assault in Red Deer, the member's riding, is it reasonable to assume that an offender who was prepared to risk the substantial penalties for kidnapping and aggravating sexual assault would have been dissuaded by the prospect of a slightly longer prison term for personating a peace officer. I suspect not.

Increasing the length of sentences is manifestly a less effective way of combatting all crimes, personation included.

This brings me to the final part of my remarks, in which I will propose some alternative methods for minimizing the occurrence of personation of peace officers to begin with, which is the private member's bill's objective.

First, we should examine how offenders acquire authentic looking police attire and accessories. As the member for Red Deer noted in debate on the previous version of his bill, a wide array of police equipment is available online and at security supply stores, including strobe lighting for vehicles and uniforms that can be made to look very real with very little alteration. It is certainly worth considering whether there are steps that might be taken to limit the availability of such items.

Second, the government could partner with police in a public awareness campaign to inform Canadians that all police officers carry badges and photo ID and that citizens themselves have the right to request to see an officer's identification and to call 9-1-1 for verification if they are truly suspicious. By empowering Canadians in this way, as well as by reducing the availability of authentic looking police equipment, we would significantly limit the capacity of offenders to pass as officers of the peace.

In conclusion, as I said at the outset, I support and applaud the member for Red Deer for consistently focusing the attention of the House on this very important issue and I will support Bill C-444 at second reading. At the very least, the bill would serve as a statement by Parliament of the seriousness with which we regard the crime of personation of a peace officer. However, we should seek to do more than make what is nonetheless a very important statement.

As I have outlined, there may be concrete steps that we could take that would have an impact on the occurrence of the crime itself. I trust that we will have the opportunity to discuss such steps at committee and that the government will take a seriously impactful action to combat the personation of peace officers in the very near future as represented in the private member's bill of the member for Red Deer.

Motions in amendment

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the minister referenced a number of abuses of the immigration system, how the deportation process has been abused and the need, with which we concur, to improve the immigration system to ensure that serious criminals should not enjoy sanctuary in Canada and to provide necessary security for Canadians. All these are matters in which the House can concur.

However, Bill C-43 purports to address serious foreign criminality, which in fact is the aim of the parent bill, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. However, some of the provisions of Bill C-43 continue to remain troubling and some, in fact, may well contravene the charter. My colleague from Winnipeg North has suggested amendments, which I trust will enjoy support from all in this place.

My remarks this morning will first address some of the specific concerns with Bill C-43, including charter concerns. Second, and not unrelated, I will raise the question of why no report of charter inconsistency has yet been tabled by the Minister of Justice, pursuant to the exigencies of section 4.1 of the Department of Justice Act.

Before turning to these considerations there are two troubling situations from last year that warrant mention at the outset. In both cases a young permanent Canadian resident was deported to a war-torn, impoverished country. As these two young men were alone and unable to speak the local language, they were susceptible to the many criminal terrorist organizations in that country, Somalia, that prey on vulnerable youth. Indeed, in one of the cases the United Nations Human Rights Committee found that Canada jeopardized the right to life of the young man in question and was therefore in violation of its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

These two young permanent residents of Canada, Saeed Jama and Jama Warsame, though they had been here since childhood, had indeed committed offences, mostly drug related, and as such deportation proceedings were initiated against them following their convictions. That is as it should be. When non-citizens commit crimes in Canada deportation is a reasonable option. However, I offer the case of Mr. Jama and Mr. Warsame to illustrate the perspective nuances and complicating factors that might arise in deportation cases and to underline the importance of due process and the right to appeal deportation orders, not only in matters of the criminal processes the minister has rightly mentioned and referenced but notably on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

As we seek, quite rightly, to streamline our immigration and deportation processes it is critical to ensure that humanitarian and compassionate considerations, as well as charter rights to security of the person and fundamentals of due process are not marginalized in the name of short-run expediency. Regrettably, the effect of the bill before us does precisely that. First, it reduces the threshold at which a conviction results in automatic deportation with no possibility of appeal from a sentence of two years to a sentence of six months.

The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has defended this change by arguing that judges have been issuing sentences of two years less a day in order to circumvent the statute. In fact, judges issue such sentences because two years is the dividing line between federal and provincial incarceration. Canadian citizens regularly receive sentences of two years less a day, thus demonstrating that immigration status is patently not the reason for such sentencing.

Furthermore, if the government is so concerned about sentences of two years less a day, why is it no less concerned about sentences of six months less a day? The standard should not be any arbitrary number of months but rather the qualitative seriousness of the offence. This brings me to the point that has been noted in prior debate on the bill. Many of the offences that result in six month sentences in no way justify automatic deportation with no possibility of appeal.

Bill C-43 would establish a situation where a person could be brought here as an infant, be raised here, be as much a Canadian as the rest of us and then be automatically expelled without due process for making a recording in a movie theatre or, since the coming into force of Bill C-10, for possessing six marijuana plants. At a time when the government is intent on ushering in new and longer mandatory minimum sentences with respect to new offences, it can hardly be said about the Canadian justice system that there is necessarily a correlation between the length of a sentence and the seriousness, let alone the serious criminality, of the offence.

In particular, if the Conservatives wish to evince a genuine desire to rid Canada of serious criminals to ensure that these criminals would be brought to justice pursuant to our international obligations in this regard as well, why do they not commit adequate resources to the war crimes program to prosecute war criminals in Canada, as I have repeatedly urged them to do? Indeed, the remedy of deporting a war criminal may result either in a serious war criminal not being held accountable for justice violations at all, or in the reverse, being sent to a country where there is a substantial risk of torture or other cruel or degrading punishment. In either case, what we need at this point is an enhanced war crimes program so that we can deal with the serious war criminals in this country for whom the deportation remedy is not a remedy at all.

A second problem with the legislation is that it would allow the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism to deny temporary resident status for up to three years on the basis, as has been mentioned, of undefined public policy considerations. Even given the requirement that was added at committee, that the government produce an annual report listing and justifying such denials, this change would still carve out a sphere of unaccountable ministerial discretion and could lead to the further politicization of our immigration system. As a matter of fundamental fairness, people affected by government decisions should be informed of the reasons leading up to those decisions and allowed to present evidence in their favour. Bill C-43 would deny them that right. The legislation would also prohibit the minister from considering humanitarian and compassionate concerns in certain cases, which could also violate a number of Canada's international obligations.

In fact, several elements of the bill may contravene not only international agreements but our own Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The automatic deportation of individuals to situations of torture, terror and grave danger raises serious concerns with respect to section 7, the right to life, liberty and security of the person. As well, by denying the right to appeal the deportation orders and by empowering the minister to deny entry on arguably arbitrary and ill-defined grounds, the bill may violate the principles of fundamental justice.

These inconsistencies with the charter brush up against section 4.1 of the Department of Justice Act. Here, the Minister of Justice must, as stated in the act:

—examine...every Bill introduced in or presented to the House of Commons by a minister of the Crown, in order to ascertain whether any of the provisions thereof are inconsistent with the purposes and provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Minister shall report any such inconsistency to the House of Commons at the first convenient opportunity.

Yet, the Minister of Justice has tabled no such report on any bill or on this bill. This is not the first time that he has failed to do so when the government has introduced legislation that poses constitutional concerns. When I raised this issue at the justice committee hearings on Bill C-45 as well as in the House, the minister avoided the question. Indeed, a justice department employee is suing the government because he claims that he was suspended for raising this issue in court. I am not suggesting that the minister is deliberately violating the Department of Justice Act, but I await the minister's explanation of why he has apparently not been acting in accordance with it with respect to a number of bills, particularly if one takes the omnibus set of bills such as Bill C-10 with arguably constitutionally suspect provisions, as well as the one before us today in the so-called faster removal of foreign criminals act.

The title of the legislation is sufficiently disconcerting that I cannot close without addressing it. Many of these so-called foreign criminals referred to in Bill C-43 are long-time Canadian residents. To put that title on the bill is to pejoratively and prejudicially mischaracterize them at the outset and does harm to all our constituents.

Technical Tax Amendments Act, 2012

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon to speak to Bill C-48, the technical tax amendments act, 2012.

Bill C-48 is 955 pages in length with 428 amendments. I am going to use my time in the House today to examine how we got to this point, and where we are now examining such a mammoth bill, looking at the recent history of technical tax bills, including the Auditor General's report from November 2009 on income tax legislation, as well as the study by the public accounts committee on that report.

I intend to talk about the need for Parliament to regularly adopt technical tax legislation in a timely manner, as well as the overwhelming need to thoroughly examine and, yes, simplify the Income Tax Act.

Finally, I would like to use my remaining time to briefly discuss Bill C-48 itself.

With respect to the recent history of technical tax bills, if Bill C-48 receives royal assent, it will be the first technical tax bill to do so since Bill C-22, the Income Tax Amendments Act, 2000, which received royal assent in June 2001, almost 12 years ago.

With such a massive bill before us now, it begs the question as to why Parliament has not approved any technical tax bills since 2001.

The previous Liberal government did publish technical amendments for public comment on three separate occasions: December 2002, February 2004, and July 2005. Those amendments were introduced in Parliament in 2006 as Bill C-33, the Income Tax Amendments Act, 2006. Bill C-33 received third reading and made it to the other house, but it died on the order paper when the Prime Minister asked the Governor General to prorogue Parliament in 2007. Later in 2007 an identical version of this legislation was tabled as Bill C-10. Once again the legislation made it to the other house and died on the order paper when the Prime Minister again asked the Governor General to prorogue Parliament in 2008.

Since then there has been nothing. For four years the Conservatives failed to introduce a technical tax bill in Parliament. Clearing up the growing backlog of technical tax amendments was nowhere to be found on the Conservatives' list of priorities.

Next week the Conservatives will pass the seventh year mark in government, but they have yet to pass a single technical tax bill. It is a failure of public administration. It is not good public administration that it has taken this long, particularly when at the time the Conservative government was elected in 2006 there was legislation ready to be introduced and twice prorogation killed legislative attempts to deal with this.

I want to speak to the Auditor General's report. In the fall of 2009, Auditor General Sheila Fraser reported on the government's inability to take action on this. She emphasized the need for the government to introduce technical tax legislation in order to bring clarity to the Income Tax Act. When she released her report, she said:

The Income Tax Act is one of the longest and most complex pieces of federal legislation. Taxpayers have the right to expect clear guidance on how to interpret the Act so they can determine how much income tax they owe.

That makes sense. In her report she argued that by failing to provide clarity through technical tax amendments, the government was increasing the costs for everyone involved. The report states:

For taxpayers, the negative effects of uncertainty may include

--higher costs of obtaining professional advice to comply with tax law; less efficiency in doing business transactions;

--inability of publicly traded corporations to use proposed tax changes in their financial reporting, because they have not been “substantively enacted”;

--greater cynicism about the fairness of the tax system; and increased willingness to use aggressive tax plans.

For the tax administrator, the negative effects may include

--higher costs for providing additional guidance and interpretations to taxpayers and tax auditors; and

--higher administrative costs for reprocessing the tax returns after an outstanding legislative amendment is enacted and for obtaining waivers to extend the limitation period for reassessment.

The result may be uncertainty in the amount of tax revenues to be collected by the government and possible loss of tax revenues.

What the Auditor General is saying is that this is not some esoteric, arcane discussion as to whether or not it is a failure of the government to provide in a timely manner these technical tax amendments to the House and to pass them. It does result in higher transaction costs for companies. It results in confusion for Canadian taxpayers, not knowing how these will affect them, and higher costs from professionals like accountants and auditors in dealing with these.

The Auditor General's report said that the result may be uncertainty in the amount of tax revenues to be collected by the government and the possible loss of tax revenues. It actually affects the amount of revenue that the government is collecting or can collect.

The Auditor General went on to warn parliamentarians that we must not wait to pass a technical tax bill, that we must clear the backlog immediately and then regularly adopt technical tax amendments. In her report she said:

If proposed technical changes are not tabled regularly, the volume of amendments becomes difficult for taxpayers, tax practitioners, and parliamentarians to absorb when they are grouped into a large package.

Finally, she pleaded with the Department of Finance to fix the situation.

Auditor General Sheila Fraser said:

The Department of Finance needs to do more to bring the urgency of the problem to the attention of the government and Parliament. It ought to review the way it manages this process.

Beyond the Auditor General's report, we also have a report from the public accounts committee. In early 2010, the public accounts committee studied the Auditor General's report. The committee was then chaired by my former colleague from Charlottetown, the hon. Sean Murphy. The committee shared her concerns about the waste and mismanagement that resulted from the Conservatives doing nothing to introduce these technical amendments. Quite naturally, the committee wanted to know when the problem would be fixed, so it called the deputy minister of finance and the commissioner of the national revenue agency before the committee. These officials assured committee members that the problem was under control and the solution was forthcoming. The committee's April, 2010 report stated:

Officials from the Department told the Committee that they are hoping to have a technical bill ready for the government's review within the next couple of months. They are also considering releasing smaller packages of technical amendments on a regular basis.... Although, officials told the Committee that they would not be in a position to propose annual technical bills until the end of 2011.

If senior officials were telling a parliamentary committee back in 2010 that a technical tax bill would be ready in a few months, we have to ask ourselves as parliamentarians what happened. What we really need, broadly, is tax reform and tax simplification. The fact is that over a long period of time, not just under this government, the Income Tax Act has grown too large and unwieldy. However, it is notable that under this Conservative government, the Income Tax Act has actually grown by almost one-sixth in size. We have arrived at the point where accountants—the very profession that bases its livelihood on interpreting on behalf of clients the complexity of tax laws—are now regularly lobbying Parliament and the finance committee for tax simplification. Even the accountants are saying the tax code is too complex.

The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants stated in its most recent prebudget submission:

Reducing complexity in Canada's domestic tax regime is crucial to easing the regulatory burden placed on Canadian businesses and attracting investment. Simplifying our tax system would make the country more competitive and allow both individuals and businesses to prosper.

According to the Global Competitiveness Report 2010-2011, issued by the World Economic Forum, tax regulations are among the top four most problematic factors cited by business executives for doing business in Canada. Many aspects of Canada's tax system have become too complex. We recommend that the government establish a national consultation process to examine tax simplification measures.

That quote was from the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants' pre-budget submission to the House of Commons finance committee.

The most recent pre-budget submission from the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada includes the following recommendations:

Modernize Canada's tax system—make it simple, transparent and more efficient

Introduce and pass a technical tax bill to deal with unlegislated tax proposals

Implement a “sunset provision” to prevent further legislative backlogs

Appoint an independent panel of experts to recommend steps to reform Canada's tax system.

It is important to realize that we have not had a comprehensive review of Canada's tax laws and our tax code since the Royal Commission on Taxation in the 1960s. The Carter commission published its report in 1966, and the changes were implemented in 1972. That is more than 40 years ago. If we were asked to sum up in one word what has changed in the Canadian and global economy since 1972, it would be “everything”.

The reality is that there have been so many fundamental structural changes to the global and Canadian economies since 1972 that we desperately need a thorough study, review and perhaps royal commission to deal with the tax changes we need as a country, with the objective of building a fairer and, in terms of economic growth, a potentially more competitive capacity to attract investment, as well as a simpler tax system.

In the House we have talked about the issue of income inequality. That has to be a consideration when we are talking about tax reform.

We have talked about issues of competitiveness and what kinds of taxes render an economy less competitive. We have to look at those. We have to study to what extent we can use the tax system to incentivize greater investment in research development and commercialization of technologies, and potentially clean technologies to green our production of energy in Canada, including cleaner conventional energy and the oil sands, as well as what kinds of tax incentives we can offer to make it more attractive to invest in and develop those technologies as we move forward.

When the Carter commission came in, among other things, it got rid of inheritance tax in Canada and replaced it with a capital gains tax. That was a significant change at the time. Today, we may look at that differently and consider some of the advice being given by tax experts both within Canada and globally.

Clearly, not to have had any thorough study of our tax system since 1972 indicates how woefully out of date our current tax code is. The reality is that the tax code under the Conservative government has since increased by one-sixth of its size. It is more complicated and less fair because of what some people refer to as the boutique tax credits the government has brought in for children in hockey and studying music, family caregivers and volunteer firefighters. We all believe it is laudable to support volunteer firefighters, family caregivers and families putting their children in activities, and we support that.

However, first, the reality is that it does complicate the tax code. Second, the fact that these tax credits are non-refundable means that the lowest income Canadian families do not qualify, those people who need the help the most, whether with respect to the family caregiver tax credit or to families with children in activities.

Not only have the Conservatives complicated our tax system, but by making these tax credits non-refundable, they have actually rendered our tax system less fair and contributed to income inequality and income disparity by not helping the people who need the help the most. Those are low-income families who, perversely, do not qualify for these tax credits.

I would like to speak about the Canada Revenue Agency. When the tax code grows in size and complexity, so do the requests to CRA for clarification. Governments have the power to compel residents to pay taxes, and that is a huge power, but with that power comes the responsibility to provide taxpayers with clarity around the law and to recognize that not every Canadian taxpayer can—in fact the vast majority cannot—really afford professional help to deal with these complexities.

One of the ways the government can provide clarity around tax law is with advanced income tax rulings. That is an area the Auditor General examined in her 2009 report. It is also an area where the CRA is failing and the record is getting worse. The CRA has set a target for itself to issue advanced income tax rulings within 60 days, and in 2004 it met this target. Three years ago the average ruling took the CRA 98 days. Two years ago it was 102 days. Last year it was 106 days, close to double the target CRA set for itself. These delays lead to increased costs both for the taxpayer and for the government.

For good public servants in the CRA who work in places like Charlottetown, P.E.I., those cuts to CRA are actually, perversely, going to lead to the government ultimately contributing not only to ambiguity and confusion around interpretation of these tax changes but also to actually collecting less money.

One of the things we discovered in our study around offshore accounts and the offshoring of personal wealth by many Canadians is that investments by the previous Liberal government to CRA to specifically target offshore accounts led to a huge level of success in terms of return on investment, in terms of collecting this money. The Conservatives have cut back funding to CRA, which will in time reduce governance and the capacity to target, identify and collect from offshore accounts and in other areas where we could collect more in terms of taxes.

The Auditor General said in her report, speaking about the CRA:

If the Agency's guidance is not timely or correct, taxpayers may inadvertently fail to comply with the law or they may become frustrated because the information they need is not available. Either may lead to a loss of tax revenue or an overpayment that later must be adjusted.

She made the following recommendation:

(4) The CRA “should develop more concrete plans to meet its own target times for issuing advance income tax rulings, given the significance of the rulings to proposed business transactions.”

Again, this is another report where the Auditor General is being extremely clear with some specific corrective measures that the government could take.

In 2009, the government said it agreed with this recommendation, but the dismal results suggest that nothing has been done about it.

Last week the Canadian Federation of Independent Business issued a press release entitled, “CRA Call Centre Business Helpline gets C- grade from CFIB”. According to the CFIB, only 61% of callers received full and accurate information “service standards and agent professionalism have declined”. Again, I am not blaming the CRA employees, but the government is making it very difficult for them to do their jobs.

The Liberals are concerned. We support the idea of Bill C-48 being presented now, finally dealing with some of these issues, but we do not support the tax direction of the government, which is ultimately creating a less fair, less competitive and more complicated Canadian tax system. We believe we need more than tax tinkering; we need real tax reform aimed at building a more competitive, fairer and simpler Canadian tax code.

Increasing Offenders' Accountability for Victims Act

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

My colleagues are applauding, and I thank them on behalf of the victims. It has long been said that the New Democratic Party is not against victims, like it or not; it is on the contrary in favour of a fair, logical and intelligent system. However, sometimes that is not entirely the case with respect to the bills introduced by the present government. I would certainly not say that this bill is perfect, since it will occasion enormous disappointment. While we support it in its current form—it is difficult to be against virtue, as my mother would say—we do have some concerns: among other things, as to whether our colleagues opposite really listened to the 14 witnesses who testified before the committee.

I take this opportunity to digress in order to thank those who served on the committee studying this bill. It may not be the case with regard to Bill C-279, which did not end well and came to an extremely disappointing conclusion, but with respect to Bill C-37, solid work was done in committee. Some extremely worthwhile witnesses explained their concerns, and the issues they had experienced.

They also highlighted what the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice explained to us just now: that in Canada, victims of crime are unfortunately left to themselves in many cases, in a manner that differs from province to province or from territory to territory. They often spend fortunes trying to obtain reparation, which they will never receive in full, and we are all very much aware of that. They will never obtain full reparation for the plain and simple reason that when you have been the victim of a rape, for example, or a family member has been killed or kidnapped, compensation is an impossibility. Nothing can compensate for a crime of that sort. There is simply no way to achieve it. It may be possible to offer help, but that is all, and that is what a bill like this tries to do.

There is a problem with the victim surcharge which has existed since it was established in the late 1980s. The Criminal Code takes the approach that a sum can be added to the sentence. We have now doubled that sum, but I will not talk about it, because enough people have done so, and others will do so. After all these years, moreover, I agree that it is not the end of the world. However, that has been the problem from the beginning, and that is why we agreed to refer the bill to committee, so that we could actually hear some witnesses on the subject.

My question concerns judicial discretion. My colleague, the member for Edmonton—Strathcona, posed the same question a short time ago. This is somewhat worrying, because the government is constantly withdrawing the discretionary component of judges’ authority. Nevertheless—I shall come back to this—I am reassured, not 100%, but rather 98%, because the Canadian judicial system will make up for Conservative mismanagement. That is more or less how I see it. It is sad to have to rely on the courts, but at the same time, the importance of victims weighed more heavily in the balance for me, and I believe the same is true of the NDP caucus and all members of this House.

However, I am not necessarily proud to see that Canadian judges have imposed a victim surcharge in only a very small percentage of cases since the system was introduced. And yet this system was designed to help victims. If it had been because the accused or the convicted individual was unable to pay, as the Criminal Code provided, that would have been different.

The burden of proof was on the accused, who therefore had to prove to the court that the surcharge was too much and that he was unable to pay it.

We would have had extraordinary statistics on the kind of individual who appears before our courts, but, no, the judges invariably did not impose it, and did so without explanation. That is where the problem started. The provinces expected to receive some revenue from the victim surcharge. That money goes into the provinces' victims of crime compensation funds, except in the three provinces that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice mentioned. One morning the provinces woke up and asked where the money from the victim surcharge was.

I also agree that this should not be the only fund. In 2003, we were told that the cost of victim damages represented approximately $70 billion. That is not peanuts. However, surcharges can only put a few hundreds million dollars in the coffers. We are still a long way off.

Victims must not imagine that this is a panacea. Passing Bill C-37 will not solve all the problems in Canada so the Conservative government, that great champion of Canadian victims, can suddenly wave around its Bill C-37. That is absolutely not enough, particularly since the vast majority of provinces and territories permitted what is called community service programs.

That is the other aspect that reminds me that some people in the correctional system are unable to pay this amount. Those inmates are unable to pay this kind of surcharge; the crime they committed has nothing to do with the argument I want to make.

The people from the Department of Justice told us that the decision in R. v. Wu would continue to be applied. According to that decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, no one may be imprisoned merely on the basis of inability to pay a fine. In that case, the system is okay.

However, once again I would like to shed some light on a problem with community service programs. Some groups that came to testify before the committee during consideration of the bill are convinced that, if this bill is passed, they will suddenly be able to get compensation for their damages. However, that will not happen. In the majority of cases, the offenders will not pay and will have to do community service.

As the parliamentary secretary noted, that suited some people, because they were asked whether they would be disappointed at not receiving money if the person went into a community service program. Community service programs are not just for people who have no money, but also for anyone who can do it that way. Everyone has access to those programs, provided a program is available in the region where the request is made. Some people, not everyone, said that they would prefer to have the money.

Let me take this opportunity to say that, rather than adopt victim surcharge systems such as these ones, perhaps this brilliant law-and-order Conservative government should get with the times and follow the example of various countries on this magnificent planet that are tending toward restorative justice

I see the member who introduced the bill on this matter and an example springs to mind. The case of a person who commits a crime by destroying national monuments is a very sad one. Which is harder for that person, paying $100 out of his pocket or appearing in front of a group of legion members and having to apologize?

Let me take a brief trip back to my childhood. When my parents punished me and sent me to my room, it made little difference to me. It gave me some peace and quiet. However, when my parents told me to go and apologize to the person I had offended, I admit that was the worst punishment for me because being compelled to admit you have made a mistake is, in a way, a form of humiliation.

Countries a little more in tune with the reality of what punishment should be, should head in that direction. They should make someone who has done something realize what he has done so that he does not do it again. The advice I have for the members opposite is to realize that always pulling out a stick and slapping people's hands does not accomplish much and that it is time to start considering other options.

All that to say that, in the context of Bill C-37, yes, it bothers me that judges are no longer granted this discretion. However, let me tell all my colleagues in this House, including my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands, that they were not using that discretion properly in any case. By that I mean that we have no idea why they granted an exemption to virtually everyone who appeared in court. It was as though the victim surcharge did not exist. To my mind, that is as intolerable as saying that a form of discretion is being taken away.

However, R. v. Wu has nevertheless had an impact. It is clear from our study in committee that the provinces and territories do not automatically impose a term of imprisonment because an individual does not pay, unless someone does it on purpose. Some will withhold driver's licences or documents from certain provinces. Some colleagues here will tell me that the most disadvantaged people we deal with do not have cars. I agree: they do not have cars, and we therefore cannot withhold their licence. However, they have other possessions that make it possible for us to make arrangements with them. The time is past when people were imprisoned for the fun of it, because they did not pay their fines.

I am repeating this because the message needs to be sent. We know that on Christmas Eve, the members opposite will be walking around saying that they have again saved the lives of X number of victims. I am disappointed to think that we have raised people's hopes and we are making them believe things that are not true. We cannot claim victory for the victims too quickly, because we have to be sure that the money that will be collected in the victim surcharge account is paid into the provincial and territorial accounts so it can be used and distributed to victims’ groups.

I do not have much time left, but still, I would like to take advantage of this opportunity. At the Standing Committee on Justice, we have seen just about everything. We are revamping Canada's criminal justice system, which prompts many different questions and leaves many of them unanswered. We do not have the time to conduct all of our studies in depth. With regard to Bill C-10, we will probably be told by the courts that it was all done much too quickly, in some respects. It is the government that will have to take the fall for this.

Regarding Bill C-37, I am reasonably satisfied just the same, as almost all of the witnesses we wanted to hear from were able to appear. Regarding the witnesses we were unable to hear, it was not because we were prevented from hearing them, but rather because they were not able to travel. I know that the bill is not perfect and that it poses the same problems for my colleagues in the Canadian Bar Association and the Barreau du Québec as it does for us. This is discouraging, because we have the time. There have been no changes for 30 years, and before any adjustments are made, sometimes it is worthwhile to spend a little more time and try to get it right.

I enjoy working with my colleague from Delta—Richmond East, the government's spokesperson on the committee. I enjoy our discussions and this new procedure, even though it was a bit of a flop last week, which I am going to say was because everyone was tired. I hope we all come back to the committee in an excellent mood.

I would like to urge everyone to support this bill for the victims. We in the NDP made promises. We have of course heard the recommendations from the Ombudsman for Victims of Crime. That was one of the planks in our platform during the last election campaign. We will present it better when we are in power in 2015. We will make sure to compensate the victims and fill in all the gaps in what is called justice in Canada.

I would like to end by thanking my NDP colleagues. I thank the deputy justice critic, my colleague from Toronto—Danforth, my colleague from Brome—Missisquoi and my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou for their excellent work on the committee. It was a huge endeavour, and their approach was serious and scrupulous, as required by this justice issue. Mr. Speaker, you know this file, because you were the justice critic for many long years and you mentored many of us here in the House. Frequently, on this issue, we try to rise above partisan politics, because people's lives are at stake and the issue is justice.

I would be remiss if I did not thank the people on the committee, as well as the committee clerk, Jean-François Pagé, and his assistants, and especially the people from the Library of Parliament, who often work in the shadows. We never say it often enough, but they do thorough, non-partisan work at the level of seasoned university researchers. Their work makes it possible for us to meet the various witnesses who come before us in committee and to be knowledgeable about the topic.

I encourage everyone who is interested in victim surcharges and the current programs in the various provinces and territories to read the two documents that were written for the study of Bill C-37.

I would of course like to thank the people on my team—I call them “Team Gatineau”—for all the support they have given me in 2012.

On that note, I would like to wish everyone happy holidays.

Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have a second opportunity to address the bill. Earlier today, I was referred to as being a one-man filibuster. I do not know how that could be. I think I spoke to the bill for 20 minutes back in March or May. If the members opposite want to see a filibuster, they should read the transcript of the justice committee meeting that took place last March on Bill C-10 where it was necessary for me to speak for at least six or seven hours in order to get some sense brought to the members opposite in terms of ensuring that at least some discussion would take place on the massive justice bill that the government put before the House. Bill C-10 was the omnibus justice bill that brought together seven, eight or nine pieces of legislation with over 200 amendments that it sought to get through committee in one day. When members opposite talk about getting a bill to committee, they are talking about a committee where they have the hammer and they can control procedure in any way they want.

I am not opposed to the bill going to committee because it needs to go to a committee. We have a new committee and, as with all committees, there is a majority of members opposite on that committee. There are new members, both from our side as well as from the other side, who were not part of the debate in the last session. However, what we are seeing in the chamber on this bill is a tremendous amount of interest by members in our party to talk about the concerns we have with respect to military justice.

I only have a few minutes but I will outline some of the principal ones. One concern is with the function of summary trial procedures before military tribunals. A summary trial takes place without a great deal of formality, as opposed to a court martial which is a much more significant judicial procedure. The reality is that more than 93% of offences that members of the military are charged with are dealt with in a summary trial proceeding. They appear before their commanding officer who listens to what they have to say, hears witnesses, makes a determination and imposes a penalty, which could be anything from incarceration, loss of rank or a fine equal to a month's pay. Many of these penalties are in breach of the Criminal Code. If I had a lot of time I would get into that. However, some of the offences are as simple as being absent without leave or being drunk in a facility which could result in a criminal offence. The nub here is that a procedure of a summary nature could result in a criminal offence.

What is wrong with that is that people do not have access to a lawyer nor do they have a lawyer present for these hearings. It is not an independent tribunal. The CO knows the person, the witnesses and probably a bit of the history of the case because he or she may have heard about it before the person appears before him or her but there are no rules of procedure or evidence. Therefore, it is very unlike the kind of trial that people would have in a civilian court if they are charged with an offence by the police. As there is no transcript, it makes it impossible to appeal under the law and yet the decision could still result in criminal record. That is wrong and it offends our sense of justice in this country.

In the committee in the last Parliament , we sought to make some significant changes to that. In the end, there was an amendment made principally to clause 75 of Bill C-41 which took a series of offences away from the criminal record circumstance. It was not enough, in our view, but some progress was made in the last Parliament. The bill came back to the House and there was a willingness to pass it in the dying days of the last Parliament.

Despite the Conservatives' alleged anxiety today and over the last number of weeks to have this bill passed and sent to committee, even though it was in the last Parliament and had reached various stages, they did not, for some reason, call it before the House. We were ready to see it passed through Parliament because there was an anxiety to have these measures put forward. We were co-operative even though it was a minority Parliament but the government did not see fit to call the bill for debate and have it passed.

Now we are back again and the Conservatives have a majority. A whole series of amendments were brought forward in the last Parliament. Were they in the new bill? No. They were stripped out after having deliberations at committee, listening to all the witnesses, having debate and passing reasonable amendments, although not all the ones we wanted. The Conservatives say that want to make progress. If they want to make progress, why did they not put back the bill that was ready to be voted on in Parliament? It is because they decided that they wanted to remove the progress that had been made in the last Parliament.

Business of the House

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I know you look forward to this with some expectations.

I am honoured to rise on behalf of the official opposition to ask the government what it has planned for the House for the rest of this week and for next week.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the government House leader appealed to you to reject the idea of allowing separate votes on separate questions facing this House. He did so on the grounds that the amendments would not be accepted by the government anyway. What is the point of us trying to fix bad Conservative bills? According to the Conservative government, reviewing and amending bills is some sort of annoyance that it wants to do away with entirely.

However, the truth is that the government has had a terrible record of getting its own legislation right. It is a bit like trying to unpack a Russian Matryoshka nesting doll. Let us review.

Bill C-4 was panned by so many critics that we lost count. It was left to die on the order paper by the Conservatives.

Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, was panned by the opposition. We tried to amend it but the Conservatives rejected the amendments. They then tried to make those very same changes later on, which you, Mr. Speaker, had to reject. The changes finally got made in the unelected and unaccountable Senate down the way.

Bill C-30, the Internet snooping bill, was so bad that, once explained by the Minister of Public Safety to Canadians, the Conservatives refused to even acknowledge that it was ever in existence. That was some bit of political spin, “You're either with us or you're with the other folks”.

Bill C-31 was panned by the opposition and others. The Conservatives had to amend it at the committee themselves.

Bill C-45, the monster budget bill and the second omnibus bill, actually includes many provisions to fix the first monster omnibus bill in the spring.

This would all be funny if it were not so serious and would have such an impact on the lives of Canadians.

Lastly, I want to say how disappointing it is that the government chose to be partisan instead of saving lives in the developing world, when it voted against Bill C-388 yesterday. This bill would have made it easier for Canada to send generic medications to those who need them most. What an unacceptable decision on the part of the Conservative government.

What does the undemocratic leaning Conservative government have in store for Canadians next?

Justice

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, while we were debating Bill C-10, the former Quebec justice minister, the National Assembly of Quebec and experts in Quebec all agreed that this legislation violates human rights, undermines the rule of law and flies in the face of Quebec's values on justice.

When will the federal government respect Quebec, its values, judicial independence, evidence and the rule of law?

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Barreau du Québec is challenging the constitutionality of the omnibus Bill C-10, which has been criticized by lawyers who maintain that mandatory minimum sentences are ineffective, pointless and discriminatory. Furthermore, our courts have found that these sentences are unconstitutional.

When will the government respect our lawyers, judges and experts and abandon this misguided, discredited and unfair approach?

Protecting Canada's Seniors Act

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague, who is doing an excellent job on this file.

I very much liked her speech and would like to pick up on one aspect of it that can apply to many issues the Conservatives are dealing with quite poorly, in my opinion.

Once again, we have a bill that deals with a serious issue by targeting people after the harm has already been done. There is no mention of prevention. As my exceptional colleague from London—Fanshawe said a moment ago, one of the best ways to prevent elder abuse is to help seniors stay at home as long as possible, be independent and not have to rely on anyone else. That is one of the best ways to make sure such situations do not arise.

The Conservatives took the same approach with bill C-10, that focused on punishment and added new sections to the Criminal Code. That is all well and good, but should we not spend more time talking about prevention and make it so that situations such as these do not arise in the first place?

I would appreciate my colleague's views on that.

Justice

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to rise in the House to speak about an issue that I have been working on a lot lately, particularly in my capacity as deputy critic for public safety and as a member of Parliament for a riding that houses three federal penitentiaries.

On May 15, the Minister of Justice completely rejected the calculations of Quebec authorities that said that 1,000 people are imprisoned each day in Quebec alone. Yet, these calculations are based on fact and come from a reliable source. In fact, Quebec's public safety department estimates that the government's Bill C-10 will increase the prison population by 20%. That means an additional 1,000 people in the prison system, which is already 96% full.

The current facilities already do not have enough room for inmates, and now this government has decided to close two prisons and a treatment centre, including the Leclerc medium-security facility, which is located in my riding. Once again, the Minister of Public Safety is making ill-considered, ad hoc decisions without thinking about the consequences. Then, he is telling us that it will not cost a penny more. It does not make any sense.

Prison populations are being moved, other prisons are being expanded, and employees are being moved. These things cost money. The Minister of Public Safety also said that he did not see any problem with double-bunking in prisons. Double-bunking jeopardizes the safety of both correctional officers and inmates. This summer, I had the opportunity to participate in a symposium on overcrowding in Canadian prisons organized by the John Howard Society of Canada.

Experts agree that double-bunking is not a solution. When we take the time to think it over, it is clear that putting two individuals with two completely different profiles in the same cell designed for just one inmate increases the risk of confrontation. Confrontation between inmates also puts the safety of correctional officers in danger since these men and women have to manage these prisoners and juggle their different profiles.

Members of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers are concerned about the repercussions Bill C-10 will have for the institutions. Their working environment will change completely. This will make their jobs even more stressful. It also means that they will be risking their lives every day with a significantly larger prison population. They feel that the penitentiaries are already overcrowded as a result of prison closures, budget cuts to the Correctional Service of Canada and the longer sentences imposed on new inmates.

I work with the union on a regular basis, especially regarding the closure of the Leclerc institution in my riding, and I have had the opportunity to visit the institution many times. I also had the opportunity to visit the other penitentiary that is closing its doors, the Kingston penitentiary, and Kingston's regional treatment centre.

These decisions do not make any sense. How can the government close institutions, cut CSC's budgets, impose longer sentences on inmates and think that it will not cost a penny more? How does this government plan to manage this disaster caused by its lack of judgment without compromising public safety and without spending a penny? Did the minister or the parliamentary secretary at least visit these institutions or consult experts in the field or the employees before applying these draconian measures?

Combating Terrorism Act

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that I do not accept the fact that government members are telling me to be quiet while I am giving my speech. I was elected, and I have the right to speak in the House.

The battle against terrorism cannot be conducted by means of legislative measures, but rather through intelligence and appropriate police action.

There is no need to pass Bill S-7; the Criminal Code already provides all the tools that are needed, and it contains provisions to combat terrorism. I have a serious problem with establishing a system that forces people to incriminate themselves. Contrary to the recommendations of the Subcommittee on the Review of the Anti-terrorism Act, witnesses clearly told the Senate committee that there were major problems in terms of the protection of children.

There is Bill C-10 and criminal justice for minors, the status of aboriginal children, and poverty among immigrant children: we have been singled out and criticized repeatedly for our violations of children's rights. Once again, the government should be ashamed to have been singled out as a democratic industrialized country that violates children's rights. And yet again, the government would like to pass legislation that would violate the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is shameful. The government members should be ashamed to be smiling as I remind them that they are violating children's rights.

It is also noteworthy that since 2001, over 10 years ago, none of the investigations that have led to charges or convictions has required the use of these extraordinary powers. There is still doubt about how, for example, a distinction could be made in practice between a terrorist act and other offences. For example, the incendiary bomb at the G20 in Ottawa was treated as a criminal offence and not an act of terrorism. The Criminal Code can handle such acts very well.

Bill S-7 would make people with no criminal charges against them liable to imprisonment for up to 12 months or subject to strict release conditions, and the NDP believes that this contravenes the fundamental values of our justice system. That the provisions were only ever invoked once, and the only time they were invoked it was a total fiasco, illustrates that the police have the tools they need to combat terrorism with existing procedures, without any risk to our civil liberties or justice. The provisions of this bill could be invoked to target dissidents or people involved in demonstrations.

I see a trend here. The Conservatives want to prevent people from protesting. I remind members that the right of association is a fundamental right protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is not the first time that the government has tried to restrict our fundamental freedoms and civil liberties. I remind them that the Canada they love so much was created with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and they should be ashamed of trying to take away the freedoms that people fought for.

This legislation shows a lack of balance between security and fundamental rights, and the New Democratic Party cannot vote for such a bill. We must give serious thought to the issue of terrorism, but we must also protect our rights and freedoms.

I would like to conclude my speech by saying that this bill shows a flagrant lack of respect for Canadian values. This is an ideological bill that threatens Canadians and their freedoms. The Criminal Code already contains all of the provisions needed to fight terrorism, and the government should be ashamed of trying to take away our civil liberties to further its own ideological and political agenda.

Justice

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is incredible to me that the hon. member has nothing to substantiate her point that there has been a serious increase in the number of prisoners as a result of the legislation we brought in. In fact, this just has not materialized.

However, I am extremely proud of this government's approach to fighting crime and protecting our communities. It is a made in Canada approach that will increase public safety and restore the confidence of Canadians in our justice system.

The Canadian approach is a balanced one that combines crime prevention, punishment and rehabilitation. Bill C-10 is one piece of this complex puzzle, and our government remains committed to ensuring that crime is prevented, that appropriate rehabilitation takes place and that proper punishments that fit the severity of the crimes are served. That is whom we are targeting, serious and violent repeat offenders.

The people of Canada elected this government because they can count on us to deliver on our communities and to stand up for victims of crime. It is unfortunate that the hon. members on the other side of this House cannot say the same.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Mr. Speaker, for too many years our criminal justice system was going in the wrong direction. It focused more on the rights of criminals instead of the rights of victims.

Since coming into office, our government has accomplished a great deal when it comes to cracking down on crime, better protecting Canadians and giving victims the rights and protections they deserve, but we know that more needs to be done, which is why we introduced Bill C-10.

As the hon. member may know, after lengthy debate and study, Bill C-10 was passed by Parliament and received royal assent on March 13, 2012. I would like to take a few minutes to remind the hon. member what exactly Bill C-10 accomplished.

A major component of the Safe Streets and Communities Act targeted criminals who sexually exploit children. Bill C-10 proposed denouncing all forms of child sexual abuse through the imposition of new and higher mandatory minimum penalties for people who prey on our most vulnerable, that is, our children.

Furthermore, Bill C-10 brought in two amendments to correct the gaps in the Criminal Code. The first amendment made it a crime when two adults conspire to set up a child for exploitation. The second amendment made it a crime to give a child sexually explicit material for the purpose of grooming that child for exploitation.

Another major component of our legislation targeted the source of the illicit drug trade, the drug traffickers. Bill C-10 has stiffened penalties for the production and trafficking of illegal drugs.

I remind the House that the criminals we are targeting with these amendments are those who are involved in selling drugs to kids on playgrounds and near schools.

In addition, the Safe Streets and Communities Act ended house arrest for serious crimes like sexual assault, kidnapping and human trafficking, as well as eliminated pardons for crimes like sexual offences against children.

It also better protects the public from violent young offenders; supports victims of terrorism; and prevents the trafficking, abuse and exploitation of vulnerable immigrants.

As hon. members know, this government was elected to implement its promises, and one such promise is to better protect our most vulnerable, including children. Bill C-10 did exactly that, and I am proud to be part of a party that stood in support of this important legislation.

Canadians deserve to feel safe in their homes and communities, and that means keeping dangerous criminals off our streets. We will continue to fight crime and protect Canadians so that our communities are safe places for people to live, raise their families and do business.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today, I would like to talk about the cost of prisons.

With unbelievable cynicism, on October 14, 2011, the Minister of Justice invited the provinces to dip into the Canada social transfer to pay for the increased prison costs resulting from the passing of Bill C-10. In general, what is the Canada social transfer used for? It is used to fund social assistance, health care, social services and higher education, not to pay for this government's bills that have absolutely nothing to do with the Canada social transfer.

The minister even said this: “I note, in the last budget, an over $2.4 billion increase in transfers,” said Mr. Nicholson in Montreal, “and I know this will be very helpful to the provinces who have for the most part the responsibility of the administration of justice.” It is as though he was telling the provinces that they had $2 billion and that they should make do. It is as though the provinces do not have education or health care systems or anything else to manage.

In a detailed study, the Institut de recherche et d'informations socio-économiques estimated that it would cost over $18.8 billion to build prisons and that there would be $3.8 billion in ongoing operating costs. The provinces will have to pay for three-quarters of the cost of the construction alone.

The Government of Quebec must therefore face the fact that 18 of its prisons are full. In practical terms, this means 565 to 1,048 additional beds in Quebec prisons. The cost of building new cells is estimated at approximately $750 million and the ongoing costs associated with the arrival of additional inmates is estimated at approximately $80 million.

Quebec was not the only one to protest. The other provinces also appealed to the government. Ontario even said that it would have to spend billions of dollars.

In order to save money, Quebec asked Ottawa to transfer ownership of the Leclerc Institution, which Ottawa wants to shut down. The federal government has invested $3 million to renovate this penitentiary. It is unbelievable. Furthermore, we have already paid for it. The Correctional Service of Canada spent $3 million on all kinds of renovations over two years, hundreds of thousands of dollars to install surveillance cameras, $5,000 to renovate a supervisor's office, $15,000 for painting, $1 million for roofing, and much more.

What was the Minister of Public Safety's response to a question I asked yesterday about transferring ownership of the Leclerc Institution?

I certainly will look at the request.

We will wait and see. The government may do something.

The request was made in a letter from the former Quebec minister of public security dated May 8, 2012. The letter was reported by the media and stated that, in three years' time, the three new prisons in Quebec would not meet demand and that Quebec wanted the Leclerc Institution. The minister must have received the letter dated May 8, 2012.

The Conservative government has never fully costed its justice initiatives. The Conservatives are closing prisons even though they want to jail more people. That does not make sense. If they want to jail more people, they have to build prisons. Instead of closing prisons, they should be giving money to the provinces so they can cover the extra costs.

Opposition Motion—Omnibus Legislation

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. Speaker, each time my colleague delivers a speech in the House people usually take note, and today is no exception. He has nailed a couple of very important points, the reflection on and the comparison with what took place with Bill C-10. The member proposed amendments that were voted down by the Conservative majority in committee. The minister tried to put them back into the legislation at the last minute, which did not happen, but at least the amendments did get in through the Senate. Those improvements, because it was at odds with the charter, made sense.

Eight hundred amendments were proposed to the omnibus bill through debate here in the House and through votes in the House, and the government supported none of them. Was the member somewhat surprised that there was not one suggestion or amendment brought forward that might have been able to improve the omnibus bill? Was he surprised that the government rejected all 800 amendments?

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, when the Prime Minister was a member of the opposition, he addressed the question of process in particular and expressed his concern that omnibus-type legislating was undermining the parliamentary process. As I said, this has been undermining the integrity of Parliament itself because process is inextricably bound up with parliamentary procedure, inextricably bound up with our constitutional responsibilities for public oversight, for seeking cost disclosure and the like.

When legislation is bundled together and rushed through Parliament, it has adverse consequences on both process and substance. The legislation itself may be flawed but may never get properly examined. The committee process that is used does not allow for adequate review and the calling of appropriate witnesses, particularly when we have time allocation. The use of such time allocation may compound matters to exclude stakeholders, not only us here in this Parliament but even in a federation it may exclude provinces' input, as we saw with Bill C-10 and the omnibus crime bill.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in this debate on omnibus legislation. Like my colleagues, and particularly now my colleague from Etobicoke North, I agree with what the current Prime Minister stated in this place in 1994 when, as an opposition member, he criticized the use of omnibus legislation asking:

How can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote in a block on such legislation and on such concerns?

He continued:

We can agree with some of the measures but oppose others. How do we express our views and the views of our constituents when the matters are so diverse?

The complaint of the Prime Minister, then speaking as an opposition member in 1994, about the use of omnibus bills ought now to underpin his work as Prime Minister. Rather, he is forcing legislation through this place as he himself regaled against. Indeed, it is time that the House took action to study and restrict the use of sweeping omnibus legislation that, among other things, deprives MPs of the opportunity to undertake the requisite detailed and differentiated analysis of the diverse constituent elements in a given omnibus bill, deprives the members of the House of the necessary public oversight with respect to these bills and undermines public participation in the political process as well as the public right to know.

I am not suggesting that the government somehow does not have a right to pursue its policy objectives. What must be debated, however, is the integrity of the process used and the merits of the means chosen. The purpose of Parliament is not to serve as a rubber stamp of the government, to be disconnected from the people and our constituents, even in a majority Parliament. Indeed, the government has yet to explain how Canadians are worse off when this body does take the necessary time to study subject matter items in detail, to separate out disparate legislative proposals and thereby, as a result, to produce the appropriate high-quality legislation deserving of our Parliament and our people. Indeed, it would seem by his own acknowledgement in this place that the member for Calgary Southwest at the time acknowledged these same views in 1994.

Accordingly, my brief remarks will be organized around the discussion of two particular pieces of legislation, the recent federal budget implementation bill, and Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill. While those are the two latest and most blatant examples of the use and abuse of the omnibus process, the government has a pattern of bundling perfectly acceptable items with utterly untenable legislation, and does so not only to its peril but to the peril of its own case and cause.

The recent federal budget legislation, Bill C-38, is what I have referred to elsewhere as the hydra-headed Trojan Horse omnibus budget implementation bill, for it was as stealth-like in its scope as it will be and has been prejudicial in its impact, the whole constituting an assault on the integrity of Parliament and its members, as well as on the democratic process. That is putting it modestly and mildly.

Simply put, while this 400-plus page piece of legislation was supposed to be anchored in the budget, in reality it had very little to do with the budget. Rather, in its sweeping scope it introduced, amended or repealed more than 70 federal statutes with the omnibus Trojan Horse providing political cover for pervasive and prejudicial impacts on everything from Canadian retirement plans to environmental protection, from immigration to food safety. All of this was accomplished through sleight-of-hand omnibus legislation where, for example, one provision undermined the whole of our environmental protection safeguards.

This enormous hodgepodge, this disconnected bundling together of variegated legislative proposals, did not and does not allow for the requisite differentiated discussion and debate, let alone the necessary oversight of the legislation. It imbued the executive with arbitrary authority to the exclusion of Parliament thereby serving as a standing abuse to the canons of good governance, transparency, accountability, public oversight, cost disclosure and the like. Indeed, this alone should have been cause for its defeat.

As Andrew Coyne put it at the time, “The scale and scope is on a level not previously seen, or tolerated”. He noted that the bill made “a mockery of the confidence convention” and that there was no “common thread” or “overarching principle” between the legislative items therein, let alone its standing contempt for Parliament in matters of process and procedure.

Moreover, and again on the crucial issues of parliamentary process and procedure, this bill was sent to the finance committee. Accordingly, the review of the environmental regulations therein, which overhauled, weakened and undermined the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and environmental protection as a whole, were thus not reviewed by the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development where it belonged.

Similarly, the provisions that changed the First Nations Land Management Act were not the subject of examination and study by the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, as my colleague from Etobicoke North identified, where they ought to have been deliberated. I could go on with numerous examples in this regard.

Moreover, if circumventing proper and thorough parliamentary review were not enough, the government invoked time allocation to limit discussion on the bill at every stage of the legislative process.

I am not suggesting that invoking time allocation, as the government has done again and again, violates the rules of this place. What I am suggesting, as many commentators have said, is that this use of it, particularly in the context of omnibus legislation, is unnecessary, prejudicial, surprisingly undemocratic, in effect, unparliamentary, and otherwise unsubstantiated, unwarranted and, frankly, is a contempt of Parliament and the people.

Surely if Parliament had to debate something like going to war, it would be easy to see why we might have time allocation to ensure that we get to the most pressing debate first. Or, if there were court decisions that affected many statutes, we might easily welcome an omnibus bill that could make the same change to many statutes at once, and that has been done by this House.

What is so disconcerting with the budget implementation bill is that the government need not have been in such a rush. There was no coherent or compelling theme, as commentators and experts have pointed out, to the omnibus proposals contained in the bill. Frankly, it could have used more study and, as we see with the current tainted beef scandal, the provisions on food inspectors perhaps warranted a more thorough review.

There are many issues that remain with the budget implement bill, not the least of which is the question of cost disclosure and the remaining possibility of a lawsuit from the PBO over the government's failure to be open and transparent about the extent of the budget cuts proposed and its cost impact.

In the matter of the omnibus crime legislation, Bill C-10, the problem with omnibus legislation is illustrated no less compellingly. While the same generic omnibus critiques operate in this context, namely, what Richard Poplak in a Globe and Mail piece termed “Chinese disease...hollowing out democracy”, for which Canadians are increasingly bearing the burden of this onslaught, I would refer to one case study of the government's omnibus failure: the amendments to the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, JVTA.

The JVTA was one of nine constituent bills of Bill C-10, one which received little attention. This landmark legislation, however, allowed, for the first time, Canadian victims of terror to sue their terrorist perpetrators in Canadian courts.

I supported the principles of the JVTA and had even introduced similar legislation in a previous session for that purpose. However, the government's version of this bill warranted improvement, which it did not allow for. Accordingly, I proposed a series of amendments at the legislative committee, explaining that I sought only to strengthen the government's bill. All of my amendments were summarily rejected by the Conservatives, as were all opposition amendments. Indeed, all 50 of my proposed amendments to Bill C-10 were summarily rejected. There was no debate or consideration given. In fact, I was accused of obstruction and delay for merely suggesting these changes. At the next meeting, the government moved to shut down debate entirely, a flagrant abuse of the parliamentary and legislative process.

Certainly a majority government has the procedural right to use its majority as it pleases. However, it ignores the opposition at its peril. Indeed, the government eventually realized the merit of my amendments and proposed them later as its own. Therefore, these amendments became part of the legislation in a dilatory fashion, prejudicing the outcome and even the improvement that could have been warranted in that legislation.

Simply put, legislation has to be examined on the merits and, when so examined, the Conservatives' omnibus crime bill revealed that it would result in more crime, less justice, at greater cost, with fewer rehabilitation opportunities for offenders, less protection and voice for the victims, and less protection for society. We are now slowly seeing the consequences of the legislation being that which we predicted at the time. In fact, we have situations and problems with regard with prison overcrowding, mandatory minimum penalties and the like, that are likely to be struck down by the courts. I could go on.

Increasing Offenders' Accountability for Victims Act

[Sylvain Chicoine, NDP, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour for me to address the House.

On May 17, 2012, the government introduced Bill C-37, which amends the Criminal Code provisions on victim surcharges as currently set out in section 737.

I have listened to many of the speeches given by my colleagues on both sides of the House, but mainly on this side, since few government members have spoken about this bill. I trust the judgment of my hon. colleague from Gatineau, who was the first to say that we would be supporting this bill at second reading. I also respect her legal experience. For my part, I worked for quite some time as a special constable, for I have always had a special interest in saving lives and keeping the people in my community safe.

At the beginning of this Parliament, I was our party's public safety critic. I care deeply about the safety of my fellow citizens. Now while debating this bill, it is our duty as legislators to ensure that victims of crime have the support they need.

Many people here have pointed out the lack of funding for programs and services offered to victims, and like my colleague, I am very concerned about this. That is why I will vote in favour of this bill, for we in the NDP support many of the recommendations made by the ombudsman for victims of crime, many of which are addressed in this bill. Furthermore, we have always supported increased funding for programs and services offered to victims of crime.

Bill C-37 amends the Criminal Code sections dealing with victim surcharges. A victim surcharge is an additional penalty imposed on offenders at the time of sentencing after they have been convicted of an indictable offence. This bill doubles the amount of victim surcharges and makes them mandatory for all offenders.

The surcharge would be the equivalent of 30% of any fine imposed on the offender at sentencing. Currently, the surcharge is 15%. If a judge does not impose a fine with the sentence or if no fine applies, then the surcharge would be $100 for summary offences and $200 for indictable offences.

Judges will be able to impose a higher victim surcharge if circumstances warrant and if the offender has the means to pay it. This provision is interesting because it leaves room to adjust the fine, but especially because it gives judges discretionary power in cases where this might apply. These fines will be collected by the provincial and territorial governments and allotted to the programs and services for victims of crime. These fines are not supposed to end up in the consolidated fund of any province or territory. We must ensure that this will indeed be the case.

A number of my colleagues have also mentioned that the programs and services are severely underfunded and that the precarious finances of these organizations often jeopardize the success of their mission. Crimes have considerable socio-economic repercussions on victims, including funeral costs, the need for psychological counselling and lost revenue. There are many repercussions for the families of victims of crime.

The statistics say it all. In 2003, crime cost roughly $70 billion, $47 billion of which was assumed by the victims. In other words, the victims assumed 70% of the cost. In 2004, a study estimated that the pain and suffering of the victims was in the neighbourhood of $36 billion. That is huge and, unfortunately, the victim surcharge is not going to fully cover this cost, but it will help.

Did the government do its homework and use the best possible tool for maximizing the funding for these organizations? That remains to be seen, and I hope we can determine that when we study the bill in committee.

This bill could contribute to funding these organizations and if that is the case, then I am most pleased. If it also—although I have my doubts—helps make an offender accountable and prevents recidivism, then just like the government, I will be very happy. But make no mistake, this is not a magic solution. The provisions in Bill C-37 will not solve all the problems, but they will be another good tool to help provide funding to the organizations.

We should not, however, expect that the impact of this bill will be significant enough to dissuade a person from committing a crime, as some members mentioned in their remarks.

This is where policies and programs on crime prevention and offender accountability come into play. Since the beginning of this parliament, the Conservatives have introduced many justice bills involving mandatory minimum sentences. Yet, they have done very little in the way of crime prevention and offender rehabilitation.

That is why, when I was a member of the Standing Committee on Public Safety, I endorsed a balanced approach to crime and rehabilitation, as did my other colleagues. It is important to invest in prevention and rehabilitation in order to minimize the chances of people committing a first offence or reoffending. We must not focus all our efforts on punishment. The Conservative Party's vision of this concept is rather shameful.

For the Conservatives, punishment solves all problems. There are so many factors that lead to crime that we must take a multi-faceted approach to dealing with it. Poverty, unemployment, inadequate housing and low levels of education are all factors that contribute to a rise in crime. A preventive approach must address all these problems in order to achieve effective results.

It is also important to have intelligent corrections legislation and policies accompanied by rehabilitation programs that help to reduce recidivism. It is everyone's duty, as a community, to help victims of crime and to do everything possible to prevent people from becoming victims of crime.

The bill also contains provisions regarding offenders who are unable to pay the fine. Under Bill C-37, these people can participate in a provincial fine option program. These programs allow offenders to pay their debts by earning credits for work done in the province or territory where they committed their crime. I think this is a worthwhile approach because it could get offenders involved in their communities and make them feel accountable, which will greatly contribute to their rehabilitation.

However, the government will have to regulate these programs, since they must be fair and equitable, in light of the sentence, and must be standardized across Canada. I hope the government has done its homework, and we will be able to check that once the bill is sent to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. We must not blindly rush into this, since these programs do not currently exist in all the provinces and territories. What happens when a program does not exist? This is a legitimate question that my colleague raised during the first debate.

If a province must create a new program, it will require funding to do so, and once again, like with Bill C-10, the government may end up passing the bill on to the provinces. Has the government consulted the provinces about this? Will the provinces once again be on the hook for financing the government's crime agenda? I would like a clear answer to that question.

The bill will eliminate the court's ability to exempt the mandatory surcharge if undue hardship to the offender or the dependants of the offender would result from payment of the surcharge. I have some concerns about this provision. The bill indicates, in order of priority, the debts that the offender will have to pay, and support payments are at the top of the list.

In conclusion, like my colleagues, I have a number of concerns about Bill C-37, but I support the spirit of the bill and some provisions that deserve to be studied more carefully in committee. A number of the questions we asked the government have not yet been answered, and we think that they deserve to be discussed in committee. We must talk about the proposed elimination of the judge's discretionary power to decide whether paying a surcharge would cause undue hardship to the offender or dependants of the offender. I think that discretionary powers for judges are very important and that we must protect their autonomy.

Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

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

Mr. Speaker, with not just some but a lot of concern and mixed feelings, I will support sending the bill to committee. However, as I am not a member of that committee, I reserve the right I have as the member representing the Green Party and Saanich—Gulf Islands to submit amendments at report stage if I am not satisfied that the bill has been re-balanced appropriately to reflect the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and respect for it.

The member's question about war criminals is a good one. It sounds pretty much like a no-brainer. If someone is a war criminal, we do not want the person in Canada, nor do we want people who have defied their government, committed crimes and spent time in jail. However, every now and then a person like that gets honorary Canadian citizenship, like Nelson Mandela.

The move under this proposed legislation and other legislation, such as the mandatory minimums under Bill C-10, is toward an authoritarian automatic discipline, which is unforgiving forever and lacks any compassion, humanitarian or even a thought process. That I will always oppose.

[Nycole Turmel, NDP, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to debate Bill C-43, which proposes amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

As my colleagues before me indicated, we will support the bill at second reading, but this support is far from being a blank cheque. Bill C-43 has a number of significant shortcomings that will need to be addressed in committee. On this side of the House, we want to co-operate with the government to make Bill C-43 a fairer and more balanced bill.

Canadians expect us to be capable of reaching compromises. Compromises are at the core of a democratic system such as Canada's. Refusing to compromise is tantamount to failing to fulfill one's democratic obligations. Since the last election, our colleagues opposite have too often shown themselves to be closed off to dialogue and compromise. This is very regrettable. I sincerely hope that that will change.

Canadians want us to impose tough penalties on non-Canadians who commit serious crimes in Canada. I am certain that law-abiding newcomers to Canada—and it is important to say that they are almost all law-abiding—share our opinion.

What people in this country are asking for is a guarantee that our judicial system is efficient and sufficiently flexible when it comes time to return criminals who do not have Canadian citizenship to their countries of origin. Canadians especially want the government to invest more energy in ensuring that applications by newcomers are processed more quickly and more efficiently. The Conservatives should go to greater lengths to ensure, for example, that these people can be reunited with members of their family as quickly as possible.

As I said earlier, I have several reservations concerning the content of this bill. For example, I have trouble understanding the reasons for the new discretionary powers being given to the minister. If Bill C-43 were to come into force tomorrow morning, the minister would have the power to declare that a foreign national may not become a temporary resident if he considers that it is justified by public policy considerations. However, one of the problems with this proposal is that the concept of public policy considerations is not defined. This opens the door to very different interpretations of what may constitute public policy considerations. This must be addressed.

I also have a lot of trouble understanding the presence of a clause that relieves the minister of his responsibility to examine the humanitarian circumstances associated with the application of a foreign national deemed inadmissible. I would like someone to explain the reason for this measure to me. I do not understand why humanitarian and compassionate grounds would not be taken to consideration in a review. Is that really the Canada that we want?

One of the biggest problems with this bill is that it severely limits access to the appeals process. We all agree that our appeal system must not be exploited in order to deliberately delay the removal of a non-resident to his country of origin, but the measures contained in Bill C-43 should not limit human rights.

The Conservatives have promoted their bill by speaking almost exclusively about the fact that it will speed up the deportation of dangerous offenders. However, Bill C-43 casts a far wider net than that. Among other things, it redefines serious crimes.

Under the present system, an individual who has committed a crime punishable by two years or more has no access to the appeal process. Bill C-43 wants to lower the bar to crimes punishable by six months or more. As a result, a lot more people will be denied the opportunity to appeal a decision made in their case.

Let us be clear. I am not fundamentally opposed to tightening the definition of “serious criminality”.

One benefit would be to take in crimes like sexual assault and robbery, which in itself is a good thing. However, I think we have to be vigilant and make sure the new definition does not lead to poorly thought out decisions.

One thing I am concerned about is what effects the new system of minimum sentences provided in Bill C-10 might have on decisions to be made in removal cases.

Some crimes covered by that new system are non-violent crimes. So we have to be careful when it comes to limiting access to the appeal process. The restriction in the legislation must not be extended too far by Bill C-43. Yes, we have to stop non-citizens who have committed serious crimes from abusing our appeal system. But we also have to be sure that we take an intelligent approach to all of this. We really have to preserve a balance. Most importantly, we have to be able to guarantee that the right decision will be made in each removal case.

The appeal mechanism is a useful tool for that purpose. Why would we take it away? We will have to pay particular attention to this issue once it gets to committee.

So far, we have heard the Conservatives telling us over and over that it is easy for non-citizens to avoid deportation: all they have to do is not commit serious crimes. I would hope so, but honestly, in real life, things are not necessarily black and white. We all know that reality is more complex than that. Bill C-43 should be constructed in a way that reflects that complexity.

For example, what do we do with offenders who came to Canada at a very young age and who know nothing about the country they are to be deported to? Some organizations have raised concerns on this point, but that is not a factor to be considered under Bill C-43.

In the NDP, we want to work with the government to prevent non-citizens who have committed serious crimes from abusing our appeal system. However, we do not want the mechanisms that make it possible for our system to deal with extraordinary circumstances in a flexible manner to be eliminated.

Like the government, we want our judicial system to be effective and to make it possible for non-citizens who have committed serious crimes to be removed as soon as possible, but we do not want to have botched, unbalanced processes that do not take special situations into account. Wanting to expedite the removal of foreign criminals is a laudable objective in itself, but we have to make sure the process leading to removal does not violate the person’s rights. In our society, we have a duty to make decisions that are just and that recognize everyone’s rights.

Bill C-43 is a bill on which we can and must build. As I said earlier, we will support it at second reading, but we have to rework it. We will all benefit from being able to hear what the experts and representatives of organizations that specialize in these issues have to say.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what I was saying to the other member before the question.

There are so many cases. I worry that with all the work that was done on Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act, new minimum sentences were created for some offences which, even the members opposite will admit, are not as serious as robbery with violence, armed robbery or major fraud.

Situations may arise like the one the hon. member for Winnipeg North just described. They are not rare. Many people have not applied for citizenship but, after making some mistakes and serving their sentences, become model citizens. They just have not made it official.

So all kinds of situations can happen. Once again, I want to ask the government a question. How many cases is this based on? Exactly who are the targets?

We must be able to make decisions based on the evidence. This government, which was elected on a promise of transparency, continues to show a lack of transparency. How ironic.

Helping Families in Need Act

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives have introduced several bills which, in their opinion, will help victims. On this side of the House, we have trouble believing that these bills will help victims, especially Bill C-10. Of course, the bill contained a number of measures, but it did not seem to directly help victims. Finally, we have a bill that is going to do exactly that.

What distinction does my colleague see in the way that the Conservatives have tried to make people believe that they are really helping victims and what is actually going to help victims? Can the member do a better job of explaining this contrast?

Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I must advise the House that I am going to share my time with the member for Rivière-du-Nord. We will each speak for 10 minutes.

I would like to start by saying that the title of the bill, quite obviously, is something that should give us pause. The reference to foreign criminals is something that seeps throughout the entire bill. It could, if we are not careful, help construct society's understanding of the contexts that are being discussed in the bill in a way that would separate those of us who are lucky to have full citizenship from those among us who are merely landed immigrants or permanent residents.

I would like to come back to that point when I discuss, a bit later, the cutting of appeal options in new categories of cases. However, I do want to put on record that one of the biggest problems is almost a discursive problem by the reference to foreign criminals in this undifferentiated way in the title.

The second big problem with the bill is that, in some ways, it combines two extremes in terms of the exercise of state power in this context.

One extreme is that it would give a full, at least in terms of the text, and unfettered discretion to the minister with the new section 22.1, which would allow him or her to refuse temporary residence visas on his or her own opinion of what are public policy considerations. There is nothing in the bill that talks about any constraints on that.

We had an answer earlier in the House when the parliamentary secretary suggested that the government might be open to giving a bit more substance to that, but at the moment it is not in the bill.

On the other hand, we have no discretion at all on other fronts in the bill in a way that adds to the repressive dimensions of its structure. Within section 64, which would change the threshold for no appeal rights after being determined to be inadmissible from two years to six months, removing the appeal as of right, there would be nothing in between. There would be no procedure for a leave to appeal. It would be all or nothing. If people have been convicted for an offence that has involved imprisonment of six months, then they have no right of appeal from the decision on admissibility to the Immigration Appeal Division.

On the other hand, in terms of no discretion, there is a new section 25 wording that would remove not just the right of the minister but the power of the minister to consider humanitarian and compassionate considerations in a category of cases.

Now, I want to be careful here when I add this in as a problem because those categories of cases are worded very broadly and they seem like the kind of cases when one would never want to exercise discretion to allow somebody to stay. “Security”, “organized criminality” and “violating human or international rights” are the words used.

However, even within those categories, they are so generally worded, “organized criminality” and “security”, that it is not difficult to imagine some circumstances in which there may be reason to lighten the severity of the law and allow somebody to stay. In fact, that is how the system has worked. On occasion the minister does exercise exactly that discretion for those reasons. The fact is that has been eliminated.

We have to look very carefully when this does hit the committee as to whether or not the use of extremes, nothing in between, has actually created a bill that would, down the road, show itself as producing a lot of hardship.

I am going to primarily address the question of the reduction of the elimination of the right to appeal to a broader category of persons and, also, the public policy discretion of the minister.

With respect to that public policy discretion, let me start here. The new section 22.1 says:

The Minister may, on the Minister’s own initiative, declare that a foreign national...may not become a temporary resident if the Minister is of the opinion that it is justified by public policy considerations.

He may do that or she may do that for up to 36 months.

That is it. That is all we have there.

It is not too difficult to imagine how, in the hands of a certain minister or in a certain period of time, this could be exercised very arbitrarily, if not abusively. There is nothing in the bill to constrain that, other than, I hope, the fact that there would be judicial review available, but judicial review is one of the worst possible ways to produce checks in any legal system because it requires time, money and good lawyers to actually get anywhere. We need to have a system of decision making within the bill itself that checks the minister in his or her decision making, and public policy consideration is just simply far too broad a mandate to give any one person to exercise in the context.

I will not go into specific examples, but we do know of at least a few examples where the Minister of Immigration has clearly not wanted somebody to enter the country for reasons that, under the surface, appear to be more about politics than they do about sound public policy. That clause has to be looked at in committee. It has to be beefed up if it is to be retained.

The next provision to look at is section 64 which, as everybody has noted, lowers the threshold for removing the right of appeal on an inadmissibility decision from two years imprisonment to six months. If a person has been in prison for six months, that is it in terms of them having any right of appeal. They would not have any.

We should think about some of the things in the Criminal Code that can attract six months, and they may not that often, such as stealing oysters, section 323, selling a betting pool, section 202, and the list goes on. There are lots of offences that can attract six months. We would like to think the system would never end up seeking to deport somebody for these kinds of offences, but the moment we go down from two years to six months, we actually enter that territory where these kinds of Kafkaesque possibilities are there.

What about more recently, the effects of mandatory minimum legislation in Bill C-10? We know now that with marijuana, for example, the growing of six plants can lead to a six months sentence. The sentence cannot exceed six months, but it can also be six months under the new Bill C-10, when that takes effect in the Criminal Code: six months, six plants, no appeal. Does that seem at all proportionate to the kind of more nuanced decision making that we would want our laws to recognize. We hope that would never be used as a basis by the system to seek to deport somebody in and of itself, but there is nothing protecting against that result the way it is written.

The biggest problem is that the lower the threshold, the more people will be caught by it. More people who have permanent residence and landed immigrant status will suddenly be put in this category of deportable, even though what they have done in the grand scheme of things is not nearly as serious as what used to be the case under the law.

We have to begin to reflect on how much ownership we have to take of those among us who get into criminal trouble, who do end up with sentences right at the edge of six months, eight months, nine months. Who is responsible? What society is responsible for dealing with that issue? Is it always the other country that has a formal nationality, a country that a person may not have seen in 30 years, a person who may have come here at age two or age three and does not even speak the language of the other country, for example, or is it the country where the person grew up and basically produced the condition under which the crime occurred? We are not responsible for it, but we are that person's brothers and sisters. How do we think about the fact that the lower the threshold is, the more likely it is that people among us will end up in the headlights of the minister or the department of administrative immigration for this kind of deportation.

In the general sense, the bill may not appear offensive to those on the other side or to many in society, but when we look at how minimal the trigger is for somebody to be deported with no right of appeal, we really have to question whether this is the way our society wants to go. Two years itself is already something that was a compromise. Why we have gone to six months has escaped me.

Motions in amendment

[Sylvain Chicoine, NDP, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me to speak. I rise today in this House to discuss something that is very important to me and obviously to all Canadians, and that is the safety and protection of our children.

My colleague opposite, the member for Kootenay—Columbia, introduced a bill that would amend the Criminal Code with regard to the kidnapping of a young person. I understand why this member introduced such a bill, because I am a father of three. The stress that parents of kidnapped children experience is unimaginable. I think it is one of the most revolting crimes, and all Canadians are disgusted when they learn that a child has been kidnapped. A child's life is so fragile that it is important to do everything possible to protect and improve their safety. During times like these, we can see just how strong Canadian solidarity can be.

The questions we have to ask today are whether Bill C-299 will reduce the number of kidnappings in Canada. Will it improve public safety? Is this new bill relevant in the fight against crimes against a person? I am not convinced of that and I do not think that this bill will achieve the objective of reducing the number of kidnappings in Canada. That is why I will oppose this bill.

The purpose of Bill C-299 is to deter potential predators by imposing a minimum punishment of five years. It would include provisions for a mandatory minimum punishment of five years for offenders found guilty of kidnapping a young person under 16 years of age. Like all of the other kidnapping provisions in the Criminal Code, Bill C-299 would impose a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Yet, a maximum sentence of life in prison is already set out in the Criminal Code for this type of crime. The life sentence has also been imposed by the courts, including in British Columbia. The Conservatives and the hon. member for Kootenay—Columbia therefore feel that predators will be dissuaded by a minimum sentence of five years, rather than by the maximum sentence of life in prison that is already set out in the legislation. If a life sentence does not dissuade predators from kidnapping children, I do not believe that a minimum sentence of five years will be as effective or have any deterrent effect. In my opinion, the members opposite lack knowledge about criminology.

Once again, the Conservatives want to please their electoral base without any regard for the interests of Canadians or the reality of Canada's legal system. Minimum sentences are a judicial approach that even the most conservative and hardened American judges are starting to reject. They are concerned about the ineffectiveness of this approach and the burden it places on the prison system. During the debates on Bill C-10, their opinions in this regard appeared in the national papers. The Conservatives basically ignored these judges' experience.

With this bill, the Conservatives are once again trying to impose minimum sentences. They want to show the people of Canada that they are tough on crime, when the only effect this approach has is to place a heavier burden on the justice system. In addition, on several occasions, the Supreme Court has struck down the legislator's attempts to impose minimum sentences because such sentences went against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So, once again, the Conservatives are trying to impose such minimum sentences when they know full well that, in certain cases, these are unfortunately not the sentences that should be imposed. And I would just like to mention again that this will no doubt be challenged before the Supreme Court in the future.

The Conservatives are going to try to convince members of the House and Canadians that, since there is no minimum sentence, those who kidnap a child could be sentenced to six months in prison, for example. This is completely false. We must not fall into that trap. Canadians have the right to be well informed.

The NDP is tough on those who commit such crimes. We want to see maximum sentences imposed in these cases. However, we want to protect judicial discretion because we have faith in the existing judicial system.

If we look at sentences in kidnapping cases, we see that average sentences for this type of crime are around eight years in jail, which is quite a bit more than the five-year minimum that this bill would impose.

By introducing a mandatory minimum sentence, all the government is doing is tying judges' hands. This bill would not enable judges to take unique attenuating circumstances into account in certain cases.

It is difficult for lawmakers to write legislation that takes all of the possibilities into account, which is why judicial discretion is important. Judges must respect not only the letter of the law, but also the spirit. They must be able to interpret the law and hand down appropriate sentences that take into account the unique circumstances of each case.

We must have confidence in our legal system and in our judges, who typically make informed decisions that take into account both the law and legal precedent.

As I said, we have confidence in the justice system. That is why we will oppose this bill. We want to respect judicial discretion by opposing this five-year mandatory minimum sentence.

Current provisions allow judges to sentence those guilty of kidnapping to a maximum of life in prison. Judges have the freedom they need to hand down harsh sentences and ensure that dangerous offenders do as much time as they deserve. As I said, judges have typically sentenced offenders to more than eight years in prison. That is more than the five years this bill sets out.

This bill is problematic on two counts: the mandatory minimum sentence it recommends is shorter than what is typical in case law, and judicial discretion is being taken away for this type of crime.

Justice Major of the Supreme Court shares our opinion on this issue. He is concerned that the minimum sentence would be the rule. He said that no two cases are alike and that the minimum sentence would be inadequate in certain kidnapping cases. He wondered why this bill imposes a minimum sentence that is lighter than typical kidnapping sentences. He also pointed out that minimum sentences do not deter would-be criminals but would have serious consequences for other aspects of our legal system.

Bill C-299 is another clear example of the Conservatives' lack of understanding when it comes to justice issues. At first glance, this is an interesting approach, but upon closer scrutiny, it soon becomes clear that this bill does not really accomplish much of anything. The courts are much more severe on these issues than what this bill proposes. Most sentences are much longer than the minimum sentence set out in this bill.

As previously mentioned, a life sentence is often imposed. Do the Conservatives not realize that they are undermining the discretion of judges and the judicial system with this bill?

In budget 2012, the Conservatives slashed front-line forces by also imposing minimum sentences in several sections of the Criminal Code. Do they really believe that minimum jail sentences will make Canadians and Canadian families safer?

Instead of adopting punitive measures that have no deterrent effect, why does the government not invest in tools and resources for front-line police forces when a kidnapping takes place? Instead of focusing on punishment, I believe the Conservative should pay a lot more attention to prevention.

We are worried that the Conservatives are once again using a crime bill to try to score political points with victims and anyone who is sickened by this kind of offence. We are under the impression that this bill was introduced in order to please the extreme right wing of the Conservative base. Once again, the Conservatives are introducing a bill that presents a restrictive view of the problem. Minimum sentences, I repeat, are not the answer to kidnapping problems, and that is why we do not support this bill.

Increasing Offenders' Accountability for Victims Act

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to preface my question with, “Really?” Bill C-10 was Bill C-10 and Bill C-37 is Bill C-37. I am not sure where my hon. colleague is drawing the link that just because we stood up against Bill C-10 from the beginning, we should do the same thing for Bill C-37. There are elements in Bill C-37 that deserve being looked at in committee. There are elements in Bill C-37 that need to be changed, in particular the point on judicial discretion.

Could my hon. colleague enlighten us a little more on the importance of taking a good look at a bill, trying to change the things that do not work and enhancing the things that do work, which is what we are trying to do with Bill C-37?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the fact that members of the New Democratic Party say that they support the Liberals' efforts and thoughts in regard to the importance of judicial discretion.

When I have asked why the NDP members would vote to send the bill to committee, the response has tended to be that that is where it should go. Even though Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act, was strongly supported by provincial jurisdictions, including the NDP in Saskatchewan, the federal NDP voted against that bill going to committee. It is an issue of consistency and that is what I am looking to the member for. As the Liberals and the New Democrats voted against sending that bill to committee, it is a bit of a surprise that those members would not join us on this bill. Instead they have chosen to join the Conservatives in supporting this particular bill going to committee even though we seem to share the same concerns about judicial independence. I for one am a very strong advocate for listening to what the victims and others have to say.

If the government were to change the principle of the bill, then it would deserve the support of an opposition party. Would the member not agree?

Motions in amendment

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House and speak to this bill. Many hon. members have already talked about the summary of the bill, so I will not dwell on it. It has already been done. I will instead focus on some of the points in Bill C-350.

First, I would like to applaud the intent behind this bill, which is to provide support to the families of the accused and to victims by ensuring that offenders are required to fulfill their responsibilities toward them. That is a very noble intention. I am glad that we have the opportunity today to discuss this issue and that the bill will be referred to committee for study.

I would also like to point out that we have just witnessed something exceptional and remarkable: a Conservative member and an NDP member have introduced two very similar amendments, two amendments that go along the same lines. We often talk about disagreements between parties and about how impossible it is for them to work together. Today's event is a fine example that, despite disagreements, the various parties also have some common interests. All hon. members of the House are thinking people, knowledgeable and well informed about the issues they are working on.

The proposed amendments are very interesting and are heading in more or less the same direction. It will be interesting to see how they will be received in committee and how the members will work together.

The government wants to put the protection of families and victims first. However, this bill should not replace measures designed to better inform and advise victims and provide them with better financial support.

This bill currently states that offenders who are awarded monies will compensate victims. However, many cannot be accountable to the victims and families. We have to take these people into consideration. We must also ensure that this bill is not one we can use to say that we did everything we could. We can do more for the good of the victims and the offenders' families, for the children of offenders. That is my concern with this bill concerning victims.

Bill C-350 seeks to make offenders accountable, as indicated by the title of the bill. We must consider what will result in true accountability of offenders. Once again, a very specific approach is being taken to a problem, which is fair, because that is what we have to do in our work. But we must not lose sight of the broader issue of interest in Bill C-350.

The NDP believes that this bill is not the best way to make offenders accountable. Based on the testimony of many experts, among others, who appeared before the committee, an offender must be directly involved in decisions about paying compensation to victims and other financial decisions in order to develop his sense of responsibility. If such decisions are made for him and he is not asked for his input, he will not necessarily develop that sense of responsibility. He does not have a say, he does not even have to think about his situation. Will that really make him more accountable? The NDP believes that this question must be posed. Many experts are also wondering about this.

I spoke about the victims and accountability. I would now like to talk about rehabilitation and prevention. These issues are not addressed in this bill, and the Conservative Party has not talked about them much in connection with this bill. I continue to find this unfortunate and worrisome.

Accountability, yes. But what about rehabilitation? We support comprehensive rehabilitation programs that will reduce recidivism and make our cities safer. When we were debating mandatory minimum sentences, there was a lot of talk about safety in our streets and communities. However, the two concepts do not necessarily go hand in hand. If we want to make our cities and communities safer, we have to talk about rehabilitation and prevention.

In a 2007 report, Public Safety Canada recognized that former inmates face a number of challenges, such as limited access to jobs, that compromise their ability to become law-abiding citizens.

If we really want to help offenders fulfill their financial responsibilities toward their communities and their families, we have to think about what we can do to improve their access to jobs. The two go hand in hand, and that issue has to be part of a debate like this one. If the Conservative Party really cares about offender accountability, what is it prepared to do to ensure that offenders who are released from prison can find work and shoulder their responsibilities toward their communities?

Quebec's Centre de ressources pour délinquants comes to mind. The centre works to enhance the skills and employability of its clientele in order to facilitate integration or reintegration into the job market. These things exist and have already been implemented in several departments and provinces in different ways. The Centre de ressources pour délinquants is an example of that. Experts are available to offenders to ensure they have the legal, social and educational support they need to give them the best possible opportunity to reintegrate into the job market. The centre is part of the Association des services de réhabilitation sociale du Québec. Yes, Quebec. So we have to think about just how involved we can get in this issue, but it is worth mentioning.

Now let us talk about prevention. Once again, we do not hear this word enough when talking about safety and the role of inmates or offenders in our society. It is important to prevent crime, and not simply punish people. This point cannot be over-emphasized, especially when working with a Conservative government like this one. Why not invest in prevention? A report entitled “Cost and Effectiveness of Federal Correctional Policy” stated the following:

The skyrocketing costs associated with new bills [like Bill C-10 and Bill C-25] will put a great deal of pressure on rehabilitation programs, which could suffer if the new influx of prisoners is not accompanied by the additional resources needed to handle them.

We could learn from the mistakes of other countries that also favour punishment, but did not put enough additional resources into the system and whose rehabilitation programs are suffering a great deal as a result.

I think it is now time to discuss Bill C-36. I can make an interesting link here. This bill deals with elder abuse. This bill contains measures that give judges another tool for punishing crimes committed against seniors. If we really want to tackle the problem of elder abuse, then we also need to ask ourselves how we can prevent it and how we can support seniors to make it easier for them to report cases of abuse.

In fact, a number of bills claim to be fighting a problem, but they do not really get to the heart of that problem and do not take into account the factors of vulnerability and prevention that go along with all that.

Lastly, I would like to talk about the work that the committee did on Bill C-350. I am pleased to see that amendments were made to the bill after the work in committee with all the parties. However, from what I heard from my colleagues on that committee, a number of questions have yet to be answered. I do not understand why members who know their stuff cannot manage to get some answers. For example, does this bill encroach on provincial jurisdictions? Is there not a risk of limiting a judge's discretionary power?

How is it that we have not yet gotten answers to these questions, and how is that we are seeing limited debate and testimony in this type of committee?

In conclusion, the NDP will support this bill at second reading, but it is important that prevention and rehabilitation be included in these discussions and these debates. Restitution is possible for a theft or items broken by an offender, but the psychological or physical damage done during a crime cannot all be repaired, and someone who dies as a result of a crime cannot be brought back.

That is why punishment is not enough; we need to take action beforehand to prevent the crime.

Increasing Offenders' Accountability for Victims Act

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, here is the danger that justice is not done because what winds up happening is that instead of the peculiarities or particularities of a case that is in front of a judge being taken into consideration, what is taken into consideration is the opinion of a government on sentencing, an opinion which, of course, is backed by certain values. The whole point of the judiciary system is objectivity and independence.

If we impose upon our legal system the values of a particular political party, a particular lobby group or a particular interest group through this type of legislation, although I am not saying that is the case for Bill C-37 but it certainly was the case for certain parts of Bill C-10, then we are on a slippery slope indeed.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot.

Along with my colleagues, many of us have said that we encourage this bill to be the source of great discussion and deliberation at committee. Therefore, our side of the House will ensure it goes in that direction. However, we have pointed to some very serious issues that are in the bill but are also recurring issues in the bills the government has put forward with respect to crime.

One of those main issues we have is the way the bill could allow for decreased discretionary power on the part of our judges. We know that judges do critical work, not only as part of our justice system but really as part of our society. Their side of work is one of those key pillars on which Canadian society and Canadian democracy are built. Unfortunately, that is something the Conservative government has tried to chip away at, the work that judges do, that important part around discretionary power that they have bestowed upon them and use with great care and sensitivity day in and day out.

The other piece we do not support is the increased pressure, the hardship that this legislation would put on so many victims, people who have already fallen through the cracks of society, who are among the poorest of the poor, who in so many cases have lived a life of poverty and immense challenge financially. The bill would do nothing to address that reality which so many people face in the justice system.

I also want to speak to the extent to which this and so much legislation put forward by the government when it comes to crime really points to the hypocrisy in its tough on crime agenda. Where we can see that best is in a constituency like the one I have the honour of representing. Just last week, the chief and council of Lac Brochet along with the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak and the Denesuline First Nation in northern Manitoba came together and talked about the atrocious conditions people who were arrested in their community faced simply because the community had nowhere to put them. This is because the RCMP has closed the one holding cell that exists in the community and will only allow it to open if somebody with proper training can manage it.

The kicker is that there used to be a program funded by the federal government to ensure that people from Lac Brochet and northern communities could have the training to police their communities and to ensure that people who were apprehended would be in a safe space. The federal government has cut that funding. This program no longer exists for training and the end result is people have been taken to the arena of the community, have been chained to a door on the floor of that arena and treated with the kind of ignorance and offence that we cannot imagine in Canada. That is because this community has said it wants to ensure the public safety of individuals, it wants to ensure these people are away in a place where they will not harm anybody and themselves and the federal government is nowhere at the table to ensure they have a dignified way of doing so. Unfortunately, the government has turned around and absolved itself from any responsibility when that is not the case.

We are dealing with yet another bill where the government is claiming to want to do something to ensure our communities are safer and that victims are protected, but when communities in northern Canada want to do that very same thing, they do not have the support from the federal government to do so.

On the topic of prevention, the bill talks about fining criminals, but where is the money to make sure we do not have criminals to deal with or to reduce the number of people who end up falling through the cracks into a life of crime or on the other side of the tracks?

In communities like those I represent, and I will speak to The Pas, gang prevention funding has come to an end. A very successful program in the inner city run by The Pas Family Resource Centre has been told that its funding will not be renewed and it has no ability to service children above six years old to prevent them from joining a gang.

Is this the response that the federal government truly wants to show to a community that has struggled with gang violence in recent years? Are we going to wait for a shooting to happen, a death or another young person to be thrown into jail before that gang prevention money comes back to that organization?

Why is the federal government shutting out organizations like The Pas Family Resource Centre? Why is the federal government saying no to communities like Lac Brochet that want to prevent more criminals coming into our system? Why is the federal government not working especially with aboriginal communities that are often the source of so many people falling through the cracks, especially in northern Canada, and ending up in our correctional system?

If only that kind of passion for eliminating crime was infused into prevention, rehabilitation and supporting safer communities, then we could see a genuine approach to dealing with crime. Rather, there are half-baked bills like the one we have here and the rhetoric we see in the media where leaders in aboriginal communities have said that public safety and victims' rights are the very things they are concerned about, but when it is about partnering with the federal government, it is nowhere to be found.

I also want to point out that when we are looking ahead to try to truly deal with preventing and cutting down crime in our country we are in the best position to do that by looking at the evidence, listening to the advocate organizations that are on the ground and to the victim organizations that are on the front line, such as Elizabeth Fry or the John Howard Society. We should be listening to correctional workers who are increasingly concerned about what legislation like Bill C-10 would mean. We should be listening to the concerns of people who work with victims and to what the people within the justice system are saying.

Let us follow their lead. Let us follow the evidence-based research that indicates prevention and rehabilitation are the way to go. That is where the investments need to be made in order to truly cut down and eliminate crime and, at the end of the day, make our communities safer.

Status of Women

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on this World Refugee Day to outline the Conservatives' contempt for women.

In Bill C-31, a bill against refugees, the Conservatives are targeting the most vulnerable women by directly attacking sexual abuse survivors who are seeking asylum. The Conservatives do not care.

The Conservatives also attacked women in Bill C-10 by putting more and more women in prison for minor crimes, when statistics show that the majority of women in prison are also mothers. This legislation is breaking up families.

The omnibus budget bill, which was passed on Monday, amends the Employment Equity Act. Again, women are being targeted.

The height of contempt is Motion M-312, a motion that, in 2012, opens the abortion debate. Women have fought for their rights, and the Conservatives are allowing a man to interfere and send women back to the days of knitting-needle abortions.

Looking back over the past year, there is not much here for women. What is more, our Prime Minister does not even trust the women in his caucus to speak on his behalf during question period. Indeed, only 22 questions out of 349 were answered by women. That is a measly 6%.

That is sad, but the NDP will always be proud to stand up for women.

Aboriginal Affairs

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, today the Native Women's Association of Canada and Justice for Girls released a report that documents the impacts of intergenerational residential school trauma on criminalized women and girls.

The cross-country consultations entitled “Arrest the Legacy: From Residential Schools to Prisons” included over 300 first nations, Métis and Inuit women who have been in custody, as well as community and justice sector workers.

Aboriginal women are overrepresented in the Canadian prison system due to poverty, violence, mental health issues and multi-generational abuse.

This report includes several recommendations to improve the lives of aboriginal women and girls, such as alternatives to incarceration, increased support for community-led healing, and supportive housing.

The first step for the Conservative government is to listen to the research that comes from organizations such as the Native Women's Association of Canada. The second step is for the government to act to stop the devastating impacts of Bill C-10, to reverse the cuts to research and healing programming and to eradicate poverty among aboriginal women.

The Canadian government is leaving aboriginal women in the cold. It is time to respect first nations, Métis and Inuit women instead of criminalizing them.

Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, for two weeks in a row, we heard testimony from experts, front-line workers and refugees who came to express their concerns about Bill C-31 while it was being studied by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. I want to remind the House that a policy without justice is an inadequate policy. Bill C-31 completely jeopardizes refugee rights, and creates two classes of refugees.

The NDP does not support Bill C-31. The Conservatives should withdraw it so that the new Balanced Refugee Reform Act can work. Never before have the rights of refugees been as threatened as they are under the Conservatives. Never has our democracy been as discredited as it has been under the Conservative government, which is incapable of respecting the compromises consensually agreed upon with the other parties.

The government is unable to remember that the ratification of international refugee or human rights conventions requires us to make our legislation and policies consistent with the provisions of the international conventions we have signed. The experts who spoke to us reminded us that Canada is a signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees. They feel that Bill C-31 protecting Canada's immigration system act respects neither the letter nor the spirit of the convention.

Let us first recall that Bill C-31 is an omnibus bill to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, unfortunately by incorporating into Bill C-4 the most unreasonable provisions of former Bill C-11, which received royal assent in June 2010. This bill raises serious concerns in addition to those already raised by Bill C-4, the unconstitutional nature of which we have raised and highlighted in our previous interventions. All the witnesses we heard during the committee's study of the bill agreed unanimously.

I would like to draw the attention of the House to some of the concerns with this bill, both in terms of the Canadian charter and the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees. In response to Bill C-31, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers has said that, like the sorry Bill C-10, Bill C-31 is extremely complicated.

The most draconian measures in Bill C-4 have again been made part of Bill C-31. Take automatic and mandatory detention, for example. Bill C-4 proposed mandatory detention for one year for people fleeing persecution in their country of origin and entering Canada without identity documents in their possession.

Clearly, the safety of Canadians is a priority for the NDP. That is why the current immigration legislation provides for detaining foreign nationals when their identity is not known, when they might run away, and especially when public safety is at risk. So we can see how the provisions on detention found in Bill C-4, which are being reintroduced in Bill C-31 are a direct violation of our Constitution.

Furthermore, the jurisprudence constante of the Supreme Court is categorical in this regard. The Barreau du Québec, the Canadian Bar Association, the Young Bar Association of Montreal and other legal experts who gave testimony were categorical about the unconstitutional nature of detention under Bill C-31, and specifically the detention of children.

The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibits the detention of children and defines a child as a human being under 18 years of age. We are asking that the age of the child be consistent with the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Finally, the experts whom we have heard from in committee have hammered away at the point that the detention of children is prohibited because it is detrimental to them psychologically, mentally and physiologically, and to society as a whole. For example, Australia had introduced mandatory detention for asylum seekers, but it had to backtrack, because, not only did detention cause costs to skyrocket, but it also destroyed the fabric of society and communities.

Why are the Conservatives attempting to put themselves above the rule of law, which is a key principle of our democracy, even though they know what our highest court said about detention in the Charkaoui case? Why are they asking the House to pass a bill that we know will be subject to court challenges, as a number of experts reminded us?

Why are they attempting to mislead the House by proposing that it pass laws that they know violate not only our Constitution, but also the Canadian charter and human rights conventions that our country has signed? Pacta sunt servanda is a principle of international law. Signed conventions have to be respected.

There are also deadlines that violate a principle of natural justice. Lawyers specializing in refugee rights have said that they are deeply troubled by the short time frames that Bill C-31 gives refugee claimants to seek Canada's protection. They find that Bill C-31 drastically changes Canada's refugee protection system and makes it unfair.

Bill C-31 imposes unrealistic time frames and unattainable deadlines on refugee claimants and uses the claimants' inability to meet those deadlines to exclude them from protection.

In fact, under the terms of Bill C-31, refugee claimants have only 15 days to overcome the trauma of persecution, find a lawyer to help them, gather the documentary evidence to support their allegations, and obtain proof of identity from their country.

If their application is dismissed, refugee claimants would have 15 days within which to file an appeal under Bill C-31. As anyone can see, the deadlines imposed on refugee claimants do not allow them to make a full response and defence.

Under our justice system, the greater the risk to life, the longer the time frame accorded to the person being tried to prepare his defence. Bill C-31 does not respect this principle of fundamental justice. A number of witnesses pointed this out to us.

I am also deeply concerned not only about the new term—designated country of origin—that Bill C-31 introduces into our legislation but also about the undemocratic nature of the process for designating the countries in question. Under Bill C-31, the minister alone has the power to designate safe countries of origin, without first defining the designation criteria for these countries that refugees may come from.

According to the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, the designated safe country list and the unilateral power granted to the minister dangerously politicize Canada's refugee system.

Refugee claimants who are on a designated safe country list have even less time to submit their written arguments and will not be allowed an appeal.

Bill C-31 also relieves the minister of the obligation of justifying why a country is safe or considering the differential risks that certain minorities face in a country that is safe for other people.

If Bill C-31 is passed, refugees will become more vulnerable because their fate will depend on the political whims of the minister and the government. Failed claimants from designated countries of origin can be deported from Canada almost immediately, even if they have requested a judicial review of the decision. In other words, a person can be deported before his case is heard.

The Geneva convention stipulates that the personal fears of victims of persecution are to be taken into consideration. Nowhere does it say that international protection is given to victims of persecution because of the country in which the persecution occurred, or whether or not the victim used clandestine means to reach a state that is a party to the convention.

It is not only in undemocratic countries that religious minorities are persecuted. Discrimination based on sexual orientation is not restricted to undemocratic countries. Persecution based on race can occur in any country in the world. All member states of the European Convention on Human Rights are democratic countries. But the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights is replete with decisions condemning democratic states for their abuse of individuals.

The government has frequently invoked the UNHCR's favourable opinion of the safe countries of origin list.

I would like to conclude by mentioning my final concern about the changes being made by Bill C-31 with respect to applications on humanitarian grounds. These applications are a tool that allow individuals to remain in Canada, even if they are not eligible for other reasons. Unfortunately, under Bill C-31, applicants awaiting a decision from the Refugee Appeal Division cannot simultaneously submit an application on humanitarian grounds.

I would like to point out that our country has always been in the forefront where basic human rights are concerned.

The refugee problem is a human rights problem and, since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all people are acknowledged to have these rights, whatever their race, religion, political beliefs or lifestyle.

Asylum seekers are above all human beings. They are to be treated with respect, humanity and dignity. More than anything else, they fall into the category of vulnerable people who need our compassion and our protection. What is involved here is universal human justice.

This bill and these universal values are poles apart. That is why Bill C-31 should be rejected.

Justice

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives continue to boast about their tough on crime agenda, but the more we look into it, the more we realize that it was written on the back of a napkin.

Quebec's public safety department estimates that Bill C-10 will increase the prison population by 20%. That means an additional 1,000 people in the prison system, which is already 96% full.

If the government were serious, it would co-operate with the provinces to make sure they have the necessary resources.

For the time being, the only thing it does is send the bill to the provinces. Why?

Report Stage

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, according to the hon. member opposite, this bill has been the focus of the most studies that this House has ever conducted.

One of my colleagues said it was the nth time, but it seems to me that this government is gagging us for the 21st time by limiting the time for debate. It is not just a question of the time available for study in committee, but also the time granted to the democratically elected representatives. They must be able to rise in this House and express their views on a bill without having a feeling that the gun is pointed at their heads and being told that they have to vote and pass this bill immediately. They must have a chance to sit down and pay particular attention to it, as new members must.

Every time it happens, we hear that this is the bill that has been studied the most often in committee, with the most days, the most hours and the most witnesses. I heard the same thing about Bill C-10; I heard the same thing about Bill C-19; and I have heard the same thing about all the bills that are studied in committee. Now we are hearing the same thing about this very important bill.

This is how the government has decided to proceed. Because of the majority that it got with the support of 39% of the population, this is how we are forced to proceed. We have to bow to this state of affairs and express our views the way they have chosen.

In any event, I would like to congratulate my colleagues for Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, Timmins—James Bay, and Jeanne-Le Ber who, in one way or another, have spent endless hours working on the bill, and all those who sat on the committee for never-ending hours. In fact, they spent endless hours studying a bill that will have a major impact, an enormous impact, on the lives of creators and producers and on the lives of consumers, the people from all walks of life that we represent here, in this House. It is our duty to find the right balance to ensure that we respect everyone's rights, but it is not always easy.

Here again, there are numerous amendments to Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Copyright Act. There are tons of amendments. Some people will say that these are the amendments that society has been waiting a long time to see. Perhaps they are, but it is not because they are long-awaited that they have to be shoved down our throats.

I understand that my time is up, Mr. Speaker. I will continue after question period.

Justice

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

Mr. Speaker, as members know, Bill C-10 zeroes in on drug traffickers and those who molest children. An estimate that this is going to add 1,000 new prisoners to provincial facilities in the province of Quebec would be 365,000 a year, just the provincial ones and not the federal one. I reject the idea that half a million people in the province of Quebec would be convicted every year of drug trafficking or child molestation. I reject that and I think most people would agree with me.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, because of Bill C-10, the justice bill, an average of 1,000 more prisoners will be sent to Quebec's 18 prisons every day. These prisons are already at capacity.

In addition to the ongoing $80 million expense, Quebec will have to spend $750 million to build new cells, even though it has the lowest crime rate in North America.

Who does the government want to take money away from in order to build prisons: families, the ill, young children? Who?

Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise on behalf of my constituents in Gatineau, but I am not proud to rise on Bill C-38, which should be extremely important because of what the budget contains. It is a huge document. The only bill I have ever seen that was bigger was Bill C-10, which was quite lengthy.

Bill C-38 is a hefty bill containing 753 clauses, only 51 of which have to do with taxes. The other 702 clauses set out a new way of governing. If that is not doing a bad job, I do not know what it is. That may be why the people of Gatineau are so fed up with this government.

Not a day goes by when I do not receive tons of messages via email, Facebook and Twitter from people in Gatineau who are fed up with the way the government does things: always acting without any transparency, in secret, without considering whether what they are doing makes sense or debating with the opposition to try to make the best laws here in Canada, and always trying to pull a fast one in big bills like this one.

The Conservatives are lucky to be in the majority with their big 39% of the vote because otherwise this bill would likely cause the same reaction as in 2008 when the Conservatives tried to slip into the economic and fiscal update two politically explosive measures, which had never been debated before: the abolition of public financing of parties and of the right to strike in the federal public service. It seems as though the Conservatives were not put off by the spontaneous reaction of the Canadian public on that occasion. The Conservatives do not give two hoots and believe that they have the majority with their impressive 39%, and they are trying to pull the same stunt yet again.

I certainly will not be encouraging the people in my riding of Gatineau to like this government any more than they do. They already tell me every day that they are not really happy with the government and that they are very much looking forward to 2015.

That being said, when you consider the overall impact of Bill C–38, it is enough to give you shivers down the spine. Moreover, I would ask the Conservative members to do more than simply rashly and blindly do what the first and second rows tell them to do. Indeed, they will have to explain in their respective ridings why particular ways of doing things have been instituted because Bill C–38 is going to affect a number of issues that are extremely important to Canadians.

By the way, for those who are not already aware of it, our debate is still subject to what I call a gag order. The government likes to call it a limited time for debate and boasts that it has allocated four long days for debate. The government has told us that the member who was finance critic before the end of the leadership race, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster, has already used up all the available hours.

But the fact is that it was not a filibuster. It was simply a demonstration of the fact that we used the only time the government allocated to us, whereas normally in this House members are given an opportunity to express themselves, not necessarily to their hearts content, but in keeping with the principles of representation. I thought that we were here to represent our constituents, but that does not seem to be the case. I consider myself lucky to be one of the chosen few who will be able to rise during the couple of days that the glorious Conservative government has allocated to us to speak about such an important bill.

If I were to put on my justice critic hat, I would say that there is even a chapter that applies to this in Bill C-38. I would not have a clue what it is doing there. Perhaps it is for economic, budgetary or other reasons? Not at all.

It would amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to eliminate the requirement of a hearing for certain reviews.

When you read this kind of thing in a budget implementation act, in Bill C-38, you wonder whether someone has made a mistake. You look at the printed pages and the computer screen in order to see whether some other sections or some other legislation has been mixed in with it. But no, this is really what Bill C-38, the budget implementation act, says.

In fact, it announces plans to review the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act. Bill C-38 also talks about implementing the Framework Agreement on Integrated Cross-Border Maritime Law Enforcement Operations between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America.

Just by themselves, these are all things that could take a some time to study and to determine whether this procedure is correct and in line with Canada's rules of law and natural justice.

Unfortunately, once again they are using the sledgehammers on us, just to satisfy their ideology that aims at reducing government with no other common thread than that of reducing for the sake of reducing and minimizing the things that they do not believe in. There will be changes to old age security, employment insurance and the Canada pension plan.

The people watching us know that we have talked a great deal about increasing the retirement age from 65 to 67, something that makes many people feel insecure, even those who are already in that age category and who will not necessarily be affected by the change. These people are well aware that if the government is now able to do this to the generation that is coming up behind them, nothing will prevent it from saying anything, any time, anyhow, and from changing the things on which they were once able to rely.

There is nothing that is certain in life any more, and this is perhaps the message I am sending to the people who are watching, and particularly to the voters in my riding who sent me here with 62% of the vote, unlike the Conservatives who received 39%, and who are pulling out their hair at hearing it said so often that it does not make sense. Is there anything that is untouchable in the opinion of this government? Are there rights that are not rights?

Another example is the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act, which is being repealed. In Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures, the government has decided that the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act will be repealed. This act was created in the 1930s to set wage standards and minimum hours of work for construction workers working on federally funded projects. Under the act, salaries are set in accordance with current industry norms, and hours are set according to provincial standards. Eliminating these minimum standards will allow employers to circumvent rates set by unions. Congratulations. This is yet another attack against those the government likes to call “big union bosses“.

I have some news for them. Thanks to all of that and perhaps to certain “big union bosses” and certain battles that have been fought over the past decades, children of a certain age have been prohibited from working, because it simply did not make sense. Pregnant women are no longer forced to continue working if their work becomes too dangerous. The government must stop painting people who fight for legitimate causes as brainless criminals who are doing this simply to upset the public. What upsets the public is when they see bills like this one, bills of this size, into which the government tries to slip all kinds of measures, because it cannot do so through separate bills, since it is afraid of attracting too much attention.

I will leave it to my colleagues to give plenty of other examples of things that will have a serious impact, for the examples I have given are merely small ones.

On behalf of the people of Gatineau, I say shame on this government for introducing this bill, which demonstrates its clear contempt for democracy and contempt for the most fundamental rights of the people of Canada.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what is disconcerting is not only the overall approach with respect to environmental protection, or the absence regarding environmental protection, but the prospective chilling effect that the critiques of critics have on the overall discussion of this issue as a whole.

We saw the same thing with regard to Bill C-10. We see the same thing with regard to Bill C-26.

There is a pattern here in which those who criticize the government, if it is in matters of criminal justice, are said to be on the side of the criminals and not on the side of the victims, or on the side of the child pornographers and not on the side of those who seek to protect children.

This kind of indictment, and it is not even by innuendo but indeed indictment, by chilling debate, by silencing dissent, does credit neither to the substance of the legislation, which should be allowed to be debated on the merits, and there is no more compelling concern in that regard than that which relates to the environment, nor to the democratic process itself, which should allow for all forms of discussion, debate, dissent, critique and the like.

We are missing this, not only in this debate but on other bills as well.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to address Bill C-38 on behalf of my constituents in Mount Royal.

While my constituents might understandably assume that the bill relates to the budget, in fact this 400-plus-page omnibus bill actually has very little to do with the budget. Many of the proposals therein have particularly deleterious consequences for the environment. Accordingly, I will be splitting my time with our environment critic, the hon. member for Etobicoke North.

A related problem is that while this budget implementation bill is supposed to flow from the budget speech, which itself is not only a financial statement but a statement of values and a reflection of priorities, this budget, in its reflection of priorities, does not note or even utter the words “social justice”. It does not note or even speak of “fairness” or “equality”. It does not note or even reference the Charter whose 30th anniversary we celebrate this year, nor does it reference or note anywhere the word “humanitarian”.

While the budget speech did outline certain measures that we see legislated in Bill C-38, this budget implementation omnibus bill goes above and beyond anything we have seen and beyond any of the enabling authority of the budget itself.

In its 400-plus pages, there are amendments to more than 60 statutes. It covers everything from fisheries to nuclear safety, from territorial borrowing limits to air transport. It is an enormous hodgepodge, bundling together legislation not unlike Bill C-10 that does not allow for the necessary differentiated parliamentary discussion and debate, let alone the necessary oversight of the legislation. It imbues the executive with arbitrary authority to the exclusion of Parliament, thereby serving as a standing abuse to the canons of good governance, transparency and accountability. Indeed, this alone should be cause for its defeat.

As Andrew Coyne has put it, and I quote, “The scale and scope is on a level not previously seen, or tolerated”. He notes that this bill makes “a mockery of the confidence convention” and that there is no “common thread” or “overarching principle” between the legislative items therein, let alone its standing contempt for Parliament in matters of process and procedure.

Moreover, and again on the crucial issues of parliamentary process and procedure, which are principled concerns, while the bundling together of disparate pieces of omnibus legislation as a confidence bill is problematic enough on its own, this bill is slated to go to the finance committee in its entirety. Accordingly, the review of the environmental regulations therein, which overhaul, weaken and undermine the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and environmental protection as a whole, will thus not be reviewed by the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, where it belongs. The provisions that abolish the First Nations Statistical Institute and make changes to the First Nations Land Management Act will not be the subject of examination and study by the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, where it belongs. I can go on with numerous examples in this regard.

If circumventing proper and thorough parliamentary review in committee was not enough, the government, as we saw earlier, has invoked time allocation to limit the amount of time and discussion on this bill.

I am not suggesting that invoking time allocation, as the government has done again and again, or the use of an omnibus vehicle, as has occurred with Bill C-10, are against the legislative rules. What I am suggesting, as have many commentators, is that its use here and now on this particular omnibus bill is unnecessary, prejudicial, suprisingly undemocratic, in effect, unparliamentary and otherwise unsubstantiated and unwarranted.

Surely if Parliament had to debate something like going to war, it would be easy to see why we might time-allocate to ensure we get to the most pressing debate first, or if there were court decisions that affected many statutes, we might easily welcome an omnibus bill that would make the same change to many statues. What is so disconcerting with Bill C-38 is that the government need not be in a rush. There is no coherent or compelling theme to the omnibus proposals contained in the bill.

The opposition is not opposed to some of what is in Bill C-38. For example, the proposed changes to the custom and tariff rules sound reasonable. What we are opposed to is the take it or leave it, one size fits all omnibus approach to legislating that does not allow the necessary differentiated and deliberative oversight or review, or review by the particular and appropriate parliamentary committees. The government and the opposition can co-operate if the government would simply respect the opposition and be responsive in debate.

Again, I will remind my colleague that the government assumes that its legislation in every instance is perfect and, in so doing, believes there are no amendments that need even be tendered let alone adopted. This occurred in the case of Bill C-10 when, in response to amendments I introduced at the time, the government summarily rejected them because they came from the opposition, it seemed. It reintroduced the amendments on its own, a matter that could have been avoided, as the Speaker then noted in terms of the procedural complications that then ensued. Moreover, while I will be voting against this bill in large part because of the way it was introduced and how it is being pushed through Parliament, in terms of matters of process and its abuse, I will use my remaining time to outline some of my objections to the substance of the bill. Regrettably, time is limited and I therefore cannot address every flaw of this legislation.

First, Bill C-38 marginalizes low-income seniors by increasing the qualifying age for OAS from 65 to 67. While the government claims this change is necessary, and it did so just now in debate, for the sustainability of OAS, this contradicts Canada's chief actuarial officer and the PBO, who agree that the change is unsound and unnecessary as the current situation and system is sufficiently sustainable.

Second, the government proposes to close the files of federal skilled workers who applied prior to 2008, without any chance on their part to review or appeal this decision. It is not surprising that some have announced plans to take the government to court over this as a matter of fundamental fairness and due process. Indeed, all who apply to Canada should have their applications judged on their merits, not an arbitrary deadline set by the minister and applied in a retroactive fashion.

Third, cuts are being made to various food inspection agencies. These agencies keep Canadians safe and secure while ensuring the food chain is not contaminated. The government has yet to explain how these cuts would not prejudice the health and safety of Canadians or how food safety would be maintained in the absence of complete and adequate funding.

Fourth, the true nature of public service cuts in this bill still remains unknown. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives estimates that in addition to the 19,200 positions being eliminated in budget 2012, there will be a further 6,300 jobs cut as a result of the government's previous strategic reviews that have yet to be implemented, and a further 9,000 cuts as a result of the government's budget operating freeze. That would create a total of 34,500 federal public service job cuts associated with this budget cycle alone. As well, the Parliamentary Budget Officer agrees that the government's figure of 19,200 public service jobs being cut does not represent the full number. He said, “...additional job losses will be required. ...we're actually talking about cuts on top of cuts”.

I raise this in particular to note that we are being asked to rubber-stamp the government's agenda without the necessary information, in a manner that precludes the necessary oversight and review and when it is clear that there are inconsistencies with what the government is saying and what independent experts assert. Parliamentarians must be afforded the facts and figures upon which they are being forced to pronounce, as was the case in Bill C-10. We did not receive it then and we are not receiving it now. This, in effect, amounts to a kind of standing contempt of Parliament.

Fifth, and my colleague from Etobicoke North will speak further to this in a moment, this bill rewrites Canada's laws on environmental assessment and repeals the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, weakening our environmental regulations but with consequences far beyond this.

In an email just this morning, a constituent wrote this. Considering that when environmental damage is caused, it has a domino effect on our food and water and thus affects Canadians' health and livelihood, these issues are actually also human rights issues. We have the right to safe clean water, safe accessible food and the myriad of other essential benefits we get from a properly functioning ecosystem.

Sixth, we have the elimination of a series of libraries and archives throughout different departments as part of the latest budget cuts, including the Canadian Council of Archives, which may close as soon as this Friday. This would affect historians, researchers, the media, Parliament and the public who deserve to have information preserved in addition to access to this information.

While I do not have time to elaborate on what this bill includes, I will close with a note about what is not in this bill. This bill does not address that which must be addressed. First and foremost is job creation, not just loss of jobs. Nor does it address the issues that matter most to my constituents in terms of social justice, access to justice and the promotion and protection of fundamental rights and freedoms.

Accordingly, and with this I close, whether it is marginalizing low-income seniors by increasing the qualifying age for OAS or cutting funds to regional development programs that create jobs or not announcing any new funding for affordable housing when the existing program funds are set to expire soon, this budget is simply wrong-headed, misguided, prejudicial and disconnected from the needs of Canadians and from my constituents.

In short, Bill C-38 marks a sad chapter in Canadian parliamentary history.

Criminal Code

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, while the debate this evening is on Bill C-394 and criminal organization recruitment, it reflects and, indeed, invites initial comment on the overall approach to criminal policy by the Conservative government in general.

In this bill, we see the problems of this generic approach to criminal law, namely, that everything is a matter for the criminal law even if there already exists an offence in the Criminal Code on this issue, that the only way to address these criminal matters is through the prism of punishment and that the best approach to punishment is through the use of mandatory minimums.

Frankly, this is a variance with long-standing principle, policy and an evidence-based approach to criminal justice. The government's preoccupation with this type of legislating is not only somewhat disingenuous but also ineffective, wasteful, prejudicial, constitutionally suspect and, simply put, bad public policy.

I realize that colleagues in this place may be somewhat surprised that I am beginning with this type of approach and perspective. However, I believe that as a chamber, given this whole approach to policy-making, that we must take a step back and gain some perspective on what we are doing.

I know the government is very quick to pounce on these types of critiques and to label those who make them, be it the Liberal Party, others or myself, as being soft on crime. We all have a shared commitment to combatting crime. The issue is how we combat it, whether we are smart and effective on crime or whether we are in a situation where we are simply legislating for the sake of legislating and sending a signal as if we are tough on crime when in fact the very subject matter may already be present in the Criminal Code.

If one looks at the legislation, it proposes to punish anyone who ”recruits, solicits, encourages or invites a person to join a criminal organization”. This offence would become the new section 467.11 of the Criminal Code, but, and this is the important point, enhancing the ability of a criminal organization is already a crime under the Criminal Code.

Section 467.11 of the Criminal Code, the very section to which this bill adds a subsection, clearly states:

Every person who, for the purpose of enhancing the ability of a criminal organization to facilitate or commit an indictable offence under this or any other Act of Parliament, knowingly, by act or omission, participates in or contributes to any activity of the criminal organization is guilty of an indictable offence....

I have no problem with legislation that sometimes seeks to make a necessary clarification to the law or to enhance the law, but what is being suggested here is that somehow without this bill there will be no offence with respect to gang recruitment. Yet recruitment previously was one of the issues on the minds of the legislators themselves in this House, as evidenced by the fact that when enacting section 467.11 in 2001, the then-minister of justice, Anne McLellan, said in this place upon the introduction of what is currently in the Criminal Code, in order to reference that this was already anticipated and then implemented as law:

We know that successful recruitment enhances the threat posed to society by criminal organizations. It allows them to grow and to more effectively achieve their harmful criminal objectives. Those who act as recruiters for criminal organizations contribute to these ends both when they recruit for specific crimes and when they recruit simply to expand the organization's human capital.

Thus, the express provisions of the proposed participation offence make it clear that the crown does not, in making its case, need to link the impugned participation, in this case recruitment, to any particular offence. In fact, these words could have been spoken by the introducer of this particular bill because that particular section in the Criminal Code already covers what this bill purports to do, as reflected in the words of the then justice minister at the time. Indeed, this is the current state of the law.

Section 467.11 of the Criminal Code goes on to note that in the prosecution of an offence under subsection (1) it is not necessary for the prosecutor to prove that, and it goes through a whole series of factors which, for reasons of time, I will not enter into here. If one looks at the offence, one will see that it already covers that which this bill purports to do.

I do not therefore wish to dwell on some of those technical points of law. Suffice it to say that the behaviour the new offence seeks to criminalize is something already criminal under another provision of the Criminal Code. Whatever act that would give rise to this proposed section would also likely be criminal under another section, such as the offences relating to counselling, aiding, abetting, conspiracy and the like.

As such, Bill C-394 is both duplicative and arguably duplicitous as well, duplicative in that it essentially repeats what is already in the Criminal Code and somewhat duplicitous in that it is being presented as if this were our only option with respect to combatting gang recruitment and as if there were no present offence that deals with this issue before us, and that those who will oppose this piece of legislation are again somehow soft on crime or do not care about street gangs and the like.

As I mentioned in my introduction, Conservative crime policy is regrettably all about punishment, yet we should be seeking to prevent young people from joining gangs to begin with. This involves an understanding and appreciation of the serious initiatives that need to be taken with respect to education, social services and the like, in order to allow people to stay in school for as long as they can to provide them with employment opportunities, so that young people are shown that there are alternatives to gang life.

Yet this would involve, and this is the core of my remarks here this evening, addressing the underlying causes and concerns relating to gang crime: housing, poverty, income inequality, employment, minority inclusion and access to education, and an understanding of why young people join gangs.

There are no young people in Canada contemplating gang life because they believe there is no offence against it or their recruitment in the Criminal Code.

There are plenty of offences in the Criminal Code, an ever-expanding list that has grown tremendously with the adoption of Bill C-10, and yet these do very little to address the root causes and concerns of crime. In fact, many of them will only lead to an increase in crime.

Here I am speaking in particular of mandatory minimum penalties, something which Bill C-394 seeks to add to the Criminal Code in the matter of gang recruitment. While I have spoken many times in the House on this point, once again one finds an ignoring or marginalizing of the evidence with respect to the fallout of mandatory minimums.

Simply put, not only do we know that mandatory minimums do not deter crime, rather they tend to increase crime both within prisons, which become schools for crime, and outside prisons. They do not deter crime. This is not my conclusion. This is a conclusion reached by studies the world over and even our own justice department here in Canada.

They remove necessary prosecutorial and judicial discretion, leading to pleas for lesser offences or forcing trials where there may have been none. This clogs the courts. The Canadian Bar Association has warned us that with the addition of more mandatory minimums, we may end up in a situation where more accused are set free contrary to the intention and objectives of the government's legislation to begin with simply because their charter right to a fair trial within a reasonable period of time has been violated.

Moreover, mandatory minimums will lead to further overcrowding in prisons, yet prisons in this country are already overcrowded. We have seen in U.S. court judgments that overcrowding amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

Lastly, though perhaps most important, such sentences also invite constitutional critiques and have been struck down, as we saw recently in the Ontario courts, for being cruel and unusual, arbitrary, disproportionate, outrageous and intolerable.

While I do not have time to elaborate further, I would like to conclude by simply reminding members that criminal law should be as much about prevention as it should be about punishment. Our approach to social evils should be as much to ensure that individuals and groups have a viable way of avoiding that which leads them into gang recruitment through all the causes and concerns that I addressed earlier in this regard.

Protecting Canada's Seniors Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise here in the House today to speak to Bill C-36 as the seniors critic for the official opposition.

It is no secret that Canada is facing an aging population, which, I would like to point out, is not a problem in itself. Our society is enriched by its seniors, who still contribute a great deal to society by volunteering, sharing precious time with their families, helping their friends and neighbours, and investing directly in their communities and their surroundings. Our aging population is clearly not a problem in itself.

However, we need to ensure that the government and its programs adapt to the situation so that everyone can continue to live with dignity until they reach the end of their lives, without any problems. This is possible.

We have known about our aging population for some time now, since those who are 60 today were not born yesterday. We began taking measures a long time ago to prepare for this situation.

One question that keeps coming up right now about our aging population has to do with all kinds of abuse that our seniors are suffering. Since we have an aging population, it is especially important that we seriously ask ourselves how we can help our seniors. We must ensure that elder abuse diminishes and, ideally, that it disappears altogether.

Today, Bill C-36 is a good start and could become part of the solution to the problem of elder abuse.

I would like to begin by briefly talking about elder abuse. Clearly, all forms of abuse are unacceptable in our society, but there are certain distinctive characteristics of elder abuse.

The most prevalent kind of abuse that seniors tend to suffer is financial exploitation. Next, in order of prevalence, comes psychological abuse and, finally, physical abuse ranks third.

Another distinctive characteristic of elder abuse is that it is often people close to them who commit the abuse: members of their family, even their immediate family, neighbours, friends and caregivers.

Another thing about elder abuse is that it is largely under-reported. In fact, according to the Réseau québécois pour contrer les abus envers les aînés, nearly 80% of abuses are never reported. That is a huge percentage. Why? Because seniors are especially vulnerable. They are afraid of being isolated and uprooted from their lives. They are afraid that if they report a family member, that family member will reject them and they will end up even more isolated. They are afraid that if they report the person who cares for them, they will stop getting their regular care and will be sent to a nursing home. For abused seniors, reporting that abuse has specific and very significant consequences. As a result, seniors unfortunately often put up with abuse and keep mum in order to protect themselves from something that they believe could be worse.

Seniors need to know that someone will be there for them, that if they report abuse, they will get all the help they need to get through the situation.

Bill C-36 recognizes the seriousness of elder abuse. The Criminal Code currently recognizes a number of aggravating factors in cases of child abuse or abuse of persons with disabilities, but there is nothing in the legislation to make elder abuse an aggravating factor. The vulnerability of seniors in cases of abuse has not been recognized. Bill C-36 recognizes this factor.

The NDP is pleased to support this bill at second reading because we believe it is an important and necessary measure.

However, that is not all. A very interesting committee, the Parliamentary Committee on Palliative and Compassionate Care, studied the issue of elder abuse and made some recommendations to Parliament with a view to addressing this problem.

Bill C-36 tackles the criminal aspect of elder abuse. We must consider whether we want to punish people who carry out the abuse and whether we also want to prevent abuse. They do not necessarily go hand in hand. Giving a longer sentence to someone who commits elder abuse may not really reduce the number of cases of abuse or increase reporting of elder abuse. These two things do not necessarily go hand in hand. Yes, we have to punish the perpetrators, but we also have to prevent and reduce abuse and ensure that we make it easier for seniors to report it.

There were some very interesting things in the committee's report. First, it is important to launch an extensive awareness campaign. We have to make people aware of elder abuse and show them that this abuse is serious. People must know that society has a role to play in helping seniors report abuse.

Second—and I am still talking about targeted, effective measures—the report talks about prevention programs. Not only do people have to be made aware of the problem, but we have to go one step further and prevent elder abuse. For example, the committee mentions training people who care for the elderly and providing family members with information so that they can recognize the signs, determine whether an elderly relative is being abused or not, and support that person in reporting the abuse.

Third, there has to be an intervention service. It is all well and good to prevent abuse or detect it and help an elderly person report it, but once that happens, what then? Seniors need to know that they have access to people and a system that can help them through their ordeal. They do not have to be afraid of losing their freedom, their loved ones or their independence if they accuse an abuser. Intervention services should include offering seniors who have been mistreated psychosocial and other care. That is another very important aspect of what should be done to fight elder abuse.

Fourth, the report talks about a legal response, which Bill C-36 addresses. Yes, there is a “legal response” element to tackling elder abuse. However, there are three other elements that are just as important.

The NDP will support Bill C-36, but we must be clear about the fact that it is not enough. If we focus only on legal measures, we will be missing a very important point. We must not forget that we need to prevent crime, and not merely punish criminals. Unfortunately, punishing criminals is the Conservative way. We saw this with the mandatory minimum sentences proposed in Bill C-10. However, prevention and intervention are measures that can truly help people who suffer abuse, and we do not talk about that enough here in the House.

Here are some suggestions of concrete measures that could be taken in response to the suggestions made by the Parliamentary Committee on Palliative and Compassionate Care. Factors that cause seniors to be more vulnerable include poverty and dependence on family members or caregivers. This means that a senior who has limited resources is much more dependent on others and will therefore be much less likely to report any financial or other abuse. A senior who does not have a spot in an affordable, appropriate seniors' home and must therefore live with a friend, neighbour or family member will be unlikely to report that person, because the senior would have nowhere to go if he or she were forced to leave.

Thus, creating a national affordable, suitable housing strategy for seniors would be another way of tackling elder abuse. I could mention several other ways of doing so. In closing, I think my message is clear: some legal measures are needed, but that is not the only way to tackle the problem of elder abuse.

Citizen's Arrest and Self-defence Act

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Surrey North for agreeing to share his time with me as we debate Bill C-26. I asked specifically for an opportunity to join the debate today on behalf of the constituents I represent in the riding of Winnipeg Centre.

Every time I poll the constituents in my riding as to what their top of mind issue might be, consistently for the last 15 years the number one issue has been safety, crime and criminal justice issues, safe streets and the right to walk the streets free of molestation and with a sense of comfort and safety. That has been the prevailing issue of about 34% or 36% of those people answering my surveys. Things like tax cuts are down around 8%, and perhaps that is a function of the socio-economic demographics of my riding as it is one of the poorest postal code areas in the country. Low income people are more likely to be affected by and have their lives touched by crime, violence and even the criminal justice system.

I am particularly interested in this legislation and how it would affect ordinary Canadians.

I also want to compliment and pay tribute to my colleague from Gatineau for representing the party on this sometimes controversial issue with integrity and a sense of balance that such a sensitive issue calls for. I also recognize the comments that were made by other members of the NDP and the origin of this particular bill.

The member for Trinity—Spadina can claim responsibility for us having this debate today as Mr. David Chen, the owner of the Lucky Moose Food Mart, resides in her riding. It was the very high profile issue associated with Mr. Chen's frustration at so often being the target of shoplifting at his small business that he was compelled to take what we would consider to be dangerous and extraordinary action but which most Canadians would agree was justified and necessary at the time.

However, we are dealing with a bunch of competing rights. As with many pieces of legislation that properly fall before the chamber, it is an issue on which reasonable people can reasonably disagree and therefore we do not want to take this issue lightly.

In the few moments that I have I will start from the premise that the benchmark of a civil society is the quality of its criminal justice system and that the criminal justice system should be measured by its fairness and its application instead of the concern that there is sometimes an arbitrary application of criminal justice issues. Also, in the element of fairness, we must take into account some of the driving forces underlying the problem as it is presented to us.

I am a former labour leader. I have negotiated dozens if not hundreds of collective agreements. Every time we sought to change a clause in a collective agreement, two questions were put to us by the management side: First, why do we want to make this clause change? Second, has this clause been a problem during the life of the collective agreement?

I think we can safely say in this example that there is justification for opening section 494 of the Criminal Code that deals with a citizen's arrest based on the extraordinary case of Mr. Chen and the Lucky Moose Food Market that brought the public's attention to this compelling issue.

The reason I began in the context of trying to describe the socio-economic demographics of my riding is that the opposite of poverty is not wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice. When we look at the high incidents of crime and in fact violence and contact with the criminal justice system in low income areas I think the argument makes itself.

When I look at the circumstances surrounding Mr. David Chen and the case that was put forward so compellingly by my colleague from Trinity—Spadina, I am gratified to know that all parties in the House of Commons acknowledge the necessity but, at the same time, we are confounded by the Conservatives' approach to criminal justice issues in the 41st Parliament and, in fact, even in the 40th Parliament when they were in a minority situation.

We have seen issues used as an excuse to raise the spectre of crime and violence in the streets as justification for putting forward legislation that cannot be easily justified. I am thinking of Bill C-10 where the Province of Manitoba, my home province, actually came to the government asking for certain changes with the detention, for example, in the auto theft situation when Manitoba was experiencing a great rash of auto thefts, often by young offenders. The police and the courts were frustrated by the limitations of holding a young offender who may have been apprehended that evening in the act of auto theft, being released the same night and then sometimes getting picked up by the same police in yet another vehicle, all in the context of a 12-hour period.

The Province of Manitoba came to the federal government urging it to make changes to where young offenders could be detained overnight until such time as they could make their first court appearance. That found its way into this new bill that has been quite controversial, but talk about baby and the bathwater. The ultimate legislation that we wound up with went far beyond any reasonable justification.

As I illustrated, the first question we need to ask when we open legislation to amend a clause is whether there is justification for it. We need to know whether the clause has been a compelling problem? In many of these cases, the only thing we were trying to address was a straw man built up by the Conservatives to strike fear in the hearts of Canadians and then they tried to paint themselves as the great saviour, the only ones who could protect the people from this manufactured fear. However, all the empirical evidence shows us that the rate of crime, especially crimes of personal violence, et cetera, is way down statistically.

However, that did not stop the Conservatives from mailing ten percenters into my riding trying to whip up a frenzy of fear. I saw one of the ten percenters, back when MPs could actually mail ten percenters into other people's ridings, and it had a picture of a guy breaking through a window with his face shielded and with a knife raised above his shoulders as if he were going to break into our house and murder us in the night with a knife if we did not vote for the Conservatives to stop him from breaking in and killing us. That was the message, for all intents and purposes.

Even at a time when we are trying to calm people down and show them the actual statistics that the streets are safer than ever before, even in an area that experiences a great deal of property crime, et cetera, no one is at particular threat of being murdered in the night by this junky with a knife.

There is a dishonesty, a disingenuous aspect to this. The Conservatives are like a duck on a June bug when it comes to any issue associated with criminal justice issues, and their reaction is far disproportionate to the actual cause, need and demand.

In the context of Bill C-26, our party supports it with concerns that have been expressed by many of my colleagues.

[Jasbir Sandhu Surrey North,, NDP]

Madam Speaker, today I rise to speak to Bill C-26, which amends subsection 494(2) of the Criminal Code, dealing with citizen's arrest.

First I want to say that the New Democrats support the bill. It is actually something that my fellow New Democrat, the member for Trinity—Spadina, had been advocating for quite some time.

Half of the bill proposes measures that her private member's bill had previously called for. My colleague introduced that legislation, which was known as the Lucky Moose bill, in response to an incident that happened in the city of Toronto in 2009. David Chen, the owner of the Lucky Moose Food Mart in Toronto, apprehended and restrained a man, Anthony Bennett, a few hours after he had stolen from his store. When police arrived, they charged Mr. Chen with kidnapping, carrying a dangerous weapon—which was a box cutter, which most grocery store workers would carry normally—assault and forcible confinement. Crown prosecutors later dropped the kidnapping charge, but proceeded with the charges of forcible confinement and assault.

According to the Criminal Code as it is currently written, a property owner can only make a citizen's arrest if the alleged wrongdoer is caught in the act. Clearly, this portion of the Criminal Code needed to be changed. My colleague saw that and introduced her private member's bill, and the government followed suit with its own very similar bill.

What surprises me most about this bill is that the Conservatives are proposing something in the realm of public safety that actually makes sense. It is very surprising that they are proposing something that is sensible, because what we have seen from the government, from the Conservatives' crime agenda, certainly does not make any sense at all. Most of the time the Conservatives seem to be living in some kind of alternative reality, completely devoid of factual information and common sense when it comes to crime.

Normally, instead of answering critical questions about a reckless public safety agenda that is destined for failure, the Minister of Public Safety has preferred to hurl accusations and insults across the floor, such as standing in the House and accusing me of supporting child molesters because I questioned the complete failure on the side of the government to estimate the cost of its reckless crime agenda.

Sadly, we know that the facts do not really matter to the government. In Senate committee hearings on Bill C-10, the public safety minister told senators to ignore the facts. He said, “I don't know if the statistics demonstrate that crime is down. I'm focused on danger”.

That was not the first time we have been told to ignore the facts by Conservatives when it comes to crime. In response to questions about Bill C-10, the Minister of Justice said, “We are not governing on the basis of the latest statistics”. When it comes to public safety, ignoring the facts seems to be in the Conservatives' talking points.

Of course they want us to ignore the facts, because the facts are on our side. The facts will tell us that their crime agenda will cripple our criminal justice system and will not make our communities any safer.

I am happy to see that the Conservatives actually support something worthwhile, Bill C-26, but this, unfortunately, is the exception, not the rule, when it comes to the Conservatives' approach to crime. While I support this bill, which has been improved by NDP amendments in committee, I remain very concerned about the safety of our communities across this wonderful country of ours.

The NDP priority in reviewing this legislation was to ensure that it did not encourage vigilante justice or people putting their own safety at risk. While we understand that there are concerns about these matters in relation to citizen's arrest, self-defence and defence of property, we have determined that the bill proposes acceptable changes.

It should be noted that all three of these concepts already exist in the Criminal Code. Therefore, the changes made by this bill would only modify aspects of our current laws and do not introduce anything radically new.

The justice committee heard from a diverse group of witnesses while considering this legislation, including the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Police Association, academics and practising lawyers. Although New Democrats have already supported the intent of this legislation, we have brought forward a number of amendments in accordance with recommendations of witnesses. One successful amendment we brought forward will place a greater onus on the courts to consider the history of the relationship between the individuals.

We recognize the great need for these sections of the Criminal Code to be updated, and although most of our amendments were defeated, we still believe this bill accomplishes an adequate update to the legislation and we support this bill. Also, legal experts the committee heard from were, in general, supportive of the proposed changes to the self-defence and defence of property sections of the Criminal Code. They all acknowledged that these clarifications were absolutely necessary.

In conclusion, I want to thank my colleague from Trinity—Spadina for her work on this issue and for bringing such a worthwhile issue to the House. I also want to thank the minister and members across the aisle for their support to bring this initiative forward. As I have mentioned, we do not often see anything sensible coming from that side of the House when it comes to crime. In fact, when it comes to crime, the Conservatives are usually detached from being sensibile altogether and pursue an approach that has been tried and has failed.

I hope to see the members opposite keen to adopt more New Democratic ideas in the future. We have many that I think make a lot of sense and are aimed at making our communities safer for all Canadians to live in.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, before beginning my speech on Bill C-26, I would like to mention that this is my first debate as the official opposition's new justice critic. I would therefore like to thank the leader of our party, the hon. member for Outremont, for the confidence he has placed in me.

I would particularly like to thank the hon. member for St. John's East, who has done absolutely extraordinary work on this file, as well as his entire team. Over the past few months, we examined Bill C-26 as a team.

I would also like to thank the hon. member for Trinity—Spadina. Those who have been following this issue know that she is behind Bill C-26. This bill addresses the famous Lucky Moose Food Mart case, which served as a wake-up call for members of Parliament who are now trying to determine how to resolve this problem.

I also extend my thanks to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, where we studied many bills, including Bill C-10 on law and order, which was very thick and had many amendments. I use the term “thick” in reference to the size of the bill and not the content. We also studied Bill C-19 on the registry. We looked at many files, but this was the first time, since I was elected on May 2, that I felt that there was co-operation and that the two parties and all the people around the table, no matter their political stripe, were truly trying to find intelligent solutions to the problems and serious issues raised.

This bill involves amending the Criminal Code, which has been in existence for quite some time and has been interpreted by the courts and the Supreme Court. It is not necessarily an easy task. The member from the Green Party pointed out a problem with citizen's arrest that was raised at the committee hearings. I will come back to that later in my speech.

Having said that, I hope that the members opposite will adopt this new way of doing things because the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights does not meet to engage in petty politics. We meet because we know that these laws will have a direct effect on the lives of Canadians. We discuss criminal acts that have an impact on the lives of people, whether they are the victims or the accused, who benefit from the presumption of innocence. As guardians of the charter, we must ensure that the legal provisions and amendments to such laws are made properly.

Let us come back to Bill C-26. What is it all about? This bill amends a few sections of the Criminal Code, especially on self-defence, whether in relation to people or their personal or real property. It is the main purpose of this bill. The other part concerns citizen's arrest in a very specific context, which was the starting point for the private member's bill introduced by my colleague from Trinity—Spadina.

The first part on the lawful defence of property and persons, especially self-defence of persons, had been requested by the courts for a very long time. Finding a way to amend the Criminal Code was not easy. Earlier, I asked the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice a question about balancing the objective and subjective criteria with regard to the reasonable nature of the force that is used in self-defence. I think people understand what self-defence is. When we think we are being attacked and our lives are in danger or we are going to be seriously injured, we defend ourselves. That being said, it must be determined whether the act of self-defence was lawful or not, what the provocation was, whether necessary force was used and whether the context was appropriate.

It is not obvious. Over the years and decades, since the Criminal Code of Canada was created, the courts have realized that it is not always obvious. Over time, as things have developed, in certain cases defences based on scientific or medical reasons have been used. Take the battered woman syndrome for example.

I remember when I was hosting a radio show some years ago and there was a murder in my region, in Aylmer. A woman had killed her husband with a gun. The entire region was outraged simply because for most people a murder is a murder. We finally learned the facts in the case and found out what had happened. The woman had been terrorized day after day by an abusive husband who beat her and sometimes held a gun to her head. It was atrocious. Nevertheless, people said that did not matter. To them, all the woman had to do was leave home, get out of there and her life would not be in danger, but can we really judge another person's circumstances?

The courts began to develop certain plausible, allowable defences and to extrapolate the criteria mentioned in the Criminal Code, but every time, they came back to us and said that it was up to us as legislators to clarify and tidy this up a bit. This has not always been easy, especially when talking about defence and provocation.

I practised a little criminal law early in my career. One day, a man walked into my office. I am not revealing anything, since no one could ever guess his identity. He was a rather short man and he had been beaten by a woman who was taller than him. He pleaded self-defence, while she maintained that he had provoked her. This gives you some idea of the cases that go before criminal courts. In that particular context, only the gender criterion might have been considered. Basically, we sometimes have an impression, a preconceived notion, that because he is a man, he cannot be abused, or that because a woman is very tall, she cannot be abused by someone shorter than her, and so on.

The courts were often frustrated by these kinds of situations. It was important that the criteria not be too stringent. That is more or less what the Canadian Bar Association and the Barreau du Québec said in committee. As the parliamentary secretary said, we heard from several groups, such as the Barreau du Québec, the Canadian Convenience Stores Association, the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, the Association of Professional Security Agencies—I will come back to this group, the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Police Association, as well as universities, lawyers and other groups.

What came up again and again, especially concerning self-defence and the criteria mentioned in section 34 of the Criminal Code, was the importance of striking a balance. There was some concern about the government's wording of some of the clauses and amendments to Bill C-26 concerning a better balance between these subjective and objective elements. For example, the Canadian Bar Association agreed with me in committee that this balance appeared to be lacking, which is dangerous. The bill seemed to emphasize the objective criteria, which could jeopardize defences such as self-defence based on battered woman syndrome, for example.

I want to point out right away that the official opposition did propose seven amendments to ensure a balanced approach. We proposed objective and subjective criteria to enable the trial judge who hears the facts of the case to determine whether actions were provoked, assess what happened between the two parties and analyze the whole thing.

We did not succeed in getting all of the amendments included even though they would have made the provisions much clearer. But we will see. People will have to adjust. We are hearing that a lot these days, particularly in Quebec. We will see how the courts interpret all of this and whether the bill is balanced. I am reasonably confident that the amendments my colleague talked about earlier will ensure that balance.

I want to make it clear that section 34 of the Criminal Code, as amended by the bill, starts out by saying that a person is not guilty:

34. (1) A person is not guilty of an offence if

[This means that all of the criteria must apply.]

(a) they believe on reasonable grounds that force is being used against them or another person or that a threat of force is being made against them or another person;

(b) the act that constitutes the offence is committed for the purpose of defending or protecting themselves or the other person from that use or threat of force; and

(c) the act committed is reasonable in the circumstances.

[This one, (c), is often problematic.]

(2) In determining whether the act committed is reasonable in the circumstances, the court shall consider the relevant circumstances of the person, the other parties and the act, including, but not limited to, the following factors:

A list of factors follows. We appreciate that the government agreed to include our amendment. We want to ensure that offences are analyzed based on the perspective of the person directly involved rather than on that of someone who was not involved at all. Sometimes, it is by putting ourselves in someone else's shoes that we come to know what that person saw and we can really understand the impact of his action.

The physical capabilities of the parties to the incident were added. As I mentioned earlier, to look only at size, age and gender could cause confusion. I know people who are only 5' 2'' who have black belts in karate and, let me tell you, they could do some damage to someone who is a sturdy 6' 4'' but who has never played a sport in his life. We therefore wanted to avoid this type of prejudice.

Paragraph 34(2)(f.1) refers to the history of interaction or communication between the parties to the incident. Some people have difficulty understanding what that means, but those who are very active users of social networking sites, who are involved in blogging and who talk to different people understand what this means.

I once had a written conversation with people I did not know. I did not even know where they lived. I must say that, at the end of that conversation, I had the willies. I hoped that those people did not live nearby because I was seriously concerned.

Since we have new technologies, we have to adapt to this type of situation. Sometimes, people can be terrorized by means of written messages or threats delivered in other ways.

Given the amendments that were made in this regard, I am confident that we have managed to find a balance. The courts will still have access to the committee's work and to the report, and they will be able to make informed decisions when they are called upon to interpret the new clauses on the protection of property, clauses 34 and 35. At least that is what I hope.

As I told my clients, those who came to see me, if we had a perfect knowledge of law and wrote perfect legal provisions, there would be no need for lawyers. Since laws are often drafted by lawyers, to date, I have yet to see a provision that is so clear and straightforward that there is no room for any interpretation. Likely, down the line, we will discover additional factors that should be added to clause 34.

With regard to the legitimate defence of property, as was expected by the legal community and the courts, no distinction is made between personal and real property. An attack on real property was always considered to be of greater consequence. If a person suffered an assault in their home or something like that, the courts tended to be a bit more strict in their assessment of the factors, when the person claimed self-defence.

In the case of the theft of a cassette from a car, we might say that self-defence was not necessary. We must always look at the concept of necessity.

I would now like to examine the most difficult part of the bill to understand: the amendments proposed by the government. I would like to point out that what I find the most worrisome is that the government has not accepted any suggested amendments at all.

The comment or the point I would like to make is as follows. Section 494(2) of the Criminal Code deals with citizen's arrest, which was the reason for Bill C-26. That is why we cannot withdraw clause 3 of Bill C-26, because it would completely gut the bill.

I am fully aware of the fact that there was the political will to amend the bill because of what Mr. Chen went through in Toronto.

These are the facts as we heard them. Mr. Chen was working at his convenience store when the store was robbed. A short time later, the shoplifter had the nerve to return to Mr. Chen's store. However, Mr. Chen recognized the shoplifter and stopped him before he had a chance to commit a second theft. The store owner, Mr. Chen, tied up the shoplifter and put him in a van—the only place he could keep him until the police arrived. Believe it or not, it was the store owner who was charged with forcible confinement, among other things. The justice system amazes me sometimes.

I worked in the media long enough to know how sensational this type of story can become across the country. The story made it all the way to Gatineau. That being said, legal experts have told us that notwithstanding Mr. Chen's case, the Criminal Code, as currently drafted, should have given plenty of latitude to the police, who could have chosen not to arrest Mr. Chen. This could have been resolved without charges being laid against Mr. Chen.

To ensure that this does not happen again, the government introduced Bill C-26. At the time, my colleague from Trinity—Spadina also introduced a very similar bill. I will read the proposed subclause 3(2):

(2) The owner or a person in lawful possession of property, or a person authorized by the owner or by a person in lawful possession of property, may arrest a person without a warrant if they find them committing a criminal offence on or in relation to that property and

(a) they make the arrest at that time; or

(b) they make the arrest within a reasonable time after the offence is committed and they believe on reasonable grounds that it is not feasible in the circumstances for a peace officer to make the arrest.

I am sure that the infamous reasonable grounds are going to be interpreted in all kinds of ways.

I have a few problems with this clause because when it says “or a person authorized by the owner”, it obviously refers to security guards, and that bothers me.

In committee, we heard from witnesses from security agencies. An entire sector of the economy collectively jumped for joy over this new opportunity. The guards said it was finally their turn to shine.

To their credit, I must say, they are already working in stores, but not in small convenience stores. It is not the Mr. Chens of the world who will benefit from this, but rather superstores like Walmart and Target.

What worries me is that some of them like to pretend they are police officers, as though they are replacing the police. However, the defendant must be able to demonstrate that no peace officer was available to make the arrest. We were told that, quite often, it was hard for police officers to respond immediately to a call concerning shoplifting, because it was not necessarily a priority for them.

We also need to think about rural communities. Personally, I am a city girl. We often forget that many people live in rural settings, where there is not necessarily a police officer posted on every street corner.

That is all I have to say about the notion of a reasonable time.

However, we were definitely convinced that defining the notion of a reasonable time would prevent the court or the judge from using their own judgment in that regard. With that in mind, even though we have some reservations and we are anxious to see what will happen with all of that, the NDP plans to support Bill C-26. In its current state, it already answers many questions people had, which the courts often referred back to us as legislators. In that context, we hope this will do what it is meant to do.

In closing, regarding section 494 and citizen's arrest, one thing is clear: the government committed to ensuring that convenience store managers know that it is not open season for them to start making arrests left, right and centre, without thinking carefully first. No one is asking or recommending that they do so. We must leave this up to the professionals, the people who have been trained to do so. Otherwise, there could be serious consequences, especially if someone makes an illegal arrest. That is all I have to say, and I now welcome questions.

Justice

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

Mr. Speaker, the government has been clear about the objectives of Bill C-10. It responds to the strong mandate that Canadians gave the government to ensure that serious crimes, including violent crimes, result in appropriate sentences that appropriately reflect the seriousness of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender. It realizes Canadians' expectations that those who commit serious and violent offences will never get to serve their sentences in the comfort of their homes.

As I said earlier, the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report relies on puzzling assumptions to estimate federal costs for Bill C-10's conditional sentence reforms when the government has stated that there are none.

The report also seems to ignore the cost of crime to victims. In 2008 crime in Canada cost an estimated $99 billion, the majority of which, $82.5 billion or 83%, was borne by the victims. Victim costs include a range of damages, such as stolen property, pain and suffering, loss of income and health services.

The government has clearly acknowledged that implementation of Bill C-10 will have federal cost implications, but only with respect to the child sexual offences and serious drug offences. This is a cost for which the government is fully prepared because the cost of doing nothing far exceeds the cost of fighting crime. Something had to be done, and it was.

I would note that parliamentarians heard from many witnesses who appeared on Bill C-10, before both the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, who supported the restrictions to the availability of conditional sentences.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would remind the parliamentary secretary that the methodology in the report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer was excellent and peer reviewed by seven independent academics. Therefore, if the Conservatives do not like the methodology for ideological reasons, that is too bad.

The government says that there will be no cost to the federal government. The Parliamentary Budget Officer comes up with a figure of $8 million. Most of the costs would go to the provinces of some $148 million. Those are the kinds of numbers we are talking about for a very small portion of Bill C-10.

The Conservatives talked about saving money by closing down prisons last week. They said that they will save $124 million. However, what they do not mention is that last year they increased the costs of Correctional Service Canada by $575 million with just one piece of legislation, the so-called two-for-one bill, which increased those costs.

Again we see the public being misled by a failure to disclose the full figures and a trashing of the Parliamentary Budget Officer when he does independent peer-reviewed studies and makes them available to Parliament.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to speak in support of the amendments to the conditional sentencing regime contained in Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act. We will have another go at convincing the opposition to stand up for law-abiding Canadians.

Canadians support the government's commitment to make our streets and communities safer, which includes ensuring that house arrest is not a sentencing option for serious and violent crimes. The safety and well-being of Canadians is fundamental.

The government has been forthright about its estimated federal costs of the impact of Bill C-10. As the Ministers of Justice and Public Safety said during their October 6, 2011 appearance before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, the costs to the federal government to implement Bill C-10 will be $78.6 million over five years. These costs relate to the reforms on child sexual offences and on serious drug offences. They also confirmed that there are no federal costs associated with Bill C-10's proposed conditional sentencing reforms.

To understand this, one need only look to the actual criteria governing when a conditional sentence is available. Bill C-10 spells out clearly that identified offences will not be eligible for conditional sentences rather than leaving it to the interpretation as to whether an offence is ineligible because it is a serious personal injury offence.

Bill C-10 would not change the criteria that say that a conditional sentence is only possible if the sentencing court is of the opinion that a sentence of imprisonment of less than two years is warranted. As we all know, federal correctional responsibility only relates to sentences that are two years or longer. Therefore, it should be clear to the members that Bill C-10' sconditional sentence reforms do not apply to federal sentences of imprisonment.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer's analysis of the amendments to the availability of conditional sentences contained in Bill C-10 raises many questions about how he arrived at his cost estimates and the basis for making many of his assumptions.

For instance, one of the most troubling assumptions made in the Parliamentary Budget Officer's analysis is that the proposed amendments to the availability of conditional sentences will result in fewer individuals pleading guilty. This consideration is not applicable to conditional sentences because there is no certainty that house arrest will be given for a particular offence, only that it is never available if the offence in question is punishable by a mandatory minimum penalty of imprisonment.

Guilty pleas are often the result of plea bargaining, which will continue to be available in appropriate cases. The incentive to plead guilty should be the same after these amendments come into force as it was before. There has been no change.

Another puzzling assumption in the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report is that it estimates that about 4,500 offenders would have to serve a prison sentence because they will no longer be eligible for house arrest once Bill C-10 comes into force. However, the analysis does not differentiate whether the offence was prosecuted by indictment or by summary conviction. I would remind all members that offences prosecuted by summary conviction and that do not carry a mandatory minimum penalty will still be eligible for house arrest.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer's report also assumes that offenders who receive a conditional sentence of imprisonment successfully complete their sentence. However, the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics has noted that up to 37% of conditional sentences are breached, which represents additional costs as a result of subsequent court appearances.

Consequently, the Parliamentary Budget Officer underestimates the current costs related to conditional sentences and consequently overestimates the cost impact of the proposed amendments. That is a total misdirection on his part. In my view, the estimates are very problematic.

Canadians have given the government a strong mandate to bring forward these reforms and that is what Bill C-10 delivers.

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

Mr. Speaker, on February 28 I asked a question of the Minister of Justice regarding the report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer on the costs to the public of the changes in just one aspect of Bill C-10, which was then before Parliament. This had to do with the conditional sentences aspect.

There were considerable changes to the availability of conditional sentences in part 3 of Bill C-10. Amendments were made to 32 previously eligible offences under the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that were rendered ineligible for conditional sentences. The question was what the cost of this was. Interestingly, when the costs were looked at, other factors became known. It confirms some of the criticism that we brought forward in committee that this legislation was ineffective in reducing the amount of crime and increasing the punishment and supposedly making our streets safer which was the sub-name of the bill.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer found that 4,500 offenders would no longer be eligible for a conditional sentence and would face the threat of a prison sentence and the costs associated with that. It was also interesting that, based on a legal analysis, approximately 650 of the 4,500, in other words 15%, would actually be acquitted, meaning that fewer offenders would face any consequence of their offence and be under correctional supervision. For those who were punished, they would be under supervision by the Correctional Service for a shorter period of time. The average cost per offender, on the other hand, would rise by a factor of 16%. So effectively we got a situation where we had skyrocketing costs, ineffective results, fewer offenders convicted serving less time, and that was at a 16% rise in the costs.

That was the question put to the minister, and he did not adequately respond. He said that if there were fewer people convicted, that would make the NDP happy. That is the kind of slur we have been getting from the other side when we raise sensible questions about government policy and the consequence of it. We had the same kind of debate last week when the government closed two prisons and a mental health facility and said, “Hey, look, the opposition is all wrong; we are actually closing down prisons”. That is the kind of misinformation and misleading spin that the government likes to put on things.

At the same time, the government was building 2,700 new cells in over 30 existing prisons. One of the analysts concluded that would have the same effect as building six new prisons. To make it look like we are closing down prisons, the Conservatives closed down two penitentiaries and a mental health unit and are opening 2,700 more facilities. That is the kind of subterfuge that goes on here. As we know from the F-35 debate, the Conservatives do not like to give any credibility to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. However, he again points out, as a service to this Parliament and to the public, that there is an increased cost by 16 times, with fewer people being incarcerated, fewer people actually paying the penalty for these crimes on account of changes that are being made in Bill C-10.

That was my concern, and I will be interested in the parliamentary secretary's response.

Firearms Registry

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Madam Speaker, I disagree with my hon. colleague on a number of fronts. First, I would disagree that I am about to get up and crow. I think there is only one crow who is crowing, and it was not me at all, nor will it be me.

Second, I disagree with the hon. member in regard to reports being suppressed. We welcome the reports by the RCMP on the entire Canadian firearms program. If one actually reads the entire report, one can see that the RCMP is talking about the program as a whole. What we did hear from front-line officers when they testified on Bill C-19 was that they did not use the long gun registry when they went on calls because they could not count on the information.

In fact, we heard from not only the RCMP but police officers as well that the 14,000 so-called checks were actually automatic checks. They were not individual police officers going to check the registry. Therefore, there were obviously some differences in how we read the report and also the testimony we heard from police officers.

The bottom line is that today Bill C-19 passed in the Senate. It passed by a vote of 50 to 27. It passed with three Liberal senators supporting the bill. We are very pleased that the House passed the bill with Conservatives and two NDP members of Parliament supporting it, and in the other place we actually received support on the bill from three Liberals. It shows that across the country, even across political lines, we agree it is time to end the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry.

It is time to give police the tools they need to do their job. It is time to put in place laws so that there is not a revolving door. That is exactly what we have done with Bill C-10. We have stopped the revolving doors with criminals who are in jail, then out of jail.

Let us not harass and criminalize rural Canadians, aboriginals, hunters, sport shooters and farmers who are using firearms for legitimate purposes. Sadly, the NDP has been misleading and misrepresenting on many parts of this file. NDP members show pictures of firearms that are clearly restricted and try to say they will no longer be registered.

My hon. colleague is incorrect, in that it still remains a requirement to get a licence to own a firearm. If a person sells or transfers a firearm to someone without a licence, it is a criminal offence. That stays in place. Nothing changes.

We can all very thankfully know that the bill has passed in the other place. It will soon reach royal assent. The long gun registry will be done in a very few short hours. Farmers, hunters and sport shooters, law abiding Canadians, will not have to register their long guns anymore.

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

As the Canadian Association of Retired Persons has said, and the hon. member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour has repeated very eloquently: we are punishing future generations in an effort to spend tens of billions of dollars on an over cost fiasco. We are saying Canadian families deserve better than that.

That was the F-35s. I am now going to address the issue of prisons, which are the second part of what we are discussing today, because these are the government's two priorities.

We already know that there are going to be budget cuts, cuts to old age security. We have already seen how this government is attacking ordinary families across the country. Middle-class families and the poorest Canadians are being affected by cuts to services. In this budget, the government claims that the bills it is proposing, for example, the crime bill, will not cost any money.

First, I must point out that, right now, there is a low crime rate. The number of crimes being committed in Canada is decreasing. At the same time, the government made major cuts to programs to prevent and combat crime across the country. We know full well that every penny or dollar spent on a crime prevention program will save us six times that amount—6¢ or $6—down the road in other parts of the judicial system, whether it be costs related to police, criminal courts or, of course, prisons. However, this government has cut funding for programs to prevent and combat crime.

Then, instead of presenting an agenda that we could agree with, the government presented its prison agenda. In the budget, the government says that this will not cost anything. Frankly, we do not believe it. In the studies that were conducted, the government never divulged the real cost of its programs and bills. It never made any estimates or calculations. As a former financial administrator, I am wondering how anyone could go ahead with a bill without doing any calculations at all to determine how much it will cost.

In this case, the government has not done any calculations or made any estimates. It has no idea of the cost. Even in the budget, the government clearly stated that we do not need prisons. Provinces all over the country know full well that the hodgepodge bills that the government has been introducing one after another will cost taxpayers a lot of money. The provinces will have to build prisons, and we also know how much that will cost us.

The Institut de recherche et d'informations socio-économiques did a study that took all these factors into account. It is too bad that the government did not try to do the same. I know that the Parliamentary Budget Officer provided a good estimate of some aspects of the programs, but the only valid estimate, the only valid and complete calculation of the cost of these programs comes from the Institut de recherche et d'informations socio-économiques, which said:

Don Head, the Commissioner of Correctional Services Canada [he did his own calculations], later said that he estimated that federal prisoner numbers would increase by 3,400, requiring 2,700 new spaces, at a cost of $2 billion to support that increase.

The increase will result from the bills this government has introduced without calculating the costs associated with them. This will also have an impact on the provinces.

The study also states:

Although passed by the federal government, many of the bills introduced will have a significant impact on the provinces and their public finances. According to some estimates...for Bill C-25, the provinces will be forced to bear most of the cost of funding the new prison system. The PBO predicts that, for the Truth in Sentencing Act alone, which came into effect on February 22, 2012, provincial and territorial responsibility for funding the prison system will increase from 49% to 56% compared to the federal level. The provinces will have to bear 78% of the cost of building these new cells, that is, $12.655 billion. Quebec's share alone will be $2.6702 billion. There is nothing to indicate that future legislation will reverse this trend.

As for all of the construction-related calculations, not to mention the annual costs associated with these bills, the eminent researchers with the Institut de recherche et d’informations socio-économiques, very reputable people, reported the following:

This socio-economic report has demonstrated the misleading nature of the Canadian government's statements regarding its crime-fighting policies. The changes made by Bill C-25 and Bill C-10 are very unlikely to have any impact on Canada's crime rate. As recent experience has shown, an approach that focuses more on offender reintegration and rehabilitation is more likely to effectively reduce the number of crimes committed. What this report adds to the file is that not only are the government's measures likely to be ineffective, but they will also be very costly for taxpayers.

This is a very important point.

They will require investments of at least $18.802 billion in prison infrastructure and engender ongoing costs of $1.616 billion for the federal government and $2.222 billion for the provinces. In addition to the federal investment, the changes will force Quebec to invest $3.057 billion in its own infrastructure. Bill C-25 will also cost the province an extra $407 million per year, and Bill C-10 will cost an extra $82 million per year. The government of Quebec allocated $379 million for prison operations in 2011-12. These additional annual costs will increase that budget by 129%.

Since the justice minister...promised that, “This is just the beginning of our efforts in this regard. We'll introduce other legislation as well," we feel it is important to point out other solutions. Focusing on reintegration and rehabilitation, which are proven solutions, would enable the government to spend much less on prisons, giving it more flexibility to invest in social policy.

This is extremely important. We are talking about two programs. One would probably cost about $40 billion and the other $19 billion, with additional annual costs of $1 billion to $2 billion.

We find all these priorities to be unbelievable. The government has no credibility since it is telling us that there are cuts coming for seniors and ordinary families, but then it is willing to spend whatever it takes on its pet projects.

We are saying that Canadian families deserve better.

I can honestly say that the NDP caucus, which is made up of dynamic and energetic individuals, is really the best in the world.

One would never imagine that we came from a convention over the weekend during which nobody slept and right into the budget deliberations. We have our new leader in place, the member for Outremont. Everybody in the NDP is still full of vim, vigour and energy. It is a wonderful thing to see. What a fantastic, amazing group. One can just imagine how much more energy we are going to have on October 20, 2015, when the first NDP government is formed.

It will not be a government that is going to spend $40 billion on a fighter jet whose costs have simply exploded. We are going to be tightly monitoring budgets so that kind of thing does not happen. If a project goes off the rails, we will cancel it. We are not going to spend $19 billion on prisons when the crime rate is actually going down. We think we should be investing in crime prevention programs. We think we should be investing in bringing the crime rate down even further. We should be investing in addiction programs.

We will be doing something for our police officers and firefighters as well. It is important to mention this. Five years ago the Conservatives voted for the NDP motion to establish a public safety officer compensation fund to ensure that when firefighters and police officers pass away in the line of duty, their families are taken care of. We have been waiting and firefighters and police officers have been waiting now for six years for the Conservative government to bring that in and the Conservatives have not done it. They have left those police officers and firefighters out in the cold. When an NDP government is elected, one of the first things we are going to bring in is a public safety officer compensation fund.

Ultimately, that is what we are all about in the NDP. We take care of Canadian families. We take care of Canadians. We are folks who work very hard. NDP MPs have the reputation of being very strong constituency advocates. We work very hard. We can see the energy people have been putting in, even over the course of the last hour, which is remarkable, given the last few weeks with everybody working double and triple shifts every day of the week.

We do that because our energy comes from Canadian families. We represent them because we truly believe that our place in the House of Commons is to stand up for those Canadian families, to represent them, to be their voice in the House of Commons.

The many emails and faxes, the postings we are getting on Facebook and the tweets that are coming in on Twitter all attest to the fact that the majority of Canadians out there are concerned about the direction this country is taking. They are concerned about the kind of country we are seeing increasingly, with a small minority of people who seem to have most of the pie and where families are increasingly left out in the cold. They are concerned about the fact that they see families struggling more and more to make ends meet as their wages go gradually, but on an ongoing basis, lower and lower. They are concerned about seeing families in their neighbourhoods lose a breadwinner because of plant closures. I prefaced my remarks this morning by talking about the dozens of plants and factories that have closed in this country only in the last few months. They are concerned about what they see as a meanspirited government, a government that does not respect democracy, a government that does not respect input, a government that says seniors and future seniors have to pay the price for its misguided priorities of prisons and fighter jets before future seniors and services that Canadian families depend on.

That is what is happening with more and more Canadian families. The majority of Canadian families are very concerned.

The Conservative government was elected on May 2 on the promise to maintain health care funding, on the promise to maintain retirement security, on the promise to maintain services for Canadian families.

This budget is a betrayal. It is a betrayal of those promises that were solemnly made by the Prime Minister. He looked Canadians right in the eye, shook their hands and said, “I will not touch health care transfers. I will not touch retirement security. I will not touch the services your family depends upon.” This is a betrayal--

Justice and Human Rights

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment on the report that was just presented on organized crime.

The New Democrats, since 2009, have been working collaboratively with other parties on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights with the objective of recommending new strategies. There are, in fact, some 699 criminal organizations in Canada, 83% of which are engaged in illegal drugs, such as cocaine, cannabis and synthetic drugs, in that order. We have consistently promoted an effective and balanced approach to combatting organized crime.

In that regard, although we support most of the 35 recommendations in the report, we supported, along with the government, passing Bill C-2, the megatrials bill, in June 2011.

However, we do have some concerns about this report, which is why we have filed a supplementary report suggesting that the government has proven, unfortunately, that, with overreaching bills such as Bill C-10 and Bill C-30, it is putting overreaching ideology ahead of level-headed legislation.

We are opposed to the mandatory minimums proposed in the report and we are concerned about the lawful access provisions that support Bill C-10. We are concerned about the lack of judicial oversight recommended and the unnecessary expansion of powers that are contained in the report.

However, regardless of that, we do support, in general, the report but have filed a dissenting report.

Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on the matter of Bill C-31 and its prospective immigration reform. Regrettably, rather than being the transformational reform the minister envisages, though some of his reforms have been commendable, this bill, not unlike its earlier incarnation that experts characterized as being “littered with charter violations”, is seriously flawed from a constitutional perspective in its constitutionally suspect provisions; from an international perspective in its breaching of our international obligations; from a humanitarian perspective its turning its back on our humanitarian ethos; and from a policy perspective in its granting to ministers of broad, arbitrary, and sometimes non-reviewable powers, while removing avenues of appeal and review for applicants. In particular, this legislation reflects a serious lack of appreciation of what it means to be a refugee escaping persecution, and it can amount to gratuitous punishment of those seeking our protection.

Let me identify some of the defects in this legislation.

First, Bill C-31 would impose unrealistic and unfair deadlines on refugee claimants that would force them to make representations, perhaps at the moment they are most vulnerable, for example having just experienced violence, torture or sexual assault, and then finding themselves in a new country in an unfamiliar situation, not to mention a situation where a language barrier may likely exist, and where a failure to meet deadlines may pre-emptively disqualify their claim without affording them a fair and reasonable opportunity to establish such a refugee claim. For example, the 15-day window for refugee claimants to deliver a written version of the basis of their refugee claim is simply not enough time for refugees to seek legal advice and to do all that is necessary for the preparation of such claims. This includes responding to complicated legal requirements, gathering the evidence to prove their claim and making the legal case. Moreover, the 15-day window to complete an appeal application is equally unfair and limits the possibility of their pursuing such an appeal, such that mistakes that may be made by the Immigration and Refugee Board may go uncorrected. This legislation would serve in some respects, however inadvertent it may be, to have as its effect the double victimization of those who have been initially victimized by the smugglers exploiting them, and who then end up being victimized when they seek protection on our shores.

This brings me to the second point. The revised process for designating certain countries as safe eliminates an expert independent advisory body that could guard against countries being designated on the basis of erroneous political, economic or other considerations. Individuals from those countries under this legislation would face discriminatory treatment respecting matters as fundamental as access to justice, given that the processing of their claims would occur more slowly than for those from non-designated countries. Not only may this violate UN convention rights, but it also goes against the very premise that all are entitled to equal and impartial hearings regardless of the country of origin. Moreover, the way countries are designated, by a calculation of the number of rejected applicants, we may end up with a situation where a few bad apples can spoil the bunch. Therefore, while there may be numerous false claims from a country, why should we penalize all from that country where there may indeed be bona fide applicants in dire need of protection? Moreover, claimants from these countries would also face immediate removal without a right of appeal, thereby increasing the possibility that those facing a legitimate fear of prosecution would be deported. This flies in the face of our constitutional obligations, as confirmed by the Supreme Court, that we simply cannot deport people to situations of torture or terror.

Third, the bill calls for the mandatory non-reviewable and year-long detention of designated foreign nationals 16 years of age or over, which itself is an arguable breach of both our charter rights and related Supreme Court jurisprudence, which hold that such detentions without review are patently illegal. In the government's rush to incarcerate, a phenomenon that we also saw with Bill C-10, it ignores that there are suffering humans involved who may be in legitimate need of serious protection.

At the end of the day, what this would do is simply immunize error in our refugee system while prejudicing the rights of prospective asylum seekers.

Moreover, the minister himself has acknowledged that there are flaws in this proposal, noting in this place:

We will be moving an amendment to Bill C-31 to allow minors under the age 16 who are not accompanied by their parents to be released from detention if they have been smuggled into the country.

While I appreciate the minister's response in that regard, and I appreciate his presence here and engagement in this debate, it is yet again this rush to legislate without considering all the variables that results in flaws that end up having to be addressed and redressed.

Further, those who are granted refugee status would nonetheless be denied the right to apply for permanent residency for a period of five years. During this period, refugees would be prohibited from applying to reunite in Canada with spouses and their children. In effect, this means that actual reunification could be delayed for approximately six to eight years after being granted refugee status. They would be required to report regularly to immigration authorities for questioning and to produce documents. They would be prohibited from travelling outside Canada for any reason during the period. Arguably again this is in breach of our international human rights and humanitarian obligations in this regard.

As a final note on this point, let us not forget that there are extensive costs associated with the detention of refugees, not simply in terms of their physical detention which is costly on its own, but costs to the system later on in terms of mental health issues resulting from prolonged detention which history suggests could also be a significant burden. This is an issue that was not properly addressed in Bill C-10 and which we are going to be revisiting here in this legislation.

Fourth, this bill targets the permanent residence status of refugees by providing that their status may be revoked if the minister determines that they are no longer in need of protection. This provision could be applied against refugees who make claims in Canada or those who have been resettled to Canada from refugee camps abroad. It could even apply retroactively. As such, refugees who have been living in Canada for even decades and have established lives, families and careers here may be stripped of their status if the minister sees fit.

I would be prepared to say that the minister would not act in such an arbitrary manner, but the legislation does grant that kind of authority for that kind of power to be so arbitrarily exercised.

Indeed, as the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers put it, this provision “undermines Canada's commitment to refugees, makes a mockery of our commitment to the United Nations to provide permanent resettlement to refugees and puts at risk of deportation tens of thousands of refugees who have already been granted permanent residence in Canada”.

Fifth, the bill makes changes to the judicial review process in ways that are highly problematic, constitutionally suspect, and undesirable from a policy point of view.

The proposed bill removes the automatic stay of removal when filing for judicial review for claimants from designated countries of origin, claimants under an exemption to the safe third country agreement, claimants whose claims have been determined to be manifestly unfounded or of no credible basis, and claimants who arrive as part of a designated irregular arrival.

Not only does this prejudice certain applicants further, as I noted in my initial remarks about the problem of having designated countries in the first place, it is problematic in that claimants who have a valid claim as recognized by the courts would be forced to fight their court case from abroad. It is difficult enough for such claimants to argue their cases here in Canada, but it becomes even more difficult when they are forced to do so from a distance. If the court finds that the claimant is correct and should be allowed to stay here, will Canada fund the person's return voyage? Or is the government's plan thereby to end up removing more than needs to be removed and make it more difficult for people to come back?

Sixth and related, the legislation allows the Canada Border Services Agency to establish regulations concerning factors to consider when deferring removal. In this regard, we see a change in the legislation where removal orders are to be enforced as soon as is reasonably practicable, to use the language of Bill C-31, which says that the order must be enforced as soon as possible. This could cause a problem.

Time does not permit me to get into any other concerns, so I will quote the Canadian Civil Liberties Association by way of conclusion:

The provisions of Bill C-31 stand in stark contrast to Canada's legal obligations under our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and a variety of international human rights conventions. Furthermore, this bill represents a dramatic departure from the ethos and reputation of Canada....

Corrections and Conditional Release Act

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that intervention.

As I was saying, I believe that my colleague, the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, proposes this measure in good faith and attempts to tackle an important issue.

The bill's intention appears to be to improve support and fairness for victims of crime and their families and to ensure offenders meet their obligations to society. That is something I know all members of this House support.

Victims of crime must, of course, be treated with compassion, dignity and respect. They need and deserve the support of their community and the support of their government. The government has an obligation to listen to and respond to the needs of victims, but the Conservative government's record on that score leaves a great deal to be desired.

My colleagues opposite spin a good yarn about defending and supporting victims, but when it comes to concrete action, they obstinately, and flying in the face of all evidence, pursue policies that will increase crime levels, increase recidivism and make our streets less safe than they are today.

From its omnibus crime legislation, which experts expect will actually create many more victims of crime, to the shameful decision to end the gun registry and destroy the attendant records, the Conservative government continues to promote policies that victims of crime oppose.

In fact, it is pretty clear that the government has about as much respect for the views of crime victims as it has respect for facts and evidence in public policy-making, that is, none.

The government fails to provide adequate supports for victims of crime and fails utterly to understand and address the root causes of crime. That is a fundamental difference between our approach and the approach of members opposite.

We want to help victims recover and to offer them every support we possibly can. We want to provide the necessary resources to help them heal and to put their lives back together after enduring experiences that, in some cases, are more terrible than any of us here can imagine.

I think any victim would tell us that among the best things we can do as legislators is to work towards a more effective criminal justice system and do everything in our power to prevent criminal behaviour in the first place.

The economically and socially responsible approach is to invest in crime prevention by investing in Canadians and in our communities. We can begin by committing to develop a coherent and robust national housing strategy and put in place a sensible plan to address homelessness. This country has as many as 300,000 homeless people on our streets, yet we remain the only country in the G8 that lacks a national housing strategy.

We must ensure that all Canadians have access to primary health care, including mental health treatment facilities and addiction programs.

We must ensure that aboriginal Canadians have access to the housing, health care and education resources necessary to build strong and vibrant communities.

We must ensure that young Canadians have opportunities through early learning, post-secondary education and apprenticeship programs to participate fully in our economy and become engaged, contributing members of society.

We must build and support a functional corrections system that offers effective rehabilitation programming that reduces the risk of reoffending when prisoners leave the criminal justice system.

What we have seen instead from the government is an abdication of responsibility for providing the kinds of social supports, that is, housing, health care, education and jobs, that are the foundations of an effective crime prevention strategy. We have also seen a complete failure on the part of the Conservative government to live up to its promise to put more police on the streets.

In fact, the government has failed crime victims. It has failed the criminal justice system. It has failed communities. But that is what happens when governments pursue public policy on the basis of ideology rather than evidence.

During the Senate committee hearings on Bill C-10, the Conservatives' omnibus crime bill, the Minister of Public Safety told senators to ignore the facts when it comes to public safety. He said, “I don't know if the statistics demonstrate that crime is down. I'm focused on danger.”

This is not the first time we have been told to ignore the facts by the Conservatives. In response to questions about Bill C-10, the Minister of Justice said, “We're not governing on the basis of the latest statistics.”

Indeed, the blind pursuit of ideology, and a dogged determination to dismiss facts and evidence as inconveniences, is a deeply troubling hallmark of the Conservative government. It is unacceptable, and frankly, Canadians have had enough. Canadians deserve better and victims deserve better.

I regret that the legislation before us today is not part of the comprehensive, evidence-based, long-term view of Canada's criminal justice system that we need. However, I can broadly support the intended purpose of the bill, and it raises some issues that deserve closer examination. Victims deserve to be better supported and this bill may be one way to take a step in that direction.

I also support recommendations 12 and 13 of the Ombudsman for Victims report “Toward a Greater Respect for Victims of Crime in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act“, which calls for an amendment to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to ensure offenders will fulfill their court ordered sentences, including restitution and victim fine surcharges, and authorizing Correctional Services Canada to deduct from an offender's earnings reasonable amounts for restitution or victim fine surcharges orders.

I do have some concerns with the bill. It would seem there are jurisdictional issues that may prove difficult to overcome. As my colleague, the member for Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, pointed out, the bill appears to be designed to create two civil law systems, one for prisoners and another for the rest of society. However, the protection of the law applies to all citizens, including prisoners.

As well, I am unaware of any existing problems with judgments being paid. I wonder if the bill really represents a solution to a problem, or whether it is in fact an exercise in wedge politics.

If the government is genuinely interested in providing effective and meaningful support for victims of crime, why does it not reinstate federal funding for criminal injuries compensation programs? These programs have largely collapsed because of a lack of funding. There are countless victims of crime who are suffering today, with no support, with no restitution, because the offenders have no money. Why does the government continue to ignore those crime victims?

Despite these significant shortcomings, I am willing to take a closer look at the bill to see where and how the broader objectives, the better intentions, can be supported.

I want to take this opportunity to encourage the members across the way to help make all conversations that we have in this place about victims more productive. I would encourage the members across to put aside ideology and to instead pay attention to facts, to evidence, to expertise and experience when it comes to developing policies on public safety. This means supporting and promoting proven and effective crime prevention strategies, which make both financial and practical sense, so we can work together toward reducing the number of victims of crime in our country.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am a lawyer by training and have practised law for most of my adult life. I served as managing partner in a successful law firm back home in Prince Edward Island. I have some experience as a prosecutor with respect to narcotics offences and election offences. That is something that will probably come in handy before too long in this country. Therefore, I understand the harm that crime can have on individuals. I know it hurts families. I know it hurts communities. I value a tough justice system, but not a vindictive one. I value proportionality and balance. I value the courts and their judgment. I value the Charter of Rights.

However, one gets a very strong impression that the Conservatives have a view of justice that is arbitrary, vindictive and disproportionate. We have certainly seen this manifested in Bill C-10, a bill that would most certainly be found to be, in whole or in part, unconstitutional. In effect, we also saw it last night in the debate on Bill C-316.

The bill before us today proposes to do something that in all my years of practising law I have yet to confront.

What widespread epidemic problem does the bill seek to fix? Are there thousands of incarcerated people in receipt of a judgment from Her Majesty where we have to divvy up the proceeds? Is this an epidemic in our country?

We know the answer to that. The answer is: very, very few.

I am not a cynic by nature, but the actions and the behaviour of the Conservatives really do cause one to question their motives. I am sure there are many members who like it when we oppose the myth-based crime bills. They perhaps want to be able to write fund-raising letters to their right-wing base, collecting untold amounts of money by suggesting that the opposition is soft on crime and that we do not care about victims. That is the type of divisive government we have in Canada.

The bill has already had a rough ride, primarily because it was initially ill-conceived and not well thought out. It was originally proposed and rejected because of jurisdictional problems. A non-partisan researcher and lawyer associated with the non-partisan Library of Parliament, Michel Bédard, said:

—I have doubts as to the federal government's power to pass provisions of this kind. It's important to understand that, according to the division of powers in Canada, property and civil rights fall within provincial jurisdiction. Under that head of power, the provinces have jurisdiction over contracts and all private law, including debt priority ranking. That includes debts owed to creditors, in particular.... It's important to realize that federal jurisdiction regarding debt priority ranking is limited to certain well-defined areas, such as bankruptcy, tax collection and banks.

This is obviously something that will have to be discussed at committee.

I would close by saying this. The Criminal Code is not some pet project to be tinkered and played with by Conservative backbenchers looking for reasons to appear tough. The Criminal Code is not supposed to be used and amended by backbenchers in order to send out a press release, or to be used as an opportunity to put something in a householder or newsletter. That is not how we make laws in Canada. In fact, I should say, that is not how we used to make laws in Canada. That is the sad part of what is happening in Canada under this fact-free Conservative government.

Justice

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

Mr. Speaker, obviously none of those statements are entirely true. Public protection is essential to Quebec and Canadian society, and we know that police officers have the resources they need. That is one of the reasons we introduced Bill C-10.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was speaking French and he still did not understand. I was talking about the aboriginal population, which makes up nearly 60% of the prison population in the prairie provinces. As for Quebec, I understood the minister's response, although it does not make sense in terms of the facts.

Let us talk about the astronomical costs associated with his prison program. It is scary. Bill C-10 will cost Quebec and Ontario $1 billion each over five years. There will be fewer police officers on our streets and more criminals out of prison without proper preparation. Who is going to pay for all that? Taxpayers will, even though they are already being squeezed. How can the Conservatives justify such recklessness?

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

Mr. Speaker, as the hon. minister said, there is absolutely nothing in Bill C-10 that would prevent Quebec from adapting its rehabilitation system however it likes. In fact, some initial guidelines have been given to the courts to protect the public. A balance must be struck between rehabilitation and protecting the public in order to protect Canadians and Quebeckers.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is not at all what the Quebec justice minister was suggesting yesterday. He had to hold a press conference to explain how Quebec was going to distance itself from Bill C-10.

The government's repressive model is particularly harmful to aboriginal offenders, who are already overrepresented in our prisons. For example, in the prairie provinces, aboriginal people make up almost 60% of the prison population.

In 1999, the Supreme Court recognized the principle of restorative justice and the need for rehabilitation services. So why does this government want to divert the funding dedicated to the rehabilitation of aboriginal offenders? Why does it want to put even more pressure on—

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. I have the honour to inform the House that a communication has been received as follows:

Government House

Ottawa

March 13th, 2012

Mr. Speaker:

I have the honour to inform you that the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, signified royal assent by written declaration to the bill listed in the Schedule to this letter on the 13th day of March, 2012, at 3:32 p.m.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Wallace

The schedule indicates that the bill assented to on Tuesday, March 13, 2012 was Bill C-10, 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.

Safer Railways Act

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as the member for Bourassa and on behalf of my party, I would like to start by commending the work that was done in the other chamber. Obviously, we all remember that this bill is a revival of former Bill C-33 and that a good job was done with the amendments. People did a great job.

At the time, the hon. member for Markham—Unionville was on the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities and the work done there was quite outstanding. Since the work was well done and everyone decided to work together to ensure everyone's safety, the bill deserves our support today. We most definitely have to send it to committee as soon as possible in order to look into certain aspects and see if we have to make some improvements.

In the other chamber, Senator Mercer, together with the other hon. senators—from both the government side and our side—have already done a thorough job. All players had a chance to speak their minds. We realize that there is already a lot of support and a series of amendments has been moved as a result of the work accomplished on the former bill.

It is only fair to say that we must support this bill and find the proper way to do so. Obviously, pulling on a flower does not make it grow faster. However, we certainly want to make sure that things will be done as quickly as possible. The bill has to be sent to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities so that we can do a proper job and quickly address the issue to determine whether adjustments have to be made. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities and for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario will agree with me in saying that Bill S-4 is a good bill and that, as a result, we should support it, given the significant work that was done in the other chamber.

I want to explain to the thousands of television viewers watching us today what Bill S-4 is all about. It is intended, of course, to amend the Railway Safety Act, specifically to improve the oversight capacity of the Department of Transport, to strengthen that department’s enforcement powers by introducing administrative monetary penalties and increasing fines, to enhance the role of safety management systems by including a provision for a railway executive who is accountable for safety—and the word accountable is important here—and to implement a confidential non-punitive reporting system for employees of railway companies. It also seeks to clarify the authority and responsibilities of the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities with respect to railway matters.

It is important that, as the representative of the people, the minister have those powers and, clearly, the regulation-making powers must be expanded, including those dealing with environmental management. The process for rule making by railway companies must also be clarified.

What I find interesting about this approach is that, for the most part, all partners support this bill. The unions, as well as the Railway Association of Canada, are generally in favour of this legislation. Naturally, the RAC is not in a position to say at this time if the industry will support the bill without reservation because, after appearing twice before the parliamentary committee that studied Bill S-4 and Bill S-33—the predecessor to the bill we are studying today—the RAC had proposed seven amendments to improve safety, all of which were rejected.

It is fair to say that our system is quite safe, but we need to make the necessary changes to make it safer. Naturally, I acknowledge my colleague from Burlington, who had that tragic accident in his riding. We will let the investigation take its course, but we must ensure that we develop the necessary tools to guarantee safety.

I truly believe in rail transportation. We all know that this country has been built on that vision. It is a great way to bridge rural and urban Canada. However, I think we need to provide better tools to make sure that citizens from coast to coast to coast feel that they are first-class citizens with that mode of transportation. Bill S-4 would provide that and some problems would be prevented.

Let us take a look at infrastructure. Certain areas may have some situations, such as the one my colleague for Trinity—Spadina spoke about in eastern Quebec. Of course, we would promote specific programs on infrastructure to make sure that we have the capacity for the track to be accurate. We must make sure we are providing the service which, in certain areas, is an essential service. It is important that we take a look at that.

We would not play with security. At times it might be used in partisan ways, such as on Bill C-10, but for the railway I think it is a non-partisan issue. I think that all sides believe in security.

However, this bill needs to be quickly sent to committee. I think that we need to look further at the bill. My colleague suggested that the Canadian Urban Transit Association, in approaching the committee, was concerned about how the provisions of the bill would affect the operation of light rail transit that operates on federally regulated rail lines. There are only a few examples of this in the country. For example, the Lakeshore line of GO Transit moves an incredibly large number of people each day. Therefore, the committee concerns must be twofold.

First, overly large increases to the administrative burden on authorities like GO Transit would negatively impact ridership and fares. However, considering the volume of riders and the number of level crossings on the Lakeshore line, it is also important that the Government of Canada ensure that these trains operate with the highest level of safety possible.

Second, the Railway Association of Canada made a request that the bill be amended by adding to subclause 24(1) the following:

Respecting notices to be given to railways regarding any proposed local plan of subdivision or zoning by-law or proposed amendment thereof in respect of land that is located within 300 meters of a line of railway or railway yard.

This amendment would require municipalities to notify and consult the railway if they made any zoning amendments on land within 300 metres of a railway or railway yard. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities was understandably concerned about this measure. At the heart of its concern was this requirement for communities to inform railways of changes from adjacent land to proximate land. As it was explained to the committee, municipalities across Canada already inform railways when their zoning plans affect land adjacent to the railway's right of way.

The FCM's objection to this change was twofold. Primarily there is a concern that the 300 metre limit is overly burdensome on municipalities that already inform railways of land use changes on property adjacent to the rail line. There is also a concern about the federal government mandating a provision that directly interferes with how provinces legislate municipal power and zoning laws. As these laws and powers vary drastically across the provinces, it would be inappropriate for the federal government to simply override them all. It could also create needless red tape for the local transit association.

These are just some of the issues that the transport committee could consider taking up at its hearings. However, I think everyone has done a great job in the other chamber.

I believe it is a good idea to pass this bill very quickly in order to provide the minister and the department with the necessary authority to enact regulations, and to ensure better safety and greater consistency of the regulations. Partners must be heard quickly one last time by the Standing Committee on Transport to ensure, as we all wish, better safety for all Canadians.

Bill C-31--Time Allocation Motion

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, we are a democracy because the government derives its mandate from the people as expressed in a general election. The government is ultimately accountable to the people for its actions, including its management of its legislative agenda.

In that respect, it is a democracy, for example, because our government made a platform commitment to pass at all stages and bring into law the various provisions of criminal justice reform included in Bill C-10 within 100 sitting days. That was an undertaking to the Canadian people, for which, in part, this government received a mandate.

Similarly, we made a very important election commitment to Canadians to take strong legislative action with the adoption of anti-human smuggling legislation, which is incorporated into the bill before this place, Bill C-31.

Furthermore, we have made commitments to Canadians to bring in fundamental reforms to our broken asylum system, which are also incorporated in this bill.

What we are seeking to do through this motion is to keep our trust with Canadians by adopting these measures, as opposed to listening to endless filibusters from the opposition, which, effectively, would preclude our ability to improve the asylum system. We must make these reforms before June 29 due to a coming into force provision included in legislation passed in June 2010.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, with the encouragement and support of the opposition House leader, I will continue to try to engage all the House leaders and other parties in an effort to work on consensus approaches as to scheduling matters. I will make the observation that for a dance to work everyone has to be dancing. Therefore, I will continue to make my best efforts.

This afternoon, we will continue debating the opposition day motion from the hon. member for Hamilton Centre.

Tomorrow we will conclude debate on the amendments coming from the other place, on Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act. We will have our final vote on this important legislation on Monday night. Bill C-10 will pass a number of important proposals that our government has put forward over the last five years that stand up for victims and for making our communities safer. I might add that Monday will be the 94th sitting day of the House, which means our government will have easily met our election commitment to make this bill law.

Also on Monday, the House will resume debate on Bill C-31, the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act. We will return to this debate on Thursday and Friday.

Tuesday will begin with Bill S-4, the Safer Railways Act. This is an important bill that was nearly passed before the opposition forced an election last year. I hope we will see the debate conclude sometime Tuesday.

If we have extra time on Tuesday, the House will take up a second piece of legislation, Bill C-15, the Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act.

Wednesday shall be the seventh and final allotted day of the supply cycle. I might correct my friend that I do not think this has ever been designated in the House. We will debate a motion from the New Democratic Party and end the afternoon with two appropriations bills from the President of the Treasury Board.

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

Mr. Speaker, I stood here in the same place last week and acknowledged that the government had gone a whole five sitting days without moving a time allocation motion and I encouraged the House leader of the government to continue that practice. Therefore, I am quite disappointed standing here today.

They moved not just one time allocation motion on Tuesday, but they moved two such motions. What they are doing is truly undemocratic. I urge the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons once again to put an end to this practice immediately.

For the coming week, there are a number of issues that are outstanding and unclear so I will list them.

I understand that we have a confirmation that Bill C-10 will come before this House for debate tomorrow and that the vote on Bill C-10 will be put off until Monday evening.

I further understand that Bill C-31, the attack on refugees bill, will come before the House on Tuesday. I would ask the House leader if that is still the case and if it will be before the House for the balance of the week.

With regard to other legislation, I will repeat a question I had earlier for him but never got an answer to. Where is Bill C-30, the Internet snooping bill? When will that be back before the House? Will we ever see it again or is the government just going to dump it?

Finally, could I have a confirmation for the House that the final supply day, which was originally scheduled for Monday, has now been put over to Wednesday and all the votes that will flow subsequent to that will be Wednesday evening?

Bill C-10—Time Allocation Motion

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order relating to our obligations as members of Parliament in relation to the Standing Orders. I have looked at this matter and, although we all took an oath to Her Majesty the Queen, it is well understand that our oath is not actually to Her Majesty as a person but to Her Majesty the Queen comprising our loyalty to the Constitution and the rule of law.

Since we first debated Bill C-10 in the House, we have now had a court ruling from the Ontario Superior Court in the case of R. v. Smickle. In that case, a judge of the Superior Court of Ontario made it very clear that the concerns of many members of opposition parties on this matter are not misplaced, in that the bill may well be unconstitutional. As such, I feel it is important, although novel, to rise on a point of--

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues should know that when I first began practising law I dealt with compensation for victims of crime. I know a great deal about victims of crime.

First and foremost, they want the people who attacked them to be arrested. After that comes punishment. They want justice. But what they want most of all is to end impunity for criminals, not to impose exemplary sentences. In that regard, I would point out that putting a rope in every inmate's cell is not necessarily what victims have called for.

The Minister of Justice informed us that these laws are constitutional. However, a few weeks ago we were advised of a legal decision indicating that the omnibus bill's provisions on firearms possession were considered cruel and unusual punishment. Is that what we can hope for from Bill C-10 over the next three years, that judges will dismantle it piece by piece?

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, most of the members who are asking questions today did not hear any of that evidence. I did hear the evidence. I heard overwhelmingly from victims who stand up for this legislation.

What is interesting is that the only time this bill was time limited in committee was on a motion moved by the NDP critic. Clearly those members must have a different idea today than they did before.

I ask the minister, who stood up for victims during committee? What did the victims of crime overwhelmingly say about Bill C-10?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very dissatisfied with this gag order, the seventeenth of its kind. When the first iteration of Bill C-10 was introduced in the House of Commons, we debated it. Then the government wanted to move things along so quickly that very serious mistakes in this bill had to be corrected by the Senate at the last minute.

This government's lack of respect for Canadians and for the members of Parliament is unbelievable. Both sides of the House are here to debate bills and improve them. Obviously, the NDP is dissatisfied and, personally, I am angry about these gag orders. This Parliament is supposed to be democratic but such is no longer the case. The Conservatives need to change their behaviour.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, legal scholars across this country and the Canadian Bar Association have very serious concerns about the constitutionality of many aspects of this bill.

The member for Mount Royal has asked the minister whether he will table the legal opinions with respect to its constitutionality. I am not sure we have an answer. I will ask the question again.

Will the minister please table the opinions with respect to the constitutionality of the provisions within Bill C-10?

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I learned something when I got into politics. My first campaign was in 2000, and I have rubbed shoulders with many politicians. What they told me is that when we are elected as MPs, we become an MP for all the people. Of course we represent a certain political party and certain choices and ideologies that come from our convictions. However, once we are elected, we represent everyone. The same is true of the government. The government is led by the leader of the Conservative Party, but he is everyone's Prime Minister.

So, why is the minister doing something so undemocratic, once again, with yet another time allocation motion—the Conservatives are out to break a record—for instance, by disrespecting the Government of Quebec, which has been very clear about its requests concerning Bill C-10?

The Quebec justice minister has even said that this is a Canada he cannot identify with, and that he had no intention of paying for the additional costs associated with Bill C-10. Why does the minister want to shut down the debate?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would be hard-pressed in all the years I have been here to come up with another piece of legislation that has had as much debate as Bill C-10 has had.

If we spent another four years debating this, would the member change her mind? Let us be honest. The day before yesterday the member said that people were criticizing the bill because more criminals might be on the streets. On another day members say that everybody is going to be locked up. Those members cannot make up their minds.

Ultimately, they should be supporting this legislation because it is the right thing to do. The legislation goes after drug traffickers, the people who are bringing heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine into this country. It sends out the message that that kind of behaviour is unacceptable. That is why the member and everyone else should support this important piece of legislation.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I move:

That, in relation to Bill C-10, 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, not more than one further sitting day shall be allotted to the stage of consideration of Senate amendments to the bill; and

That, 15 minutes before the expiry of the time provided for government orders on the day allotted to the consideration of the said stage of the said bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this order, and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.

Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Laurentides—Labelle.

A policy without justice is an inadequate policy. Bill C-31 completely jeopardizes refugee rights. Never in human history have refugee rights been as threatened as they are under the Conservatives and never has our democracy been as discredited as it is under the Conservative government, which is unable to respect the compromises reached in consensus with the other parties.

The government seems to forget that our ratification of international conventions on refugee rights and human rights requires us to bring our laws and policies into line with the provisions of these international conventions.

Canada is a signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees. Bill C-31, intended to protect Canada's immigration system, respects neither the spirit nor the letter of the Geneva convention. Having read the bill, one wonders whether the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, adopted by the House in 1982, is still in effect in Canada.

Let us not forget that Bill C-31 is an omnibus bill, which seeks to amend the Immigration Refugee Protection Act by unfortunately incorporating into Bill C-4 the most unreasonable provisions of the former Bill C-11, which received royal assent in June 2010.

The government had three main goals in mind for this bill: revoking the majority of the compromises included in the former Bill C-11, Balanced Refugee Reform Act, which received support from all the parties; reintroducing Bill C-4, the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act; and finally, introducing the use of biometrics into the temporary resident program.

Bill C-31 raises some serious concerns in addition to the those already raised by Bill C-4, the unconstitutional nature of which we have raised and highlighted in our previous interventions.

In my speech today, I would like to draw the attention of the House to some of the concerns that Bill C-31 raises. In reaction to the introduction of Bill C-31, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers says that like the sorry Bill C-10, Bill C-31 is extremely complicated.

The most draconian measures in Bill C-4 have been integrated into Bill C-31. Let us look at a few examples. Bill C-4 provided for mandatory detention for one year for people fleeing persecution in their country of origin and entering Canada without identity documents in their possession. Also, Bill C-4 eliminated review of detention for refugees who are smuggled into Canada.

The provisions pertaining to detention found in Bill C-4, which are being reintroduced in Bill C-31, are a direct violation of our Constitution. Furthermore, the jurisprudence constante of the Supreme Court is categorical in this regard.

Why are the Conservatives attempting to put themselves above the rule of law, which is a key principle of our democracy, even though they are familiar with the precedents of our high court? Why are they attempting to mislead the House by proposing that it pass laws that they know violate not only our Constitution, but also the Canadian charter and human rights conventions that our country has signed? Pacta sunt servanda is a principle of international law. Signed conventions have to be respected.

Furthermore, lawyers specializing in refugee rights have said that they are deeply troubled by the short time frames that Bill C-31 gives refugee claimants to seek Canada's protection. They find that Bill C-31 drastically changes Canada's refugee protection system and makes it unfair. Bill C-31 imposes unrealistic time frames and unattainable deadlines on refugee claimants and uses the claimants' inability to meet those deadlines to exclude them from protection.

In fact, under the terms of Bill C-31, refugee claimants have only 15 days to overcome the trauma of persecution, find a lawyer to help them, gather the documentary evidence to support their allegations, obtain proof of identity from their country, scrape together the money for legal fees, present an articulate and coherent account of their life, and so forth.

Is there a woman who has been raped and traumatized who would be willing to tell her story to a stranger? I am a psychologist and I know that is impossible in the time provided.

Unsuccessful refugee claimants will have 15 days within which to file an appeal under Bill C-31. As everyone can see, the time frames imposed on refugee claimants are not long enough to allow them to make full answer and defence.

Under our justice system, the greater the risk to life, the longer the time frames given to the person being tried to prepare his defence. Bill C-31 does not respect this principle of fundamental justice.

I am also deeply concerned not only about the new term—designated country of origin—that Bill C-31 introduces into our legislation but also about the undemocratic nature of the process for designating the countries in question. Under Bill C-31, the minister alone has the power to designate safe countries of origin, without first defining the designation criteria for these countries.

According to the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, the designated safe country list and the unilateral power granted to the minister dangerously politicize Canada's refugee system.

Refugee claimants who are on a designated safe country list have even less time to submit their written arguments and will not be allowed an appeal.

Bill C-31 also relieves the minister of the obligation of justifying why a country is safe and considering the differential risks that certain minorities face in a country that is safe for others.

If Bill C-31 is passed, refugees will become more vulnerable because their fate will depend on the political whims of the minister and the government. Failed claimants from designated countries of origin can be deported from Canada almost immediately, even if they have requested a judicial review of the decision. In other words, a person can be deported before his case is heard.

This shows us that the government has no understanding at all of the Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which was adopted on July 28, 1951. The convention insists that the individual concerns of victims of persecution be taken into account. The Geneva convention does not state anywhere that international protection is granted to the victim of persecution based on the country in which the persecution was experienced.

Persecution of religious minorities does not occur solely in non-democratic countries, nor does discrimination based on sexual orientation occur solely in non-democratic countries. Race-based persecution can happen anywhere in the world. All signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights are democratic countries, but the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights is teeming with rulings that condemn democratic states for abuses of individual rights.

If that is the case, by what objective criteria can the minister deny a person international protection based on the fact that he or she is from a particular country and claims to have been persecuted because of his or her sexual orientation or religion?

The process of designating countries of origin is not carried out by an independent, democratic entity. The government is judge and jury. It has the power to designate countries of origin considered safe, and it has the power to refuse protection provided for in the Geneva convention on refugee status without examining the merits of a given case.

I would also point out that under subclause 19(1) of Bill C-31, the government can, if it chooses, withdraw the international protection due to victims of persecution on the grounds that circumstances have changed in the refugee's country of origin. Under this provision, the government could now decide to send people to whom it granted international protection during the first and second world wars, for example, back to their countries of origin.

Subclause 19(1) also adds new terms to the section concerning loss of permanent resident status. It states that the existing criteria for withdrawing protection from asylum seekers can be grounds for loss of permanent resident status.

I will conclude with one final concern about changes that Bill C-31 makes to claims made on humanitarian grounds. Such claims enable a person to stay in Canada even if he or she is not eligible on other grounds. Unfortunately, under Bill C-31, applicants awaiting a refugee appeal division decision cannot simultaneously apply on humanitarian grounds.

This bill is unjust and cruel. It is antithetical to Canadian values of compassion for victims of persecution, and it must be defeated.

Bill C-10--Notice of time allocation motion

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I also note that our government made a clear commitment in the last election to pass the safe streets and communities act within 100 sitting days. We are on track to meet that commitment. All that remains before the House is to agree to the six amendments that were passed in the other place dealing with civil remedies for terrorism. I understand that all the opposition parties actually support these amendments, yet they somehow seem determined to keep them from coming into force.

Therefore, I would like to inform the House that an agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Orders 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-10, 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.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the Crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage. I intend to move that motion tomorrow.

Canada-Panama Economic Growth and Prosperity Act

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is not a question of the NDP being against free trade. What we have always asked for is that trade be fair, and that labour and environmental standards be enshrined in trade agreements. That is a tenet of a social democrat. It is no good that the workers in this country benefit, if workers in the country that we are trading with do not benefit as well.

Let us look at Mexican workers. We were told during the free trade deals with Mexico that their living standards would rise and rise, and so would ours. Well, 400,000 people lost their jobs in Ontario, no rising there. I have been to Mexico a fair number of times, and I have seen some whose standard has not changed too much.

In trading with Panama, the reality is this is a country that is inadvertently a tax haven for nefarious organizations, such as the drug cartel. One would think that if Canada wanted to trade with Panama that it would be paramount that we get Panama to agree to stop being a tax haven for that type of activity. That should have been number one.

Number two, where are the labour and environmental agreements enshrined in this agreement? They are not there.

Number three, the fact is our colleague, the hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster said very clearly that with the 11 amendments that would have strengthened the agreement, it would have gotten New Democratic support. However, every single one of the amendments was ignored.

I remember a Conservative committee that denied every amendment from a gentleman from Mount Royal on Bill C-10. Every single one of those amendments was defeated at committee. Yet, when it came back to the House for third reading, the government wanted to institute those amendments, but it could not do it. The government took it to the Senate, where the amendments that the gentleman from the Liberal Party proposed were then put in.

Why did the government do that? Just because it has a majority does not mean it has all the good ideas. Our colleague had some very sound and basic ideas to improve and strengthen the trade deal with Panama. They were rejected outright. It was not because the members of the committee understood what he was saying, it was because they were told to reject them. It is as simple as that.

If the government brings us back an agreement that includes labour and environmental standards, and ends the tax haven for drug dealers, maybe the NDP will support this initiative. Until that happens, the government should send it back. The reality is that on every single trade deal that has been out there, the NDP has been front and centre. We have been very clear that there is no deal unless labour and environmental standards are enshrined in the deal. There can be no side agreement, no bargain back here. They should be enshrined in the context of the deal.

That way, labour unions in Panama could collectively bargain with their employers and with their government to have the same rights that our trade unions have here in Canada in their collective agreements. That is the commonality we look for. We also want environmental standards to increase in both countries in order to improve the natural environment of both countries.

If the government does that, we should be able to enter into trade deals in order to assist businesses and workers. Unless that happens, there is really no deal on this side.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is always better to follow the member for Winnipeg Centre because then everybody on the other side of the House is awake and I appreciate that.

I get nervous when I read about free trade deals with countries like Panama. I come from a labour background, working for trade unions. I know when we reach agreements with other countries that have very poor labour relations records and very low wages, generally Canadians suffer. Canadian workers suffer, unionized or not, because we are now trying to enter into a race to the bottom. That nervousness is part of what drives me to want to speak to this bill.

The agreement with Panama does not correct the very shoddy state of the labour relations in Panama. We are not dealing with a country on an even footing. I appreciate the comment of my friend from Winnipeg Centre, that we do not always want to be on an even footing. We want to have agreements with countries regardless of whether they are our equals because we hope that our entering into these agreements will raise everyone's standard of living in both countries.

However, the experience I personally have had is that when there is a low-wage jurisdiction to send jobs to and there is nothing to prevent the products or services that come from that low-wage jurisdiction, Canadian corporations, even big multinational corporations based in Canada, are quick to send those jobs to those other countries, thus hurting Canadian workers. Even in knowledge-based industries, film and television production and in the newspaper business, we have seen jobs move out of Canada into low-wage jurisdictions like Panama because there is nothing the government has done to prevent it. There is no barrier whatsoever. With this bill, we would create even fewer barriers to a low-wage jurisdiction and one that has very little, if any, labour protections for organized labour in that country.

We spent quite a bit of time debating Bill C-10, which had in it some raising of the bar for people who were involved in drug trafficking, with a mandatory minimum five-year sentence those people. Even if that person is growing as few as six pot plants to alleviate symptoms from multiple sclerosis, he or she might go to jail for five years. The good news in that case is that person would not stay in jail for five years because he or she would likely be dead before that.

The problem is we are about to enter into an agreement with a country with a large part of its economic basis being the drug trade. How is it that we are opposed to the drug trade when it is in Canada, but we are in favour of entering into a deal with a country where probably billions of dollars, because there is no way of disclosing how much, is being laundered from the drug trade in that country? That gives me pause and it should give everyone here pause, that we should not be encouraging deals with drug dealers. That is just not on, as far as this side of the House is concerned.

There is no agreement on tax information exchange, so we do not even know the size of the problem. Both the Conservatives and the Liberals have agreed that the tax-doubling agreement is enough. It is not enough. It does not disclose any of the illegal income that is floating around in that country as a tax haven, a tax haven for drug dealers and drug cartels. We believe most of this income is from money laundering that cannot happen in Canada because we have good financial and taxation regimes that prevent it. Now we getting into bed with a country that permits it and will not even disclose it. The OECD had it on its grey list as one of the countries to not do business with, yet we are about to do that.

There are already too many drug dealers in my riding. What kind of a message does it send to those people who are doing harm to our community and our citizens when we are entering into an agreement with a country that is notorious around the world for being a haven for money laundering for drug dealers? I am sure there are a few Panamanians in my riding, although not very many. There are probably far more drug dealers.

Last summer we had the police task force on anti-violence and drugs in my riding. Our riding was showered with many more police officers over the course of the summer to try to weed out some of that drug problem. Yet we are saying that it is okay to do business with what essentially is a country that harbours and is a haven for the drug trade. That does not make sense to me and it should not make sense to my constituents either.

For example, last week I had a meeting in my riding with a bunch of youth from the York Youth Coalition. One of the young folks asked me what he should tell the kids in the riding who could not get jobs. Over the course of the past few years of trade deals all the manufacturing jobs have left the riding. In part, they have gone to the U.S. and to low-wage countries as a result of free trade deals that the government has signed with other countries. These kids who cannot get jobs, or if they do get jobs, they are for 20 hours a week at $9 or $10 an hour, discover very quickly that they can earn $300 or $400 in an hour standing on a street corner selling drugs. He asked what he should tell these kids. He said he told them that it is wrong to sell drugs, but he wanted to know what to tell them about how they could move forward in society, how they could expect to, at some, point make a living that would sustain a family when the jobs had disappeared.

As with my friend's riding of Winnipeg Centre, which had huge and burgeoning textile businesses, we used to have a litany of manufacturing that was part of Ontario's manufacturing industry, to the point where every June the manufacturers would line up in the high schools to solicit the kids graduating to come and work in their factories. The last time that happened was probably 30 years ago. Stores like Wal-Mart certainly do not line up in the high schools looking for kids. The kids come pounding on those doors looking for $10 an hour jobs. It is a very desperate situation where I am. We have only ourselves to blame as a result of some of these trade deals.

I am not saying that we, as an opposition, are opposed to anything to do with trade. That is not the case. However, we need to protect our interests. We need to protect the interests of Canadians in the deals that we do exercise with other countries. We need to protect the labour rights in those countries. We need to ensure that we are not in a huge race to the bottom in which our minimum wage will never go up because we now compete with minimum wages of $1 an hour or $1 a day, depending on the jurisdiction with which we are about to compete. There are no protections from labour unions in those same countries.

We have made proposals in the past to amend these agreements to protect the labour rights of Canadians and to protect environmental rights and they have been rejected by both the Conservatives and the Liberals. Therefore, these kinds of sensible applications need to be made to this kind of an agreement before we enter into it.

Financial Literacy Leader Act

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.

This is yet another in a series of governing on the back of an envelope from the government side. The government tried to amend Bill C-10, and discovered it could not. It then had to send the bill to the Senate to have some amendments made. Now it will come back to the House.

We then had the lawful access bill, the awful access bill, which the government had to withdraw. It had to send the bill to committee so some amendments could be made to please Canadians.

Now we have this bill. It seems to be extremely poorly thought out. It does not actually deal with the recommendations of the task force, except to create a new bureaucracy. Canadians do not need another level of bureaucracy.

According to the bill, a position would be created, with no definition of what the person would do and with a very vague statement of consulting with stakeholders, which have not been defined. Are the stakeholders the big banks? Are they the payday lenders? Are they the big and powerful corporations that want better tax regimes? Who are the stakeholders in this?

The bill does not deal with the bulk of the recommendations that came from the task force. In fact, it only deals with half of one, which is to appoint a leader. The other recommendations suggested that the government spend money on making Canadians better able to deal with their day to day financial pressures. They are such things as integrating financial literacy into the Canada student loans program. That would require an expenditure. This proposed new individual would not have the authority to spend money.

There was the recommendation that government make financial literacy training programs for young Canadians eligible for funding through the youth employment strategy. Again, the bill would not do that. There was the recommendation that the Government of Canada, as part of the renewal of the urban aboriginal strategy, make financial literacy training programs for young aboriginal Canadians eligible for funding. Again, funding is not a part of the bill.

The recommendation to provide relevant financial information and education services for recent newcomers through the newcomers to Canada program, again, would require funding. In Toronto the funding for CIC programs is being cut.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we all agree that financial literacy is important, that it is a good thing, but that is not the subject of today’s debate. The issue is whether or not this bill is going to strengthen financial literacy. And on that point I must say that I have many doubts about this bill.

As I said, we are supportive of financial literacy. Who would not be? We are deeply concerned about the lack of information in the bill. it is my hope that the government will clarify further detail in the course of this debate.

We can all agree that increasing the financial literacy of Canadians is an important goal for government, both federal and provincial. A more financially literate population would be a more prosperous population. But financial literacy is not the panacea that the Conservative Party seems to pretend it to be.

Far too often over the past six years we have been told by the government that problems like increasing post-secondary education costs and rising household debt can simply be solved by waving this magic wand of financial literacy. This is simply incorrect. There are a number of policy levers the government can operate to help solve the issues of rising household debt or runaway student debt. Increased financial literacy is one of them. My goal is not to downplay the importance of financial literacy but only to point out that it is not the only policy solution available to the government.

Let me turn now to the contents of the bill. I get the distinct impression that Bill C-28 was written on the back of an envelope, that the primary motive was probably to have an “announceable” for Financial Literacy Month last November, because it is virtually content-free. I will explain.

The bill and its supporting documents are completely devoid of any detail as to how the office of the financial literacy leader would even work. The bill does not specify if there would even be an office of the financial literacy leader or if he or she would simply be one more employee at FCAC.

Bill C-28 was a response to the recommendations of the Task Force on Financial Literacy. The task force was created as part of the 2009 budget. It reported back to the minister early last year. The task force had 30 recommendations. This legislation satisfies only a part of one of the recommendations.

The first recommendation was that the government create the position of financial literacy leader and that this person be charged with improving financial literacy across Canada. It also said the financial literacy leader should report directly to the Minister of Finance. Under this legislation this position would report to the commissioner of FCAC. Let us give the government half a point for getting recommendation 1 half right. Its total score then is one-half of one point out of thirty. If I were back in my professor days, I do not think that would be a passing grade.

The bill would also give FCAC the power to impose a levy on the banks in order to pay for its efforts in improving financial literacy. But it would also give the Minister of Finance the power to spend government money to achieve the same objective. As parliamentarians, we are yet again being asked to vote on a bill that causes the government to incur costs, spend money and perhaps tax banks without being given even a hint of the numbers involved.

Liberals, indeed all parliamentarians, should not have a problem with spending resources to improve financial literacy. However, we do want to know the order of magnitude these expenditures and the related taxes would be on. Are we talking about $100,000, $500,000, $1 million, $10 million? We have no idea, because there is nothing in the bill to tell us what this process would involve other than the naming of this one person. The question of how much things would cost is important because many of the other recommendations from the task force's report would require additional effort and financial commitment on the part of the government.

For example, recommendation 2 requires the government to establish an advisory board on financial literacy. The advisory board would help the financial literacy leader to develop a national strategy on financial literacy.

Recommendation 4 requires the national strategy to incorporate financial literacy in the school curriculums across Canada and at all levels of education. This would obviously require coordination with provincial governments and may I suggest the direct ministerial mandate asked for in the task force's first recommendation.

Recommendation 9 suggests that financial literacy material be delivered to Canadians through programs that reach Canadians directly, such as EI, CPP, OAS or the universal child care benefit. There are many such requirements and they will all cost money.

Surely the government must have some idea of the anticipated costs. Yet there is no mention of any of these recommendations or any actions to be taken or not to be taken in the bill. Therefore, we are all left totally in the dark as to what, if anything significant, this leader would accomplish, how much money it would cost and what the scope of the mandate would be.

This is not the first time that the House of Commons has been asked to vote on legislation without knowing the cost. The most prominent case that comes to mind is Bill C-10, the tough on crime compendium of bills. The government did not tell us what the additional costs would be for new prisons. We know from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that it is many billions of dollars. We know that some of those billions would be downloaded onto the provinces. The government did not come clean on that and it was a far more important case in terms of expenditure of funds than this would be. However, it is the same principle. The government wants us to pass legislation, but tell us nothing about what it would actually do and what it would actually cost.

This similar issue has caught the attention of the government operations committee, which is currently conducting a study on how Parliament considers supply and more broadly how we as parliamentarians are presented with information on the government spending plan. I would certainly suggest that not knowing the cost of bills before we vote on them is just one part of this problem.

Back to the contents of the bill, there are other existing mechanisms at the disposal of the federal government to promote financial literacy. For example, the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education was created in 1974 as a non-profit, non-partisan organization with the goal of promoting greater financial literacy. It already has tremendous buy-in from government and from the private sector. A quick scan of its website indicates that its list of board of directors include prominent members of the private, post-secondary and labour sectors. On the government side, the CFEE has relationships with the federal Department of Finance and numerous ministries of education provincially.

I know this group from my earlier incarnation with the Royal Bank as their chief economist and I had several meetings with this group. I know that they were working diligently. However, it certainly is not obvious from the bill, which tells us virtually nothing, why the addition of one more body in the bowels of the federal bureaucracy would improve financial literacy better than the work being carried out by the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education.

In the end, the issue I have with the bill is that we simply do not know what the government is planning to do. We do know that it may involve taxing banks. We know that it may involve spending more government funds, but we have no idea how much. We do not know the size of this new organization. We do not know which of the other recommendations from the Task Force on Financial Literacy would be carried out. We know very little, virtually nothing about it.

As I said at the outset, improving financial literacy is an important task for the federal government. However, we have concerns on this side of the House that the newly created financial literacy leader would not be able to carry out his important task.

There is another side of this coin. We can talk about the need for greater financial literacy on the part of Canadians, but we can also talk about the problem of financial illiteracy on the part of the Conservative government.

I would like to say a few words on the financial illiteracy of the Conservative government. I think if there needs to be a course in financial literacy, the first ones to enrol in such a course should probably be the members sitting opposite.

My first example of Conservative financial illiteracy goes way back to 2006. Prior to the arrival of the current government in 2006, for many years Canadians had to have at least a 5% down payment on a mortgage. The longest mortgage they could get was 25 years. What did these financial wizards do in 2006? Instead of a 25 year maximum period, they made it 40 years.

Instead of a 5% minimum down payment, they made it zero. Brilliant. Magic. People could get a zero down payment mortgage for 40 years under the Conservative government.

Now, the problem is that this is like the subprime mortgages in the U.S. Eventually, they found out, but did not admit it because the Conservatives would never admit they made a mistake. They discovered they had made a mistake, so they put it back from 40 years down to 35 years, and they brought the minimum payment up from zero to 5%. Then they claimed credit for tightening the system.

However, the system is not back to where it was when the Conservatives arrived. It is still looser. That is the first example of financial illiteracy.

So I suggest that the Minister of Finance and some of his colleagues enrol in financial literacy 101. If they do, maybe their performance will improve.

The second example of financial illiteracy is the fact that the Conservatives were so lucky when they inherited a massive $13 billion Liberal surplus when they came to power. Then they proceeded to spend like drunken sailors. They are the biggest spenders in Canadian history, to the point where these Conservatives actually ate through all that surplus and went into deficit before the recession began.

That is a second reason for the Minister of Finance to enrol in that course which I shall call financial literacy 101. It is important to have a prudent fiscal policy. It is not good financial literacy to blow through a $13 billion surplus by spending madly when the economy is strong. One might have a deficit when the economy is weak, but one should not run through a surplus when times are good, with massive spending just before a recession begins.

I have a third example of this government’s lack of financial literacy. That is its plan for massive cuts in government spending at a time when the Canadian economy is very fragile. It is suggesting reductions on the order of $4 billion or even $8 billion in public spending and reductions of government services to Canadians. It will be doing this at a time when the economy is very weak.

Let us not forget that unemployment remains high; let us not forget that there is a crisis in Europe; let us not forget that the U.S. economy is extremely weak.

We are living in a world where the unemployment rate remains too high and where the level of risk is very high everywhere, compared with the past.

In this context of a hugely fragile weak economy, anyone who went through financial literacy 101 would know that this is not the moment to have massive cuts in government spending, massive layoffs of public servants and massive reductions in the services provided to Canadians. It is not a good idea.

Members do not have to believe me, I will invoke the name of Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF. The IMF is the mother of all fiscally prudent people. Typically the IMF calls for countries to cut. Christine Lagarde recently said that countries which have room, and this might not include Greece but it certainly includes Canada, should in the short run focus on measures to create jobs and support the economy, and in the medium term they should have a credible plan to balance the books and bring down debt. That is not me talking, that is the head of the IMF. The chief economist of BMO had said something similar, that making massive cuts at this time is as crazy as what Herbert Hoover did in the U.S. during the Great Depression.

As I said earlier, I think members of the government, maybe even the Prime Minister, might like to enrol in this course which we could set up called financial literacy 101.

If they do this, there will be at least three subjects. The first is that it is not smart to have mortgages amortized over 40 years with no capital outlay. That makes no sense. We saw this in the United States, but this government changed the system for the worse in 2006. Second, when you inherit a $13 billion surplus, it is not financially prudent to spend all of those funds when the economy is strong and to go into deficit even before the recession. That is not a good example of financial literacy.

That is what this Conservative government did: it did not demonstrate sound financial literacy. As I just said, it is not a good idea to make massive budget cuts in government investments and have monumental job losses in the public sector when the economy is weak and the global economic system is very fragile. That too is not a good idea.

In conclusion, in terms of the mark that the bill deserves, it got 1 of the recommendations out of 30 half right, so is one-half of one out of 30, which is a failure. Also, in terms of the three subjects for a financial literacy class 101, which I recommended for the government, it fails on all three.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I do want to express my amusement, I guess is the best word, at the opposition House leader's great interest in the democratic process in the Senate. Of course, his party's position is that body should be abolished. The one benefit is that if he had his way, Bill C-10 would already be law today. That is something we hope will happen very soon.

Let me begin by thanking the hon. member for asking for the business of the House in the upcoming week. I am happy to provide it to you, Mr. Speaker, to him and, indeed, to all Canadians. This afternoon we will continue debate on Bill C-28, Financial Literacy Leader Act.

Continuing our week focused on jobs and economic growth, because that is what this week is about, tomorrow morning we will resume debate on Bill C-28, the financial literacy leader act, and in the afternoon we will debate the Canada-Panama economic growth and prosperity act, Bill C-24. That bill implements a free trade agreement that was signed almost two years ago, which will create new jobs for Canadians by opening new markets for Canadian exporters and workers. The bill was studied and passed by the international trade committee in a previous Parliament and has been debated on numerous days at second reading in this Parliament.

Monday will be the fifth allotted day, when I understand we will debate an NDP motion. I know members of the House would appreciate it if the opposition House leader could tell us what motion we will be debating at that time. I know I am certainly interested.

On Tuesday afternoon, we will begin debating the protecting Canada's immigration system act, Bill C-31. I also understand that the safe streets and communities act, Bill C-10, will be returning from the other place very soon. We will consider Senate amendments on Tuesday morning and Wednesday. The amendments relate to the civil remedies for terrorism portions of the act, which I understand enjoy support from all parties. Thus I would invite the opposition to agree to move quickly on those items that we all support, so that we can get those provisions into law as soon as possible.

As the House knows, the government committed to passing this bill within 100 sitting days, and we will keep that commitment. Thursday, March 8, will be the sixth allotted day of this supply period, which will also go the NDP, I understand.

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

Mr. Speaker, as you can tell from my voice, I am going to be very brief this week, as opposed to some other weeks. At the outset I would like to note that we have now gone five full sitting days with no time allocation by the government. I want to encourage the House leader on the government side to continue to follow that pattern, perhaps maybe even give us some assurances today that he will follow that pattern.

I have to say, however, that his colleagues in the other House have not been quite so willing to follow that pattern, since I understand that either today or yesterday they began to move a motion for time allocation in the Senate on Bill C-10. I was expecting that we would see Bill C-10 on Tuesday next week. Will that still be the case or will it be coming later?

In addition to that bill, we have had indications from the government that Bill C-30 would be sent to committee before second reading, and I wonder if the House leader could advise us as to when the motion to send it to committee prior to second reading will be coming back to the House.

Justice

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

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives, as usual, are cherry-picking the facts. The minister knows that this rule also includes non-violent offences and such things as theft.

The independent Parliamentary Budget Officer was only dealing with one small part of Bill C-10 and concluded that the changes would be extremely costly and would punish fewer criminals for less time. It would cost 16 times more money to keep fewer criminals under correctional supervision. That is just nonsense.

This bill is expensive, it will not make our streets safer and nobody wants to pay for it. Why are the Conservatives forging ahead with something that is doomed to fail?

Opposition Motion--Charter of Rights and Freedoms

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-10 is in the Senate at the moment where the senators are adopting what we in the Liberal Party call the member for Mount Royal's amendments. We expect the bill to be improved as a result of that.

When we get to talking about Bill C-30, we hope that the very sensible Liberal amendments that will be put forward will be adopted in committee so we will not have to go to the Senate and backfill if members understand my meaning.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Madam Speaker, we support the principle of the bill, but the devil is in the details. We hope that those concerns will be brought forward at the committee hearings.

Members of the Conservative Party have raised concerns about the bill. I have not seen the members who raised those concerns engaged in the debate today. Maybe they are not allowed to raise those concerns in the House.

Some good amendments were put forward by our colleague from Mount Royal on Bill C-10 and they were dismissed totally by the government--

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

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Compton—Stanstead, so I will have 10 minutes to make an address with some questions and comments afterward.

We on this side of the House support this motion, the recognition of the fundamental right of all Canadians to the freedom of speech, communications and privacy, and looking for a clear affirmation on the need for these rights to be respected for all forms of communication. It invokes the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a very important part of our Constitution.

The constitutional guarantee under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is very broad. One of the rights specified in the fundamental freedoms, in addition to the freedom of conscience and religion, is the freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.

We have in this day and age a media of communication which is a two-way street. There is that of the Internet, emails and electronic communication. We already have, for example, mail service through Canada Post. These are private communications that Canadians are able to make with one another.

When the state desires to interfere with that privacy and to carry out a search or surveillance of these communications, under our law there is a requirement that there be judicial oversight to provide a warrant in most cases, unless someone is caught in the act. No one can enter a person's house, for example, without a warrant, unless under hot pursuit of someone who has just committed a crime. There are protections for fundamental freedoms and legal rights, including the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure. These are the kinds of fundamental rights that we have in our society.

People value their privacy. That is very clear. We have had the government go so far as to suggest that Statistics Canada was invading people's privacy by asking them how many bathrooms they had in their house. As a result the government brought in changes to the statistics forms that had been in use for many years by an agency that is sworn to secrecy and uses the information for statistical purposes only. Therefore, privacy is extremely important.

In the face of these fundamental rights, we have a piece of legislation that challenges those fundamental rights and freedoms by giving powers to the state that it does not have now.

The privacy commissioners and experts are already worried about this legislation, that Canadians' personal information could be obtained without a warrant, violating the rights and freedoms of law-abiding citizens. It does target what the Conservatives like to call law-abiding citizens, which is the vast majority of Canadians.

New Democrats believe that we can go aggressively after criminals and punish them to the full extent of the law without making false comparisons. We have heard in this House, to the shame of the government and to the shame of the Minister of Public Safety, false comparisons made to child pornographers and treating law-abiding citizens like criminals.

It is interesting that the most recent public opinion research on the bill which was released on February 24 indicates that 64% of Canadians reject the notion of requiring Internet service providers to give the subscriber data that would be required in the legislation to authorities without a warrant. That is not surprising to me. What is interesting for members opposite is that the highest level of rejection for Bill C-30 is in Alberta. Sixty-six per cent of Albertans are opposed to the provisions contained in Bill C-30 that impose these intrusions on people's privacy.

I find it interesting, not necessarily surprising, that when I look opposite and see what the breakdown in the House is of representation from Alberta there is 1 New Democrat and 26 Conservatives. Twenty-six members on that side of the House represent a province where 66% of the people reject the notion that the government ought to intrude in people's privacy in the way that Bill C-30 provides. That speaks volumes to how out of touch with the people the government is on Bill C-30. People value their privacy and their communication and they do not want the government snooping around without a warrant. That is the issue here.

I do not think it can be said that 66% of Albertans are in league with child pornographers but that is what the Minister of Public Safety has suggested to members on this side of the House. We are either with the government or we are with the child pornographers. We stand with the government or we stand with the child pornographers.

People made a mockery of that, even Margaret Wente who is not normally opposed to some kinds of Conservative legislation. She said that she was with the child pornographers. That is how she handled it, but obviously it was an ironic and sarcastic statement. I guess 66% of Albertans are with the child pornographers if the Minister of Public Safety is to be believed. I do not think that is the case. I think that is a case of law-abiding citizens of Canada, the majority of citizens of Canada, being concerned about their fundamental rights as guaranteed to them by the charter.

This is a worthwhile motion to have considered in the House as we are doing right now. We have legislation before the House that has not passed second reading and, as we have said, the government needs to scrap this legislation and go back to the drawing board and do the kind of consultations required.

As I said last week, the bill will go to committee which is where we will all have a chance to amend it. I do not have a lot of confidence given the hothouse nature of committees. We have seen how politicized they are. We saw happened to Bill C-10. It went to committee for consideration and, after hearing from dozens of witnesses, the time came for clause by clause study and what happened? We had all the witnesses to consider, all the suggestions that they made, and we sit down and have a two hour meeting. There are five parts to the bill, including nine previous pieces of legislation. We spent two hours discussing part one. Six or seven amendments were proposed and they were rejected by the government. When we went back the next day, we were faced with a motion from the government side saying that we would deal with all the rest of the bill today and that if it were not dealt with by 11:59 p.m. tonight it would be deemed to have been put and passed and sent back to the House of Commons.

That is the kind of thing that goes on in committees in the House. That did not happen because we had what is called a filibuster and started talking about how wrong that process was. Eventually, two days were devoted to discussing it, not very much. However, not one amendment proposed by the opposition was deemed worthy of consideration by the government. That is what happens in committee.

We say that Bill C-30 should be scrapped. The government should go back to the drawing board, listen to Canadians and listen to the privacy commissioners. They are there, by the way. They are public officials with the duty and obligation to act on behalf of Canadians to look at this legislation, not with a partisan eye but with an eye to the fundamental rights and freedoms of Canadians and a principle that says that we should only go so far as we need to go in order to protect the public safety of the people of Canada.

We support the rights of police and law enforcement officials to get warrants to do that. They can get a warrant to look at somebody's mail but they cannot look at somebody's mail without a warrant. They cannot get the kind of information they are asking for people without a warrant. This legislation would provide for warrantless searches, which are not necessary for the protection of the public, whether it be children or adults.

We support the motion today and we want to see it passed. We would hope that the government pays attention to Canadians and pays attention to the fundamental rights and freedoms of Canadians when redrafting the legislation and putting together something that it thinks will be acceptable to Canadians.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Madam Speaker, the illustration the member gave was Bill C-10. Everyone in the House knows that Bill C-10 had been debated in various forms and that different parts made up the total of Bill C-10. Canadians expected us to get moving on many of those initiatives. That was exactly what needed to be done. It does not mean the amendments were not considered, but it is the obligation of government to implement its agenda when it comes to protecting Canadians.

The member commented about using talking points. I would just like to read from a news release from November 15, 2005, when the then deputy prime minister and minister of public safety, Anne McLellan, stated:

We consulted extensively to ensure this legislation strikes the right balance between the needs of police to maintain their investigative capabilities and the business considerations of the industry, while respecting Canadians’ privacy, rights and freedoms.

What has changed? This was introduced by the Liberal government of that day. Today the Liberals are trying to make it look like we are somehow intruding on the privacy of Canadians.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Madam Speaker, I note the member made the very reasonable comment that Conservatives expected Parliament to conduct a thorough review of the bill to ensure it achieved the right balance, et cetera. It was exactly the same wording and statement made by the previous speaker on the Conservative side, so clearly there are some talking points.

Since the government won its majority last May, there has not been, as far as I know, a single bill that was reviewed at committee in which the majority Conservative members accepted any of the amendments, ideas or results of the thorough review, including Bill C-10, a massive, complex bill with many amendments offered. All were rejected at committee.

Could the member please tell us why any member of Parliament in the opposition parties should actually believe there will be anything different this time?

Justice

[Sylvain Chicoine, NDP, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians want real answers, not empty rhetoric. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has shown that just one of the provisions in Bill C-10 will cost Quebec $40 million.

The Conservatives want to pass the cost on to Quebec. Even worse, the bill is completely ineffective. Quebec will pay more and put fewer criminals behind bars.

Given that Quebec and many other provinces have already said that they will not pay, who is going to foot the bill?

Opposition Motion—Charter of Rights and Freedoms

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver Centre.

It is with pleasure that I stand today to address what is an important motion. I hope and suspect that Conservatives, along with New Democrats, will join us in recognizing just how important it is with regard to our charter and privacy-related issues.

The bill that we are obviously citing at great length is Bill C-30, and we do that for a good reason. Even the government would acknowledge that it blew it. The government received overwhelming kickback from the public in regard to how it messed up in terms of what it proposed in Bill C-30.

The Prime Minister is not known to back down even when he is wrong. He has had an awakening of sorts in regard to just how outraged Canadians are with respect to this issue. We do give him some credit for acknowledging that outrage and how he is now prepared to send Bill C-30 to committee.

One of my colleagues reminded me that under the Conservative government committee meetings end up being held in camera. The Conservatives hold them in camera because they do not want the public to know what is being debated inside a committee. When the government says that it wants a meeting in camera, that is just a nice way of saying the public does not get to participate, that it does not get to listen to what is being said behind those closed doors. No government has ever had more in camera sessions in such a short time span as the new majority Conservative government.

We know how stubborn the Conservatives are when it comes to making changes. We can tell them that they have made mistakes, but would they recognize those mistakes? It takes a great deal of convincing.

All we have to do is look at Bill C-10. The Liberal Party brought forward amendments at committee stage, but the government voted against those amendments. It did not want anything to do with them. What happened? Conservative senators brought in the amendments because the government, in its stubborn way, did not recognize how important those amendments were. I am sure the government is a bit embarrassed now.

We are glad that the government has seen the wisdom of bringing Bill C-30 to committee before it is debated in the House. That is why there is strong merit to looking at today's opposition day motion as a statement. I look forward to a Conservative member standing and assuring us that there will not be any in camera sessions when Bill C-30 goes to committee, that the meeting will be open to all those individuals who want to follow the debate. We anxiously await hearing that sort of commitment.

The Conservatives talk about the rights of victims as if they have a vested interest in protecting the rights of victims. Just because they repeat it many times does not necessarily mean they have any more interest in the rights of victims than members of the opposition. Not only are we interested in the rights of victims, we are also interested in protecting people from becoming victims in the first place. That is why we believe in addressing some of the issues that fight crime. We do so to prevent victims in the first place. The Conservatives do not own the moral high ground when it comes to protecting the rights of victims.

The Conservatives say that they want to protect law-abiding citizens. I would suggest that one of the ways they could do that is by supporting the Liberal Party motion before us today.

I will read what the motion says so that members can reflect on it between now and the time to vote.

That the House recognize: (a) the fundamental right of all Canadians to the freedoms of speech, communication and privacy, and that there must be a clear affirmation on the need for these rights to be respected in all forms of communication; (b) that the collection by government of personal information and data from Canadians relating to their online activities without limits, rules, and judicial oversight constitutes a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms' protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

If the Conservatives are sincere when they say that they want to protect law-abiding citizens, I would suggest that voting for this motion would go a long way in protecting their rights.

The Internet has grown as a tool in many different ways. I think that we underestimate the role it plays in the lives of Canadians. I have heard statistics that Canadians have access to and use the Internet like no other country in the world. We have seen the benefits of the Internet. We can look at the social groups of Facebook and others to see how well utilized they are. We can appreciate how many people today bank online and purchase online. The Internet is used every day by a vast majority of Canadians. It has become a part of our lives.

It is interesting that NDP members and Conservatives have joint speaking notes. They bring up those speaking notes because they are a little sensitive to the Liberal Party being practical and wanting to protect the rights of individuals. Therefore, they pull out their speaking notes, whether New Democrat or Conservative, to say that the Liberals proposed in 2002, 2005 and 2007. I think I might have even heard another year.

Gee whiz, yes, the Liberal Party does have a proactive approach to bringing legislation forward. The difference is that we are also open to ideas, amendments and changes, which is something the current government has never demonstrated. Hopefully the NDP will never be provided the opportunity to govern. I will not preclude what Canadians might ultimately decide, but I have seen NDP administrations in my own province and I can talk about disappointments in this area.

They talk the line of wanting to protect the interests of Canadians. Well, the Liberal Party has overriding concerns and we would say to members of other political entities, Green, New Democrat or Conservative, to go back before 2002. They should go back to 1981 and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guarantees privacy.

The vast majority of Canadians want just cause and having to go to a judge, which could take a half hour or whatever amount of time it takes. We do not underestimate the capabilities of law enforcement or our courts. There are wonderful people who work within our law enforcement industry and court infrastructure who can expedite the process. They can make it happen quickly if the need is there. Let us not override how important it is to protect the rights of individuals to their privacy.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor.

I rise to speak to the Liberal opposition day motion introduced by our leader, calling on the House to recognize the fundamental right of all Canadians to freedom of speech, communication and privacy. The motion is in response to the Conservative government's invasive Bill C-30.

If Canada is to remain a truly democratic society, it must strike the correct balance between security and civil liberties and individual rights and freedoms. As written, Bill C-30 does not ensure a balance among those principles.

At the outset, the Conservatives demonstrated their disregard for Canadian civil liberties and individual rights. Rather than sit down and discuss with Canadians and have an honest debate about the strengths and weaknesses of Bill C-30, the government attempted to irresponsibly frame the debate in rhetoric.

The Minister of Public Safety even went so far as to berate one of my colleagues, who was merely bringing the concerns of countless Canadians into the debate, by telling him that he, “can either stand with us or with the child pornographers”.

Attempts to demonize opponents of Bill C-30, many of whom are in my riding as well, and characterize them as friends of child pornographers is not only reckless, but completely unwarranted. The Minister of Public Safety still has not apologized for offending those Canadians who have difficulty with some of the aspects of Bill C-30.

Understandably, Canadians from coast to coast to coast do not trust the government with their personal information. After all, the Conservatives do not exactly have a glowing track record when it comes to managing the personal information of individual Canadians.

Through creeping individual's Facebook accounts and using personal profile information to restrict Canadians from attending public election rallies, sifting through personal medical records of veterans who asked too many questions or inappropriately using voter identification databases to make robocalls that are all about election fraud, the government has worked hard to earn the mistrust of Canadians.

In its current form, Bill C-30 forces Internet service providers to track, save and hand over Canadians' personal subscriber information, including their email and IP addresses, upon request without a warrant. This means that the Prime Minister's people would now have the legal right to monitor the emails of Canadians and track their movements online without any kind of judicial discretion.

The Conservatives destroyed the critical long from census because they claimed it was too intrusive into the personal lives of Canadians. Yet they now propose legislation that encroaches deep into the lives of Canadians and treats all Internet users as criminals. There are innocent Canadians out there.

The public outcry from Canadians and the Liberal Party, following the introduction of Bill C-30, forced the government to admit its legislation was far from perfect and it took the unusual step of shepherding its own legislation to committee before being debated so it could be fixed. The government has said that it will consider amendments from the opposition, and we welcome that.

Unfortunately, that is the same government that has abused its majority at committees to conduct business behind closed doors, making committee business the most secretive it has ever been and requests to do otherwise continue to fall on deaf ears. If the government forces the committee behind closed doors, it can oppose the reasonable and fair amendments that Liberals will be proposing without any public oversight, and this is a serious concern.

Sending Bill C-30 straight to committee for amendments is an important first step in admitting that Bill C-30 is highly flawed, but actions speak louder than words. The true measure of the Conservative government's commitment will be tested and witnessed during the committee proceedings. If the Conservatives truly believe that Canadians have the right to determine how their personal information is handled, then the Conservatives should be forthcoming and accept Liberal amendments at committee.

Canadians, including my constituents in Random—Burin—St. George's, are listening with interest and taking note of the debate over Bill C-30. One of my constituents aptly described the bill when he said, “This bill is a total invasion of privacy”.

Another constituent wrote to tell me that he was concerned about the legislation. He said, “This would be a breach of the basic human rights of all Canadians. It almost goes without saying that giving this kind of power to any institution is ripe for potential abuse”. He goes on further to state, “Not only that, we citizens, will have to pay for it out of our taxpayers wallets. There is also the dangerous potential of criminals having another gateway for hacking into people's accounts”.

Another constituent wrote to me to say that he was equally concerned about the legislation, writing “The online spying ("Lawful Access") bills are poorly thought out, and irresponsibly allow a range of authorities to access my personal data without a warrant”.

A different constituent from my riding went further saying, “Unchecked mass surveillance is a breach of my fundamental right to privacy”.

These are just a few examples of the correspondence that I have received. It is what Canadians are saying, and I am sure all members in the House are hearing the same thing from coast to coast to coast. I have yet to receive a letter in support of Bill C-30.

Privacy is a fundamental freedom enshrined in our charter and Canadians have every right to be worried about heightened surveillance of their online activities. Warrantless use of personal information is an inappropriate violation of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Liberals are seriously concerned that the lack of judicial oversight in the bill relating to subscriber data and that forcing ISP and telecomm providers to have the capacity to trace all communications in their system could create a very slippery slope.

For example, Canada's Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, agrees. Her office, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, is charged with overseeing compliance with both the Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. Exercising her mission to protect and promote the privacy rights of individuals, last October she wrote the Minister of Public Safety detailing her concerns with the government's lawful access proposal. She said:

I am...concerned about the adoption of lower thresholds for obtaining personal information from commercial enterprises. The new powers envisaged are not limited to specific, serious offences or urgent or exceptional situations. In the case of access to subscriber data, there is not even a requirement for the commission of a crime to justify access to personal information – real names, home address, unlisted numbers, email addresses, IP addresses and much more – without a warrant.

Apart from what we are hearing from Canadians throughout the country, this is coming from the Privacy Commissioner.

The government must ensure the protection of the online privacy rights of law-abiding Canadians. Again, there are innocent Canadians out there. The warrantless tracking of Canadians' online activity would unfairly treat all Canadian online users as criminals.

Through Bill C-30, the omnibus crime Bill C-10, Bill C-4 and others, the government has raised serious questions about whether they respects the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Liberals will be focused at committee, finding logical solutions that strike the correct balance between public safety and privacy.

Criminal Code

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-299. Let me state at the outset, I realize that as soon as one opposes a mandatory minimum sentence one is regarded as being soft on crime or worse. That has occurred here in the House. However, it is my submission that the issue really is how can one be smart and effective on crime.

In that regard, mandatory minimums not only impugn the integrity of the legal process but they also are a failed criminal justice policy. Enhancing our Criminal Code with such mandatory minimums does nothing to reduce crime or improve public safety.

Moreover, the fact that this legislation is dealing with child kidnapping, a crime all of us abhor, is not a reason to suggest that a mandatory minimum that underlines it should be accepted without any form of reservation or critique. The abhorrence of the crime does not thereby validate the sentence.

Simply put, mandatory minimums do not advance the goal they purport to reach, that of crime prevention and of deterrence. This is not a personal conclusion. It is one that is anchored in studies the world over, from the United States, South Africa, from whence I have just come, which discussed and critiqued mandatory minimum sentences, New Zealand, and the like. That conclusion is found also in volumes of social science research and evidence.

Perhaps the strongest evidence against mandatory minimums comes from the United States where legal experts have increasingly critiqued their use. Indeed, just last week a coalition of American law enforcement officials, judges and prosecutors called upon the Senate of Canada to reconsider the mandatory minimum sentences in Bill C-10, concluding that such penalties “do not achieve their stated objectives”.

Indeed, the signatories of the letter expressed great confusion over the current government's emphasis on mandatory minimums, as these mandatory minimum sentences have been repealed in various jurisdictions of the United States for precisely the reason of being a failed criminal justice policy. Moreover, the letter itself bluntly states:

--we cannot understand why Canada's federal government and some provincial governments would embark down this road.

Lest it be thought that there is no Canadian evidence on the matter, our own justice department published a study in December 1990 called “A Framework for Sentencing, Corrections and Conditional Release, Directions for Reform”, which on page 9 states:

The evidence shows that long periods served in prison increase the chance that the offender will offend again. In the end, public security is diminished rather than increased if we “throw away the key”.

The truth is that mandatory minimum sentences also have a disproportionate impact on those minority groups that already suffer from poverty and deprivation and disadvantage. For example, we have a situation right now where 34% of aboriginal women are in prison, which is a shocking datum. Mandatory minimums would not alleviate let alone address this problem. Rather, they would exacerbate it.

As well, mandatory minimums prejudice the integrity of the legal and judicial process. They unduly limit judicial and prosecutorial discretion. We know that in some cases prosecutors will leverage or avoid mandatory minimum charges so that offenders will plead to a lesser offence, even if they are innocent of that offence.

Similarly, if more offenders plead not guilty given the particular mandatory minimums, we are likely to further strain our scarce judicial resources, something from which nobody benefits. The Canadian Bar Association has gone so far as to warn that if the courts become clogged with persons contesting the minimum, it may be that the right trial in a reasonable period of time would be infringed and criminals would thereby be set free.

Moreover, mandatory minimums may invite a spectrum of constitutional challenges that further backlog the courts and take us away from principles of justice and fairness. If they are gross and disproportionate, they may violate the charter.

The Ontario Court ruling in the Smickle case several weeks ago is proof on this point. The judge struck down a mandatory minimum in that case saying that its imposition would be, "fundamentally unfair, outrageous, abhorrent and intolerable".

For a government that touts itself as being so concerned with cost cutting, it is surprising that it would embark on a criminal justice plan that would have it defending multiple charter claims at great expense to Canadian taxpayers without enhancing the integrity of our system and without serving as a deterrent or being fair in its application.

Further, as the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the Canadian Sentencing Commission pointed out, inequitable and inconsistent sentencing policies, and this can and very often does result from mandatory minimums as all of the evidence shows us, may foster disrespect for and lack of confidence in the federal criminal justice system. This is another consideration that we should be addressing in the debate on the bill.

At the end of the day, as all of the evidence demonstrates, relying on mandatory minimums would likely result in a situation where we would find ourselves incarcerating more people for longer periods of time and thereby also aggravating the existing problem of prison overcrowding. This in itself may raise a question of constitutional concern with regard to the question of cruel and unusual punishment as it has in the United States. We may find a similar concern being raised here in Canada.

These laws have helped to fill prisons but without increasing public safety. With respect to the subject matter of this bill, someone intent on kidnapping a child is not going to be deterred by the fact that there is a mandatory minimum sentence on the books. Odds are the individual is not even aware of the penalty. Unless we think criminals are using Google to look up the potential consequence of an offence, there is no deterrent value here. The evidence has shown that not only is there no deterrent value, but mandatory minimums end up also being unfair, injurious, grossly disproportionate, and the like.

Lest anyone be confused, the Liberal Party has a strong historical advocacy policy with respect to the protection of children. I might add that the first bill I introduced as minister of justice was exactly that, an act to protect children and other vulnerable persons, to help children who are the most vulnerable in Canadian society.

This is not about whether we do or do not protect children. We all agree that we must protect children. We all agree that the kidnapping of children is an abhorrent crime. The issue is about how we can effectively prevent and combat such a heinous criminal offence.

We support concrete measures to make Canada's streets and communities safer, particularly when it comes to protecting our children, but we cannot support the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences which have been proven time and again to be ineffective, costly, unfair, injurious, prejudicial, disproportionate, and as all of the evidence has shown in all of the jurisdictions that I have cited, an utterly failed criminal justice policy.

Corrections and Conditional Release Act

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-350, a private member's bill introduced by the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry regarding the accountability of offenders.

This is an important topic. Canada has in the order of about 40,000 prisoners presently, which represents a very small share of our population. Although it sounds like a large number, it is less than 1% of our population. About 15,000 of these prisoners are in federal custody while the remainder are in provincial penal systems. Our incarceration rate is in line with, or slightly lower than actually, incarceration rates from many of Canada's peer countries, with an exception. It is far less than a third of the rate of incarceration in the United States.

In addition, the crime rate in Canada is actually decreasing, including the severity index for violent crimes. Even so, it seems that the government intends to greatly expand our prison system. Under the government's planned changes, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, last year, estimated that the cost of running of our prisons could grow to $9.5 billion annually in 2015-16. That is up from $4.4 billion in 2010, which is more than double. That could require the construction of up to a dozen new prisons. Mr. Page found that the numbers could be twice as high in the provincial system as well.

I can only see our prison population ballooning even higher than the Parliamentary Budget Officer's estimates with the legislation introduced recently by the government, such as Bill C-10. We could see any number of people convicted and sent to jail for five years for just circumventing digital locks to listen to their purchased CDs on their iPods or copying their DVDs onto their laptops, for example. Who knows how many people might be sent to jail when their cell phone locations are scanned by the authorities and they happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, going home from work through an area where a protest breaks out.

With these and other changes from the Conservative government, including mandatory minimum sentences, I expect to see our prison population in this country growing and growing under the government.

This raises questions. How are taxpayers expected to pay for so many Canadians in jail when the federal government is running a steep and rapidly growing deficit and our provinces are struggling financially as well? Surely the government is aware that we would have a hard time paying for megaprisons and megaprison populations while trying to balance the books.

Does the Prime Minister intend to burden we taxpayers, our taxpayers, our constituents and the provinces with so many prison costs that he will just throw up his hands in a few years and say that we cannot possibly afford it anymore and that the prison system needs to be privatized.

This would fit in lockstep with his overall philosophy of allegedly creating smaller governments and privatization. However, it could have catastrophic consequences for Canadian society. If incarceration itself becomes a profit centre when the Conservatives privatize the jails, it will be in many corporations' best interests to send more people to jail for longer and keep them there.

That means that our goals as a society will have changed from rehabilitation and good outcomes for citizens to one of maximizing the incarceration rate, a growth industry. A well-funded private prisons lobby could emerge to keep pressure up for ever-harsher laws. They could lobby to ensure that many more people cease to be productive members of society, no longer paying taxes but instead left rotting in prisons or being criminalized even further there.

To me, this is a disturbing picture of Canada's future if we continue down the government's path. We can see how badly that road has worked out for the United States of America. In the early 1980s, privatization of prisons took off in the U.S. with the war on drugs and harsher sentencing. States could no longer afford to run their prison systems and so companies starting taking over more and more prison services and eventually entire prisons. Incarceration skyrocketed, doubling every decade from less than half a million in 1980 to over two million by the year 2000.

Our neighbours to the south now have by far the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. They have the largest prison population on earth. With less than 5% of the world's overall population they have almost a quarter of the world's adult prison population. We have all heard about the extraordinary incarceration rates of African Americans and other visible minorities in the U.S.; entire generations thrown in jail. Are we going to replicate that failed system here in Canada?

I cannot begin to detail the tragic social costs that come when incarceration becomes a profit-making enterprise. Sadly, this was all for nothing. U.S. statistics show that cost savings promised to the taxpayers by privatized prisons simply have not materialized. It is no wonder that states such as California and Texas are now backpedaling on privatized prisons.

For Canada, this is a very real possibility given the crime agenda advanced by members on the other side of the House. Statistics Canada found that 93% of Canadians are satisfied with their personal safety, so most do not live in fear of crime or criminals. Perhaps they should start worrying about some politicians as being costly to their welfare.

This private member's bill takes on a new importance in light of all of this. If we are to have so many more people in prison, then we need to make sure that families and others surrounding them do not pay more of a price than they need to. The aim of this bill is to make sure incarcerated people are held to account for their actions financially with respect to victims and families. That is a laudable goal.

As my colleagues have discussed, it mandates that family members and victims to whom the offender owes money would be compensated first from any financial gains awarded to that offender by a court settlement. I support an underlying presumption in the bill that the principle of accountability and learning accountability is important in the rehabilitation process of all inmates.

My colleagues on this side of the House and I believe it is important to rehabilitate offenders, not harden them and offer criminal graduate degrees. Part of that rehabilitation involves meeting obligations to others. It is taking responsibility for debts owed.

I also see a welcomed item in this legislation, and that is child support. Children of offenders should not be punished for their parents' crimes. All too often they are. They often fall through the cracks. Children whose parents have been incarcerated face unique difficulties. Aside from the sudden separation from their caregiver, sometimes their only caregiver, these children have to deal with fear, depression, anger and guilt. They are often moved around from caregiver to caregiver. They are at higher risk of failure in school and delinquency. They are often left in poor circumstances financially as well. I am glad to see that Bill C-350 counts child support as a priority for repayment of debts.

I know that this version of the legislation has been tweaked from a previous iteration to take into account not just child support but also respect for the jurisdiction of the provinces as well. I am very happy this seems to signal an openness to improvements so that the bill may pass with broad support from all parties. It gives me hope that we can improve things for Canadians if and when the bill passes in the other place. I know from personal experience that all too few private members' bills actually end up becoming law. I wish the member luck with his legislation.

To sum up, the bill has merit in that it seeks to help victims and families. I support this private member's bill going to committee for further consideration.

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to the bill moved by the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry.

However, I am rather ambivalent about it because, although we agree that prisoners ought to be accountable and we agree with the recommendations of the Ombudsman for Victims of Crime who talked about some of these issues and suggested that the Corrections and Conditional Release Act be amended to ensure that offenders who fill their court ordered sentences, including restitution, and victim fine surcharges and also the suggestion that there be authorization for the Correctional Service of Canada to deduct from an offender's earnings while in prison reasonable amounts for the restitution or victim fine surcharge orders, some of this can be done by regulation. In fact, there is no need to change the act to do that at all.

I am curious that the member did not address that. I want to talk about the government's talk about victims. Who are we talking about? We are talking about somebody who has successfully sued Her Majesty the Queen on the basis that there was something committed against them. It specifically refers to any debt owed to an offender as a result of a monetary award made by a court, tribunal or agency proceeding against Her Majesty the Queen or any agent employed by Her Majesty the Queen in the course of performance of his or her duties.

Who are we talking about? Are we talking about a prisoner who has been abused by some agent of Her Majesty the Queen who then successfully sues Her Majesty the Queen and is entitled to a monetary award? I do not know how many people there are like that. Perhaps the member can address that in his closing remarks. Are we talking about two? Are we talking about 10? Are we talking about hundreds of people? Is there really any purpose for the bill? Is there anything to be gained by this? It only deals with people who sue Her Majesty the Queen.

The member referred to spurious lawsuits. If it were a spurious lawsuit against Her Majesty the Queen, it would not be successful. It would be thrown out of court. I do not know what the evil is that is being corrected. However, I do agree with certain aspects of what the member said in that, yes, if an offender has obligations to his family, which is supported by a court order in the case of spousal support, child support or the other items listed, they would get the money before the offender would. However, I think that is already provided for by the law of the provinces referred to by the member for Lac-Saint-Louis and as noted by the parliamentary officers who advise on legislation.

I think there are some problems with this. The notion is not a bad one. I do not know whether it can be amended at committee to allow for deductions from offenders' pay to cover court restitution orders or to cover the other ones that are mentioned here, whether it be spousal support, the business dealing with victim fine surcharges, for example, or restitution orders. These are things that surely should be able to be handled by a different sort of amendment that authorizes deductions of those items from payments due to an offender.

The member is on the right track when it comes to trying to find a way to ensure that offenders who are receiving money while in prison can have deductions made to look after these matters, but we should not build it around what he has done in saying that this is for people who successfully sue the Crown for some action taken against them by an officer of the Crown in the performance of his or her duty. That obviously means somebody committed something against the prisoner who might be considered a victim of a civil tort.

The bill is a bit misguided in that sense but there may be something that can be done with it. New Democrats are not saying that the bill does not deserve further consideration in committee but we need listened carefully to what legal experts told us about jurisdiction. In my province, there is a judgment enforcement act that deals with the issue of priorities as to who gets what money from a court judgment. It may be that this legislation could override that and that is something that needs to be further examined.

There is a bit of a mix-up in terms of what the member has suggested. I would like to know, in terms of his own research, why he feels this bill is necessary. Are there hundreds and thousands of people incarcerated who are receiving monetary awards on claims against Her Majesty the Queen? How many are we talking about? Is this a problem that needs to be solved in this way or would we be better off looking at the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to ensure that the provisions in sections 76 to 78 ensure that payments may be deducted. Subsection 78(2) states:

Where an offender receives a payment [or income]...from a prescribed source, the Service may

(a) make deductions from that payment...in accordance with regulations made under paragraph 96(z.2) and any Commissioner’s Directive....

That seems to me to be the place where we ought to be looking because that is the provision of the act that allows for deductions to be made from any prisoner's income.

I have listened to the member and I do not agree with his statement that the government is concerned about victims because, if it were, it would have listened to the victims who testified before the public safety committee on Bill C-19. They were concerned about the wholesale lack of protection that would be left if the bill were to pass through the Senate because of all the other measures that were taken away, along with the so-called long gun registry. It did not listen to them. It did not listen to the victims and families of École Polytechnique who testified. It also does not seem to be interested in reinstating support for the Criminal Injuries Compensation Boards across Canada, some of which have shut down due to lack of federal support.

Victims are going without the compensation that was available previously during the 1990s. In fact, I represented a large number of victims of sexual abuse at a particular orphanage in St. John's. We went to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board on a regular basis to get support for counselling and what was available under the Criminal Injury Compensation Act. However, that act no longer exists. There are no criminal injury compensations in my province anymore because of lack of funding and federal support.

We do not hear anybody on the other side say that we should get back on track with criminal injuries compensation. Maybe I am putting something in their ears over there. Maybe they should ask the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Justice why they are not supporting criminal injury compensation in Canada, which used to be the case with previous governments. We do not talk about what we are doing for victims. We talk about what we are doing to offenders.

The biggest worry I have is that many of the things being done to offenders within Bill C-10, for example, would lead to more hardened criminals, less rehabilitation and more crime as a result. When people are not rehabilitated when they are in prison, when they are released they will be more likely to offend, which will lead to more victims. They have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to the approach the government is taking.

New Democrats will support this bill at second reading, allow it to go committee where we can see if something can be done with it that fits the jurisdiction and the Constitution and that can provide for deductions being made from prisoners' incomes to meet some of the objectives that the member suggests.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak today in support of Bill C-350, which addresses crucial changes to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act as it relates to the accountability of offenders.

I would like to thank the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry for his hard work on behalf of victims of crime.

Before I begin, I would like to take a moment to briefly review what the bill is all about. Bill C-350 is about putting more focus on offender accountability and restitution. It will do this through two key changes.

First, the bill would amend the wording in the purpose section of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which currently refers only to custody and supervision, and rehabilitation and reintegration. The new wording will clarify that one of the purposes of the federal corrections system is the following:

encouraging the accountability and responsibility of offenders, with a view to ensuring that their obligations to society are addressed.

Second, the bill sets out the priorities for debt repayment in cases when an offender is owed a monetary award as a result of a legal action against the crown. What this means in essence is that an offender will first have to satisfy outstanding debts before collecting any award. The debt owed to the offender would be paid on a pro rata basis and in the following order of priority, to amounts owing, pursuant to the following: a spousal or child support order; a legal restitution order; any victim surcharge order; and any person with a civil judgment against the offender. It is only after all of these priorities have been addressed that any outstanding amount from the monetary award would be paid to the offender.

While our government supports the rights of offenders to be treated humanely, we also believe that offenders must be held accountable for the debts they owe. Learning how to do this is an important part of their rehabilitation.

This legislation would ensure that crown debts are distributed with these obligations in mind and ensure that priority is given to victims and the spouses and children of these offenders.

At its core, the bill is really about supporting victims and holding offenders accountable for their legal obligations. That is why our government is pleased to support this legislation, with some minor amendments. When the bill reaches committee stage, we recommend amending it to add clarity regarding the role of the Correctional Service of Canada in the administration and operation of these provisions.

Our government is wholly committed to supporting victims and ensuring that the justice system takes the consideration of victims to heart, and I am proud of our impressive track record. For example, we have committed $52 million to enhance the federal victims strategy to better meet the needs of victims. We have created and provided ongoing support to the Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime as an independent resource for victims. We have provided support to the National Office for Victims at Public Safety Canada to give victims a greater voice in the corrections and conditional release process, and to help them access the services that they need.

These are only a few examples of how our government has dedicated itself to supporting victims of crime.

Just as important, we remain committed to making sure that offenders are held accountable. Because more needs to be done, our government included offender accountability measures as part of our safe streets and communities act that we introduced in September 2011. Bill C-10 contains measures that will help to enhance offender responsibility and accountability while strengthening the management of offenders during their incarceration and parole. It would also give victims access to more information about the offender who has harmed them and modernize disciplinary sanctions for offenders. Under that proposed legislation we would amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to emphasize the need for offenders to conduct themselves in a way that demonstrates respect for other people and property.

As well, the proposed changes would require all offenders to obey all penitentiary rules and conditions governing their release, while also actively participating in the setting and achieving of objectives in their correctional plan, including their behaviour, program participation and meeting their court-ordered obligations such as restitution to victims. This ties directly to the legislation that we are discussing today.

Another element of offender accountability found in our safe streets and communities act is amendments to modernize the system of discipline in federal penitentiaries by addressing disrespectful, intimidating and assaultive behaviour by inmates, including the throwing of bodily substances.

The safe streets and communities act also delivers on the issue of victim support. Victims have limited information about an offender's life in prison. They do not know whether offenders are taking part in rehabilitation programs, if they are absent from the institution temporarily or are being transferred to a minimum security facility. Yet victims deserve to have access to as much information as they reasonably can about the offender, and Bill C-10 would enshrine in law their ability to take part in parole hearings and to be kept better informed about the behaviour and management of offenders.

Clearly, the measures proposed in the safe streets and communities act will work in tandem with Bill C-350, the legislation we are discussing today.

Just as clear is the message we are hearing from victims and advocacy groups across this country. They are asking us to move swiftly to strengthen the rights of victims. They are asking us to make changes to our laws to improve the accountability of offenders, and they are asking us to create mechanisms that support victims of crime.

I spoke earlier of our ongoing financial support programs, like the National Office for Victims and the federal victims strategy. While we have made progress, much work still remains to be done.

In the 2011 Speech from the Throne, we reiterated our intention to move swiftly ahead with efforts that support victims, that give our law officers better tools and that support crime prevention programs. That is what we told Canadians we would do, and that is exactly what we intend to do.

Today I am very pleased to support the bill with our proposed amendments, and I call on all hon. members to ensure its speedy passage.

Justice

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to respond to some of the opposition's criticism to the government's efforts to ensure that serious crimes are adequately punished.

Our government intends to ensure that serious crimes, including violent crimes, result in sentences that appropriately reflect the seriousness of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender.

To that end, our Bill C-10 would reform the Criminal Code in order to achieve the following: provide new mandatory minimum penalties for seven existing offences related to child exploitation; impose mandatory minimum sentences for serious drug offences that are related to organized crime or that target youth.

Generally speaking, minimum sentences would apply when there are aggravating factors, especially when the production of the drug in question presents a danger to public health or safety.

Bill C-10 proposes mandatory minimum sentences for sexual offences against children and serious drug offences.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Madam Speaker, I am proud to speak today about minimum sentences.

As mentioned last November, in response to a question from my hon. colleague from Mount Royal, this issue has been discussed on several occasions, not only in this House, but also before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

As a former minister of justice, he knows I cannot comment on a case still before the courts.

In May 2011, Canadians gave us a clear mandate. They want to live in healthy and safe communities. In our opinion, the government's main focus must be on victims of crime who, from a financial perspective, pay most of the price of crime.

The strong mandate this government received from Canadians in May 2011 included support for our commitment to table comprehensive legislation that would reintroduce several law and order bills, including those that proposed mandatory minimum penalties for child sexual offences and for serious drug crimes.

Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act, includes reforms from nine previous bills. Bill C-10's proposed amendments would make communities safer by extending greater protection to the most vulnerable members of our society, enhancing the ability of our justice system to hold criminals accountable for their actions, and helping improve the safety and security of all Canadians.

The government's approach is balanced. It addresses prevention, enforcement and rehabilitation, and respects the rights of the accused while also respecting victims' interests, as well as community safety. This approach reflects the reality that Canadians lose faith in the criminal justice system when they feel the punishment does not fit the crime.

It appears to me that the member opposite contradicts the position of his own party when he criticizes the proposed mandatory minimum penalties that this government proposes to better denounce serious crimes, a policy supported by premiers and attorneys general across Canada.

For instance, former Bill C-54, which has been reintroduced as part of Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act, and which proposes mandatory minimum penalties for sexual offences committed against children, received the support of all parties at third reading.

I often hear the opposition referring to studies that unequivocally demonstrate the ineffectiveness and excessiveness of mandatory minimum penalties. With all due respect, this is hardly conclusive. There is research that suggests mandatory minimum penalties are not effective. However, other research indicates there is evidence that mandatory minimum penalties have had positive effects on serious offences, such as impaired driving.

Another argument the opposition continually relies on to criticize either the use of mandatory minimum penalties or the restrictions on the availability of conditional sentences is the impact such proposals would have on prison populations and the related cost implications.

The government has always been clear that the cost of protecting victims far outweighs the cost implications of such reforms. Although there is a cost to having proportionate sentences, there is also a significant cost to victims and Canadian society as a whole.

In 2008, crime in Canada cost an estimated $99 billion, the majority of which, $82.5 billion or 83%, was borne by the victims. Victim costs include the value of damaged or stolen property, pain and suffering, loss of income, and health services.

This government has a clear and strong mandate to ensure that Canadians are better protected from dangerous criminals by ensuring that they are not permitted to serve their sentence in the comfort of their homes.

Mandatory minimum penalties will ensure clarity and consistency in sentencing, while at the same time ensuring that perpetrators of serious crimes do not reoffend during the period of incarceration.

It is time for all members to recognize the significant impact that serious and violent crimes have on Canadian communities and victims.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, when I posed my question last November, regarding the evidence to support mandatory minimum penalties, including whether the mandatory minimums were compatible with the charter, the parliamentary secretary replied also in an irrelevant fashion on the issue of costs. He concluded in a kind of customary, demagogic disclaimer that, “We support the victims, while they support the criminals”.

I trust that the answer this evening will address the question I raised and avoid demagoguery. I trust, also, that it will take into account what has changed since I put the question in November. Namely, that evidence-based testimony in different jurisdictions exists to the effect that mandatory minimums are excessive, unfair, ineffective, injurious constantly and do not have a deterrent effect. As well, I trust that it will take into account the Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision earlier this week that struck down a mandatory minimum sentence for violating the charter. I assume that the member opposite is well aware of the case.

I look forward to hearing how the government continues to justify insisting on such penalties in Bill C-10 in light of this ruling and in light of the preponderance of Canadian and international evidence on this matter.

I might add that yesterday evening, former Supreme Court Justice John Major himself supported the judgment. He lamented the prejudicial impact on judicial discretion by these mandatory minimums.

The Conservatives have advanced the notion that if one opposes mandatory minimum sentences, one is soft on crime. Admittedly, on its face, opposing mandatory minimums may appear counterintuitive.

However, this is not about being soft on crime. It is about being smart and effective on crime. In particular, the evidence demonstrates that mandatory minimums are a failed policy. Stacking our Criminal Code with such mandatory minimums would do nothing to reduce crime or improve public safety. Indeed, it would lead only to an increase in crime and may violate the charter, as we saw earlier this week.

Moreover, mandatory minimums do not in fact advance the goal that they purport to reap; namely, that of crime prevention and of deterrence.

As I noted in this House in debate on this topic in 2006 and since:

Indeed, the vast preponderance of studies in every jurisdiction have concluded that mandatory minimums are neither a deterrent nor are they effective.

However, we need not look beyond our own borders for proof that mandatory minimums do not work. Indeed, our own Department of Justice published a study in December 1990 which states:

The evidence shows that long periods served in prison increase the chance that the offender will offend again. In the end, public safety is diminished rather than increased if we “throw away the key”.

Indeed, the U.S. Sentencing Commission released a comprehensive 645 page report in November concluding that federal mandatory minimum sentences are often “excessively severe”, are “not narrowly tailored” to apply only to those offenders who warrant such punishment, and are “not applied consistently”.

The truth is, as the Canadian Bar Association and others have shown, mandatory minimum sentences have a disproportionate impact on those minority groups that already suffer from poverty, deprivation and disadvantage.

We have a situation where, for example, 34% of aboriginal women are in prison. That is a shocking fact. Mandatory minimums would not alleviate or address this problem; rather, they would exacerbate them. They would unduly limit judicial and prosecutorial discretion, and if more offenders plead not guilty, given such mandatory minimums, we would be likely to further strain our scarce judicial resources, something from which no one would benefit.

Moreover, as we have seen, inequitable, inconsistent and excessive mandatory minimums invite a spectrum of constitutional challenges that would further clog the courts and further take us down from principles of justice and fairness, while fostering disrespect of and lack of confidence in the criminal justice system.

I close by saying that, at the end of the day--

Ending The Long-Gun Registry Act

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform the House that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to add my voice to those of many Quebeckers, Canadians, police officers and victims who strongly condemn abolishing the long gun registry and its data. This irresponsible choice shows once again the take-it-or-leave-it Conservative rhetoric that has prevailed in the House of Commons since the last election.

Under the Liberal government, the initial implementation phase of this registry cost Canadians a lot more than expected, while also being plagued by significant delays and registration costs. The lack of leadership and the poor estimate of the actual costs were indeed disturbing. However, the current cost of maintaining the registry is $4 million annually, while the total budget for the Canadian firearms program is $76.5 million. Let us do some quick calculations. The registry accounts for 5.23% of the program's annual budget. Hon. members will agree that this is a relatively small amount and that the significant investments that had to be made to create the registry are now behind us. Therefore, destroying these records would waste the public funds already invested.

With their taxes, Quebeckers have paid close to one-quarter of the cost of the registry, and they want a registry. Quebec was even prepared to take over this registry, but the Conservative government flatly refused. Destroying the data would waste the large investment made by Quebeckers and Canadians.

Since the destruction of those records is part of the Conservative plan, I find it unacceptable that the provinces, which have invested a lot of money, were not consulted before making this decision. The Conservative government refuses yet again to listen to the provinces, just as it did with Bill C-10. That shows a total lack of respect.

I also want to point out that the speeches made by the Conservatives in recent months are very inconsistent. The Conservatives partly justify abolishing the long gun registry by suggesting that citizens should be treated like adults and that the government should not interfere in their private lives. The government also says that it is wrong to treat law-abiding hunters as if they were criminals.

I find it very ironic that, under the lawful access legislation, all Canadians using the Internet will be treated like criminals, without any regard for their right to privacy. After all, one of the main goals of the Conservatives with Bill C-19 is to destroy data in order to protect privacy. These two positions are rather controversial and inconsistent.

I want to point out that those same hunters whose privacy the government wants to protect also have computers at home. They will probably use the Internet. I am having a very hard time understanding the government's position. I do not understand why we are legally required to disclose details about our private lives by registering our animals, our children and our cars, but registering a firearm that could be used to kill someone, whether intentionally or accidentally, is an invasion of privacy. That makes no sense.

Simply put, the government is against data that interfere with their rhetoric. They are underestimating the intelligence of Canadians.

As of September 30, 2011, the registry was being accessed 17,000 times a day. A survey showed that nearly all general duty police officers use the system, and that in 74% of cases, the information they obtain assists their operations. The registry enables police officers to better prepare their intervention strategies, which is crucial to protecting those who bear the weighty responsibility of keeping us safe.

That is why William Blair, Toronto police chief and president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, and Daniel Parkinson, president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, expressed concern about the safety of police officers and Canadians should the data be destroyed.

In Quebec, Yves Francoeur, president of the Fraternité des policiers et policières de Montréal, said, “To keep people safe, we need a registry, no matter what the cost”.

Marc Parent, chief of the Montreal city police, said, “This is a tool we use every day. The need is there".

The RCMP and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police have also spoken in favour of maintaining the registry.

The government is bragging about making the work of police officers easier, but Bill C-19 does not make any sense to police officers across the country.

There is absolutely no question that the registry gives police officers essential strategic planning tools that they use for their interventions. However, I am very concerned about victims and future victims of criminal acts committed with guns. I am thinking in particular of the victims at the Polytechnique in 1989 and at Dawson College in 2006, of police officer Valérie Gignac, and of the RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe in 2005, who were all killed by guns. In 2010, the RCMP said that in the previous 10 years, 10 out of 13 police officers were killed by long guns.

Victims' groups have condemned Bill C-19. It is grotesque, insensitive and cruel to all these victims to abolish a registry whose records can save lives. This government says it protects victims, but its position on Bill C-19 shows the exact opposite. Rather than presenting Canadians with a take-it-or-leave-it choice so as to divide them, the NDP wants to unite them. Our party seeks a compromise between the public safety issues that could result from the abolition and destruction of this registry and aboriginal treaty rights. We believe it is possible to find a solution for all Canadians.

In 2010, we proposed the following: decriminalizing the failure to register a firearm for first-time offenders and issuing a ticket instead; indicating in the legislation that long gun owners would not have to pay registration costs; prohibiting the disclosure of information about firearms owners, except for the purpose of protecting the public or when ordered by a court or by law; and creating a legal guarantee to protect aboriginal treaty rights.

Our point of view has not changed. We support a constructive dialogue between the stakeholders, so that no one is left out and we all work together. Recent governments have divided us enough. The time has come to take measures that will foster reconciliation between all Canadians. There are solutions that will improve public safety while also respecting aboriginal people and everyone who lives in rural areas.

It is time the Conservative government listened to Canadians and acted like a responsible government towards them and towards all those who risk their lives to maintain the peace.

Copyright Modernization Act

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in today's debate on Bill C-11. This is not the first time I have had to debate the issue of copyright.

Back in the 1990s, which dates me somewhat, because some people would say I am a veteran as I have been here for awhile, we dealt with copyright law. I think it was Bill C-32 at the time, although I would need to verify that. We were confronted then with the same things that Bill C-11 confronts us with now, which is the necessity for balance between the rights of consumers, of artists and of the creators of the material that is consumed, to put it crassly. Unfortunately, it seems to us that we are not striking that balance right now.

There is no denying that there are some good things in the bill and that there is strong support for it in certain quarters. However, the reality is that it is the same bill that was before the House in the previous Parliament. A number of people who came before committee at that time indicated a desire for changes. We thought there was substantive progress in terms of where we could effect some change to strike a better balance within the bill and yet we are now confronted with the same bill without any changes whatsoever.

Perhaps the most popular provision of the bill is the one that would allow Canadians to transfer the material they bought from one platform to another. In layman's terms, it means that when people by a CD they can transfer it onto their iPod or computer as a backup and not be faced with criminal charges. That is appropriate because I would suspect that in this day and age that is what most people do. People transfer their music to their computer so that they can transfer it to their iPod and manipulate it to have playlists and whatnot. Personally, I think it is quite appropriate that Canadians who are paying for copyrighted material should be able to use it on their own platform, but not for the purposes of transferring it to friends, selling it or whatever. The bill recognizes that, as it should, and, therefore, we would be tempted to support the bill on that basis alone.

However, out comes the digital lock. The way it came about is, to say the least, very troubling. We now have good evidence that this is as a result of pressure from our neighbours to the south. We even had evidence that two government ministers had asked the United States' authorities to put Canada on the list of piracy to put greater pressure on parliamentarians to adopt the bill back then and to justify the existence of the digital lock. That adds a major sticking point and one that causes great imbalance. If we give anyone the right to prevent owners of copyrighted material to use it for their personal pleasure and benefit, we give that right away to large corporations because they put a digital lock on works that have been purchased and paid for legitimately. It skews the bill entirely and destroys whatever balance might be there. On that basis alone, it causes a great deal of difficulty.

There are other difficulties. We might be going a little too far with the exceptions on education. We have heard a number of artistic groups say that they were concerned and worried about that.

We thought that the amendments that were introduced might perhaps be woven into the Bill C-11 edition of the bill but that seems not to be the case. Therefore, we have another imbalance that has been created here that we had hoped would have been addressed but has not been.

I will tell the House a bit about what happened back in the nineties with that bill and why I would be opposed to it now.

I was on the government side. We had the bill before us. We had over 50 witnesses come forward. It was obvious that this chasm, which we are seeing again, was prevalent then between the distributors and the creators of copyrighted material. We were rapidly going into a logjam. I became very sympathetic to the plight of the artistic creators, those who were creating this material, because, without them, the entire industry would not exist. We need to protect the rights of the artists in our country.

To break the logjam that seemed to be coming, I introduced from the government side, imagine that, four amendments to my government's legislation. It did not sit well with everyone, and I recognize that, but the four amendments were actually carried at committee and became part of the bill.

One of the amendments was to change the definition which ever so slightly tilted the legislation at that point in favour of the creators. It was to define what a reasonable effort to find the owner of the copyright would be. In the first definition, it was that one went to one or two stores to find the owner of the copyright. That would be very easy to do, but not really fruitful in terms of a real search of who owned the copyright.

I introduced the motion that a reasonable effort to identify and find the owner of the copyright would be to refer to a collective. A collective, of course, is the creation of artists and artistic communities to defend their rights, to defend their copyright. By the way, I know it has been said and I will repeat it, copyright is not the right to copy. Unfortunately, too many people see it that way.

To defend the rights of the copyright, the right of the owner, the creator, we said that a reasonable effort would be to go to the collectives that represent that group of artists. That definition was accepted. It is in the law now and it is what protects.

I am saying this as an example that at the time we had a committee that could and would change the government's legislation, even amendments coming from the government side. I do not think we will see much of that in this Parliament, unfortunately. If I thought we could see some of the government members willing to put amendments forward, say, to get rid of the digital locks, then I might be tempted to support sending the bill to committee so that we could see the constructive work of committees at play, but we are not likely to see that.

My experience, unfortunately, in this Parliament is that the government's majority shuts down anything coming from the opposition side. We have seen it with Bill C-10, so much so that now with Bill C-10, the Senate has had to correct the lack of appropriate dealing with bills in this House.

I have seen it in my own committee where every constructive suggestion coming from either the NDP or the Liberals is automatically shut down. Not seeing any willingness on the government side to be constructive in terms of real work at committee stage, I am reluctant to support sending the bill to committee, because there is this digital lock and there are other provisions.

The bill eliminates ephemeral rights, an important source of income for artists. Given this government's obstinacy, we have no choice but to challenge it.

I will give another example which is a little bit off topic, but I think you will see the relevance, Mr. Speaker.

In the Liberal minority government, we introduced a notion that we would refer bills to committee before second reading so that committees had a chance to work at the bill constructively. The government always had the ability to stop anything that came forward that was way out of line by just not going any further with the legislation.

Two-thirds of our legislation was referred to committee before second reading. It gave the opposition side of the House, at the time the Reform Party, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, a chance to really exercise their craft as legislators positively and constructively. It worked, and by and large, it worked well. Parliamentarians did their job properly. The committee engaged in real work. The witnesses knew they could come to committee and offer constructive suggestions, positive amendments, and that they would be considered.

The Conservative government never does that, not even when it was in a minority situation. Therefore, given all of that, we cannot help but vote against the bill.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I was at every committee meeting when we looked at drugs and alcohol in prisons. We are just finishing that report right now. My hon. colleague will enjoy looking at the report. I think she will see some very positive things that came out of that because our government has invested unprecedented amounts of money into mental health, mental illness and specifically programs in prison to deal with drugs and alcohol.

Bill C-10 is a bill for which Canadians have asked. They were tired of the old Liberal way of dealing with criminals and worrying more about criminals rather than victims. We made a very distinct difference.

Our government believes in standing up for victims, which is what Bill C-10 would do. That is why our streets and communities will be safer when the bill is passed.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I sat in the same committee meeting when Mr. Sapers and others spoke. Two million dollars are being taken out of the programs for people struggling with drugs.

The government is taking power away from judges to look at the circumstances of a crime and determine a fair punishment. It undermines the judge's necessary ability to consider extenuating circumstances. More young people, more aboriginal people and more people with FASD and mental illness will end up in jail. That will be the wrong place for those people. That will make our streets more dangerous as well.

Bill C-10 has many provisions that are based on a solid foundation all right but a solid foundation of regressive policies that have proven not to work. It would make Canadians less secure on their streets and in their communities.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, I need to correct a couple of things that the hon. member said in regard to Commissioner Head who just appeared at our committee and praised this government for the funds that we had invested, which was his terminology, in our prison system, specifically to address the issue of drugs and alcohol addiction in prison. The member is not correct. Commissioner Head is very thankful for our investment. We have increased investment as opposed to other governments.

Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act, is important legislation. It would make significant and positive changes to our justice system.

We are following through on a commitment our government made to Canadians that we would introduce and pass comprehensive law and order legislation to combat crime and stand up for victims within 100 sitting days of this new session of Parliament. Canadians gave us a majority government, which means that is what they wanted us to do, and that is exactly what we have been doing.

Bill C-10 does include a range of significant law and order issues that affect Canadians across the country.

I do want to note that our government is very sensitive to aboriginal offenders and we ensure that our government follows all of our obligations in this area.

We disagree with those who would equate our corrections system with that of the United States. They are two very distinct systems. We will continue to legislate based on Canadian principles and build on the solid correctional foundation that exists in this country.

Everyone is aware that the safe streets and communities act would make several reforms that this government deems critical, and Canadians have agreed with us, to modernizing Canada's corrections and criminal justice system.

The bill would amend the International Transfer of Offenders Act to emphasize public safety as an express purpose of the act. It would also update the decision-making criteria that the Minister of Public Safety can use in making the decision to transfer Canadian offenders back to our nation.

The proposed reforms would change the name of pardons to a more appropriate term, that being record suspension. It would end record suspensions for child molesters once and for all, which, again, is what Canadians have asked us to do, which is why we have a majority mandate from Canadians.

Bill C-10 also highlights the importance of the correctional plan in law and sets out clear behavioural expectations for offenders. We heard throughout the study just recently at the public safety committee how the correction plan works, how it is supported by correctional officers and by people who are working with inmates, and is supported by our government. It is in line with our zero drug policy in prisons.

Other modernizations to the justice system would increase penalties for sexual offences against children, as well as create two new offences that take aim at conduct that could facilitate the sexual abuse of a child.

The bill would create tougher sentences for the production and possession of illicit drugs for the purpose of trafficking.

Combined, all of those measures will strengthen our justice system. They will help create safer communities and they will have a significant positive impact on our ability to keep all of our citizens safe.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to continue the debate on a question regarding Bill C-10, and the government's expensive, ineffective and discriminatory approach to crime.

I have talked with people in Vancouver Quadra. I have had a stakeholder meeting with key leaders in the community on a number of issues. To discuss this approach to crime, I hosted a telephone town hall involving almost 6,000 constituents to go over the details and get input. My guest was a former minister of justice. I have had a policy breakfast featuring the head of the criminology department at Simon Fraser University.

I have had a chance to hear from constituents in Vancouver Quadra. They are most disturbed with the provisions in Bill C-10 around mandatory minimums. There are many other parts of this omnibus grab-bag of nine different laws that they are concerned about, but those provisions are the most concerning.

When I asked the question, the leader of the government in the House of Commons at that time used the words “safe streets and communities” four times in 30 seconds. Clearly, all of my constituents want safer streets and communities too, but the research and evidence shows that Bill C-10 would provide the opposite. The Conservative government would actually make streets more dangerous.

Don Head, the Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada, said, “Offenders who participate in substance abuse programs are 45% less likely to return with a new offence and 63% less likely to return with a new violent offence.”

Substance abuse programs make our streets safer. However, the government has put a huge amount of money into security because of the overcrowding and in-prison crime. It has cut the funding for substance abuse programs. Correctional plans include those programs for a reason. The government would actually make the streets more dangerous by denying 85% of prisoners the very programs they need to help with their rehabilitation.

In B.C., the prisons are close to 150% capacity. Recently there was news that charges against two alleged offenders were dropped due to lack of capacity to prosecute in a timely way. That problem will only be exacerbated with Bill C-10 by the influx of prisoners because of fixed mandatory sentences. This will make the streets even more dangerous.

This has been shown in other jurisdictions, such as Texas. Texas saved $1.7 billion and slashed crime rates by 27% by reversing its approach to crime which had resembled Bill C-10. Instead, Texas put that money into rehabilitation, mental health centres and so on.

The government for ideological reasons will make our streets more dangerous. It needs to level with Canadians because if that is its plan, more dangerous streets will be the outcome.

Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-19, a bill that if passed will mean the abolishment of the long gun registry.

As the opposition critic for public safety and as the representative for a community where gang and gun-related violence is a reality, where there have been four murders in the last month alone, I am fiercely opposed to the bill.

Abolishing the long gun registry is a mistake and I fear the impact this mistake will have on public safety.

The most saddening part about the government's motivation to kill the registry is that it is entirely political. It has nothing to do with public safety. Instead, it has to do with a reckless Conservative agenda on crime that will cripple our criminal justice system and cost taxpayers billions of dollars, all just to divide Canadians and score some cheap points along the way. It has nothing to do with the facts, but, sadly, facts are rarely a concern with the government, especially when it comes to public safety.

Last week in the Senate committee hearing on Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, the Minister of Public Safety told senators to ignore the facts when it came to public safety. He said, “I don't know if the statistics demonstrate that crime is down...I'm focused on danger”.

His statement, which seems completely absurd to most Canadians, pretty much summarizes the government's approach on crime. Its plan, as far as I can see, is to scare Canadians and then spend billions of dollars on policies that will not make our communities any safer, all the while convincing us that all of this somehow makes it tough.

My friends do not believe in facts, but I will give some to them anyway. Here are some facts about the long gun registry, which the minister and his colleagues on that side of the House are ignoring.

On average, one in three women killed by their husbands are shot and 88% of those women are killed with legally owned rifles and shotguns. Since the introduction of the gun registry, gun-related spousal homicides are down 50%.

Rifles and shotguns are the guns most often used in suicides, particularly those involving youth. These have decreased by 64% in nine years, from 329 in 1995 to 121 in 2005, with no evidence of substitution with other methods.

Long guns have killed 10 out of 13 police officers in the past 10 years. That comes from the 2010 RCMP evaluation of the Canadian firearms program.

The Conservatives are also ignoring the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, which has told them many times that the registry saves the lives of officers and that cancelling it would hinder their ability to solve crimes.

The Conservatives are ignoring the RCMP that has consistently defended its usefulness as an investigative tool.

The Conservatives are ignoring victims' groups that have spoken out in support of the gun registry. We heard from many victims' groups in committee.

The registry is not perfect. That is why New Democrats have been saying for many years that we need to find a way to address the problems with the gun registry, while strengthening gun controls in our country.

Our position is clear. We want to see the legitimate concerns of rural Canadians and aboriginals addressed, while ensuring that police officers have the tools they need to keep our communities safer. We want to bring Canadians together and find solutions, instead of playing games with wedge politics like the Conservatives are doing.

The NDP put forward a number of suggestions to address problems with the registry, while maintaining its value as a public safety tool, but the Conservatives refused to consider those solutions. Not only are they going to end the gun registry, but just to prove a juvenile point, the government is also going to destroy the existing gun registry data.

The money has already been spent. We have heard about it. It was $2 billion that my friends spent over the years to gather this information. It makes no sense to simply destroy it if there are police officers and provinces that want to use it to enhance public safety. Destroying existing information in the registry will not bring back the money that has already been spent. Why is the government going to effectively burn billions of dollars worth of data that Canadian taxpayers have already paid for when the provinces and the police are telling us that the data has a public safety value?

It does not make sense to me. What makes sense to me is to fix the registry so it works for all Canadians, rural Canadians, aboriginals and urban Canadians. What makes sense to me is to give the police the tools they need. What makes sense to me is to adopt improvements that New Democrats have proposed to strengthen the gun registry. What makes sense to me is to ensure that semi-automatic weapons, like the Ruger Mini-14, used by Anders Breivik in the recent Norway shootings and by Marc Lépine at the Montreal massacre in 1989, cannot be classified the same way as hunting and sporting shooting guns, to close loopholes around firearms importation that have led to guns ending up on the black market. What makes sense to me is to stop gun violence in the country using every possible tool that we have. What makes sense is to save lives.

Like Jack Layton said, “stopping gun violence has been a priority” for rural and urban Canadians. There is no good reason why we should not be able to sit down with goodwill and open minds. There is no good reason why we should not be able to build solutions that bring us together. There is no good reason why we cannot rise above the political games, fix the registry and make Canada a safer place for everyone: my family, the families of the members and families across our country.

I urge my Conservative colleagues to vote against the bill so they can work with the NDP to fix this so we have safer communities.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to talk a bit more about what the B.C. Wildlife Federation said:

The long gun registry, created under Bill C-68 by a previous Liberal government, has always been misdirected. It focused on law-abiding citizens, ignoring violent criminals and offenders who have been prohibited by court from owning firearms who actually do threaten the public safety. As a result, the BCWF [B.C. Wildlife Federation] has joined with provincial and territorial wildlife federations, national and provincial wildlife and outdoor organizations, responsible firearms owners, hunters, farmers, trappers, recreational sport shooters, and many rank and file law enforcement officers who have consistently urged the government to scrap the system.

These are common sense folks, just as the legislation we are bringing forward under Bill C-10 and Bill C-19 is common sense.

I would appreciate the support of the hon. member. He was not here at the time when his predecessors brought in the registry. He is from Kingston and can bring some common sense from those folks in Ontario to the House.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, the government listens to the Association of Chiefs of Police when it comes to Bill C-10 on law and order, but when those same chiefs come to committee to talk about Bill C-19 and urge the government to keep the registry, the government suddenly turns a deaf ear. What does the hon. member think about that?

Report Stage

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to debate Bill C-19.

Once again, the Conservatives are showing their narrow ideology in trying to eliminate the Canadian firearms registry. This registry is strongly defended by our police forces and by the majority of Canadians, but this government is choosing once again to ignore reality. It continues to reject all the recommendations by the opposition parties and the provinces, showing utter contempt.

The arguments in favour of this bill are not very convincing, while there are many arguments against the bill that are backed by data and by groups that work in protecting Canadians. The Conservatives' three main arguments—that the registry is expensive and ineffective and it violates the rights of hunters—do not hold water.

Yes, the initial cost of the registry was exorbitant, but it has already been paid for by Canadian taxpayers. Abolishing the registry will not bring back the money that has already been spent. In addition, today, the government is refusing to even give the provinces the data when they are the ones that paid for it. The provinces will therefore have to once again spend taxpayers' money to recreate a registry that already existed. In short, the Conservatives are once again making the provinces pay, just as they are doing with Bill C-10 and Bill C-25 and just as we saw recently with the proposed changes to increase the age of eligibility for old age security benefits.

Also, according to the RCMP, abolishing the registry would result in direct savings of only $1 million to $3.6 million. That is what the lives of the thousands of people saved by this registry are worth to the Conservatives. This government claims to want to destroy the registry to save money. To the government, then, a life is worth nothing.This so-called savings is nothing compared to the increased cost of police investigations that will inevitably result from abolishing this registry.

In other words, the Conservatives' main argument for wanting to abolish the registry is simply a ridiculous lie. The annual cost of the registry is negligible and the government could easily cover this low cost if it stopped wasting taxpayers' money on exorbitantly priced military aircraft and the ridiculous promotion of royalty.

The other argument frequently used by the Conservatives to justify destroying the registry is that it is supposedly ineffective. This argument is no more convincing than the others. Police forces consult the registry more than 17,000 times a day and want the registry to be maintained. It allows police officers to plan their operations better when they have to intervene with individuals, which contributes to the safety of our police forces. The registry also helps reduce the cost of police investigations. When a long gun is used in a crime, police officers can easily track the firearm and its user.

The registry has also helped save many lives. Even though the majority of murders are committed with handguns, long guns are used in the majority of spousal murders and suicides in which firearms are involved. Various women's advocacy associations want the registry to be maintained. Year after year, long guns are used in two out of every three murders involving firearms. The registry has helped greatly diminish the number of spousal murders. For example, only a third as many spousal murders were committed with long guns in 2007 as in 1996, despite population growth, which shows the usefulness of the registry.

These long guns wreak even more havoc on Canadian society when we consider suicide. Year after year, close to 60% of firearms suicides are committed with long guns. The registry makes it possible to quickly determine if, for example, a depressed person owns a firearm, which allows authorities to save many lives. The number of firearms suicides dropped from 569 in 2001 to 475 in 2004, proving once again that the registry works.

Since we know that most homicides committed with firearms are suicides, it is of the utmost importance for the government to take action. However, this government is irresponsible and would rather ignore the facts and introduce a bill that will lead to the death of hundreds of Canadians.

The survivors of the various massacres that have occurred in Canada also want the registry to be maintained. The Conservatives say that they are on the side of victims of crime, but they ignore and turn their backs on those victims when they take a stand that does not match the Conservative ideology. These same Conservatives accuse the opposition parties of being against victims.

If, as they claim, the Conservatives are on the side of victims, why are they not listening to them? Why are they making their retrograde Conservative ideology a priority rather than addressing the concerns of victims? This government is illogical: it says that it wants to make our streets safer by imposing repressive bills, but it wants to allow the free circulation of firearms. This clearly shows that there is something fundamentally wrong with the Conservative ideology.

In addition, one of the main reasons that there are problems with the registry is that the Conservatives did not enforce the legislation. Instead of fining or, depending on the seriousness of the case, prosecuting those who did not register their guns, the Conservatives gave offenders amnesty. Since 2006, this government has been sending the message that the laws pertaining to the registry are not important and that the Conservative government supports offenders. As a result, millions of firearms are still not registered. What credibility does this irresponsible government have when it states that the registry is ineffective, given that it is directly responsible for the problems with the registry? The Conservatives have done nothing but sabotage the registry since 2006. This government claims to want to enforce the laws but, instead, it is sending the message that only the laws that are consistent with the Conservative ideology have to be respected.

Another argument put forward by the Conservatives to justify destroying this registry is that it violates the freedom of firearms users by imposing red tape. That does not stand up either. Only 2 million people have to deal with the registry's red tape out of a total population of almost 35 million Canadians. Why destroy this registry and sacrifice the majority of Canadians to save a very small minority from the administrative irritants of the registry? Should we stop registering vehicles? Now there is a question. Yet there are far more users of vehicles than of firearms. Obviously, vehicle registration does not go against the Conservative ideology, which is modelled on the mentality in the United States.

It is pathetic that this irresponsible government is again trying to destroy the registry. Once again, this government is lying to Canadians in order to justify its actions. Once again, this government is allowing the United States—in this case the powerful gun lobbies—to dictate our country's policies. It is time that this government started to listen to reason and the facts: abolishing this registry will lead to more suicides and spousal murders. Abolishing the registry will complicate the work of our police officers and make it more dangerous.

I could go on for hours, but I know that the Conservatives do not listen to anyone. They refuse to listen to the recommendations put forward by the opposition parties and the provinces. They do not have enough respect for the loved ones of those who take their own lives, the victims of killings and abused women to consider, at a bare minimum, providing the provinces with the data from the registry.

They do not even have enough respect for our police forces to listen to them when they say that they need the registry. In short, these Conservatives, who always claim that they are tough on crime, are promoting crime by allowing weapons to circulate freely. They are completely forsaking victims by ignoring them. This bill clearly demonstrates the extent of the Conservative's contempt for our constituents. I will continue to stand up for all those Canadians who have been abandoned by this Conservative government.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by saying how disappointed I am that the government has introduced this bill. During the previous Parliament, my colleague from Timmins—James Bay introduced a bill laying out a responsible approach to ensuring public safety while taking into account the needs and grievances of gun owners. I am disappointed in the government's position, but I am not surprised.

Personally, I support the gun registry. There is no doubt in my mind that the registry is an important tool to ensure public safety in Quebec and in Canada. How can the government say that it wants to make our streets safer? Of course I want safer streets, but I have to tell it like it is. This government has ignored all of the available data and analyses, choosing instead to give us Bill C-10 and Bill C-19. The people of Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert and I feel that this government is not walking the walk.

Many organizations have condemned this bill, among them the Fédération des policiers et policières municipaux du Québec, the Quebec association of emergency physicians, the Canadian Labour Congress and the YWCA. These organizations have said that the registry is useful.

Why is this government not heeding its own Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, Ms. O'Sullivan, who has said that Canada must do all it can to prevent further tragedies from happening, including using the tools we have to help keep communities safe, like the long-gun registry?

From the beginning of the session, this government has tried to convince us that it cares about the victims of crime. Students at Dawson College spoke to me about this issue at a meeting on post-secondary education. The chairperson of the Dawson student union, Audrey Deveault, said that the harm caused by firearms is a problem for our country and that weakening long gun control would not help solve the problem. But why listen to them? Dawson College students asked to meet with the Prime Minister to discuss the firearms registry, but he did not even have the courtesy to respond.

The Association des étudiants de Polytechnique has also spoken out loud and clear against this bill, as has the Association québécoise plaidoyer-victimes, which stated in its press release that saving money is a false argument. It said:

Citing the cost of the registry as a reason for undermining some of its elements is not one of the soundest possible arguments. In fact, the Polytechnique, Concordia and Dawson shootings are tragic reminders of the cost of gun violence.

I would also like to call the attention of this House to the opinion of Quebec's Association of Families of Persons Assassinated or Disappeared. Ms. Elizabeth Pousoulidis, president of the association, said that controlling and registering firearms were important measures to protect safety and quality of life in our communities and to minimize the number of victims wounded or slain. That is one more voice speaking out against this bill. The government may not have expected this from an organization founded by one of its senators.

The registry has had many positive outcomes. I have been involved in women's causes for a long time. I was affected by the École Polytechnique massacre, which spurred many to call for the creation of the registry. But we should not forget about domestic violence. According to the Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, 71% of spousal homicides are committed with a rifle or shotgun. These types of guns are governed by this bill.

The YWCA estimates that violence against women costs Canadians approximately $4 billion annually.

Over 100,000 women and children are forced to leave their homes because of violence and abuse. The CEO of the YWCA, Paulette Senior, made a very important point that I would like to share with the House. She said, “Long guns and rifles are used to intimidate women and the threat of a rifle is often a significant reason that women don’t risk leaving to seek help.”

That is why the Fédération des femmes du Québec, the Regroupement des maisons pour femmes victimes de violence conjugale and the Fédération de ressources d'hébergement pour femmes violentées et en difficulté du Québec have decided to speak out in favour of maintaining the firearms registry. They work in the field of violence against women and they see the effects of firearms and the registry. It is important to note that the rate of homicides involving rifles or shotguns has decreased by 70% since the registry was created.

As a member from Quebec, I call upon this government to grant the request of the Government of Quebec and Quebeckers. We must save the firearms registry or, in the worst case scenario, we must save the data. We must.

I would like to close by citing a letter that I received from Dr. Jocelyne Sauvé, the director of public health in the Montérégie region. She makes arguments that represent the principles I uphold as a physician.

...I would like to share with you my concerns about public health should this bill be passed.

In Canada, firearms are the cause of approximately 800 deaths per year, mainly suicides committed in private residences with non-restricted firearms such as shotguns or rifles. A number of studies have shown that a home where there are firearms is five times more likely to be the scene of a suicide and three times more likely to be the scene of a homicide or a firearm-related accident than a home without a gun. Contrary to popular belief, most gun deaths are caused by people who do not have a criminal record. For these people, who often have personal, marital or mental health problems, access to firearms is a significant risk factor for such action. As a result, controlling access to firearms is a key prevention measure for vulnerable individuals.

...The combined effects [of the firearms registry] have resulted in a reduction in the number of weapons that are improperly stored, lost or illegally owned. It also makes firearms less accessible to individuals who are vulnerable or in a state of crisis, without preventing owners from using them for ordinary, legitimate, purposes such as hunting or sports shooting.

In addition, the Institut national de santé publique du Québec recently stated that the Firearms Act had saved 300 lives a year between 1998 and 2004. I am therefore asking members of the House to consider the points that I have just mentioned, as well as those set out in our brief, and oppose this bill.

Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we have seen time and time again in this Parliament the Conservatives downloading costs onto the provinces and municipalities and refusing to help them with the bill.

That is why the NDP has proposed various changes to Bill C-19 at report stage. Notably, we have proposed abolishing clause 29, as we have heard police chiefs in provinces such as Quebec indicate their desire to retain data to help protect public safety.

The Conservative government has to stop downloading costs and has to help the provinces and municipalities foot the bills. We have seen this as well with the omnibus crime bill, Bill C-10. The government keeps putting forward laws and forcing the provinces as well as municipalities to pay for these enormous bills.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, with the omnibus Bill C-10, the Conservatives are trying to create criminals rather than help victims and rehabilitate criminals. If the member wants to know what the NDP is proposing, here are a couple of measures. We suggest that failing to register a gun be decriminalized for a first offence and that the person involved be fined instead. This is a proposal we put forward in 2010.

Moreover, we suggest that the law state that owners of long guns should not have to absorb the cost of registration. We also propose that disclosing information about the owners of firearms be prohibited, except for the purpose of protecting the public, or when ordered by a court or by law.

These are but a few recommendations. The NDP is looking for conciliatory solutions that help address the concerns of many Canadians across the country. I hope that my colleague is going to propose the same solutions.

Motions in Amendment

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I commend the hon. member on his speech. Earlier, we heard a member from the Conservative Party rhyme off a list of myths by number.

I have two myths to offer my colleague, and I would like him to say a few words about them. First myth: the Conservative government and the Conservatives stand up for victims. Answer: false, given that two ombudsmen for victims of crime—the current one and the former one—say that at the end of the day, the Conservatives are doing absolutely nothing for victims.

Second myth: the Conservative government and the Conservatives are fighting crime. False: in my opinion, they are making a spectacle of crime. From time to time they use victims and their suffering to try to explain or justify unacceptable bills. The best example is Bill C-10—if memory serves me correctly—with which they are going to completely change the way we deal with young offenders in Quebec.

What does the hon. member think about these myths?

Justice

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

Madam Speaker, I present two petitions today. They both deal with issues of justice and human rights.

The first petition is signed by over 165 people from British Columbia, Ontario and other parts of Canada. It deals with the troubling use of secret trial security certificates.

The petitioners ask the House to examine security certificates, recognizing that they imprison indefinitely on secret evidence people for whom no charges have yet been brought. They really deny them full right of appeal and deny them their charter rights. This really is offensive to all principles of the rule of law and Canadian tradition.

They call upon the House to ensure that those who are currently detained be released unless they can have charges clearly brought and that they not be deported.

The second petition also deals with justice issues. It is signed by people from British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Manitoba. It deals with the mandatory minimum sentences that are included in Bill C-10.

The petitioners urge that the government not pursue the failed policies of other jurisdictions in using mandatory minimums, knowing that every criminologist, every academic study has found that they simply do not work. They are not tough on crime; they are just stupid on crime.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Madam Speaker, today, another provincial justice minister added his voice to a growing long list of people who do not want the Conservatives' prison agenda. Nunavut's justice minister says Bill C-10 would undermine the Supreme Court ruling on aboriginal justice. It would drag down the corrections system and it would rob judges of the chance to use their own discretion.

The verdict is in. The Conservatives' prison agenda will not work. When will the government admit its mistake and go back to the drawing board?

Pooled Registered Pension Plans Act

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to thank my NDP colleagues for their various interventions on the government bill before us here today. I think this is a very important subject, one that Canadians are really concerned about. A number of people from my riding have contacted me to share their concerns about their retirement. That is why I wanted to speak here today.

In a democratic country like Canada, the right to retire in dignity after working hard one's entire life is absolutely fundamental. What I mean by “in dignity” is having enough money to pay for groceries, to pay the rent and to pay for health care. The current economic situation, economic projections for the future and our aging population are all crucial factors in determining how we, as a society, should manage our retirement programs.

In that regard, I must commend the government for recognizing the issues that will affect how and when Canadians retire and for trying to come up with solutions to ensure a decent retirement for everyone. Where I disagree with the Conservatives—and where I agree more with the NDP's opinion—has to do with how the government is going about solving the growing problem of access to a decent income when the time comes to retire. Bill C-25, introduced by the government, has many flaws that really need to be examined and understood by Canadians, because, I would remind the House, it is their money on the line.

According to the main points of the bill, the new pooled registered pension plans, PRPPs, a retirement savings vehicle very similar to RRSPs, would enable plan members to pool their funds to reduce costs associated with managing the plan's investments. The bill notes that the benefits of PRPPs are transferable, but that they are not indexed to inflation. These plans are intended for self-employed workers and small and medium-sized businesses that do not have the means to manage a private sector pension plan.

Despite the government's claims, pooled registered pension plans will not enable Canadians to achieve their retirement goals. The plans will not improve income security for retired workers. The plan proposed here is a defined contribution plan, not a defined benefit plan. In this kind of plan, employees set aside funds throughout their working lives, and those funds are invested in stocks, bonds, mutual funds and so on. Investment income depends entirely on market fluctuations. That is an extremely important point. The employees absorb all of the financial risk associated with stock market ups and downs.

If the government made an effort to listen to all of the Canadians whose RRSPs melted away like snow in sunshine in 2008, it would understand that more stable and secure savings options should be made available. People who can tolerate significant risk can turn to the stock market and RRSPs. Worse still, depending on the province, employers could potentially be required to offer this plan to their employees without having to contribute. People already have the option of contributing to a savings plan without employer participation. That is called an RRSP. What more does the government have to offer?

Last November, in its press release announcing Bill C-25, the government said:

...over 60% of Canadians do not have a workplace pension plan. Because of this, our government acted by introducing legislation...that implements pooled registered pension plans.... Our Conservative government is delivering PRPPs to offer a new, low-cost and accessible pension option to help Canadians meet their goals.

What low-cost, accessible pension is the Conservative government talking about? Last year, only 31% of eligible Canadians contributed to an RRSP. The rest just could not afford to. Currently, Canadians have $500 billion in unused RRSP contribution room available.

Let us say it again loud and clear: Canadians do not have access to an affordable and accessible retirement because they have absolutely nothing left at the end of the month to put into savings. And the Conservatives are asking them to take what little they have managed to put aside and put it into investment funds administered by banks, the very banks that have nearly wiped out the global economy, with no guaranteed income and no guarantee that the funds available will see the workers all the way through retirement?

And the Conservatives want these funds to be managed by fund management “experts” at the banks and insurance companies without any limits on the cost of their management fees and bonuses that will be paid out of the pockets of our future retirees?

During a radio interview, the Minister of Industry said:

By pooling retirement savings, PRPPs will allow Canadians to benefit from greater purchasing power. We are talking about economies of scale here. Canadians will essentially be able to buy in bulk. Professional administrators will exercise a duty of care to ensure that the funds are invested in the best interests of the plan members.

In my opinion, the advantage of economies of scale is quite questionable. We should learn from the Australian experience, but this government is again turning a deaf ear, as it did to the warnings from the United States about the omnibus Bill C-10.

Ten years ago in Australia, a similar system provided very disappointing results. Their system was mandatory, with the possibility to opt out, a bit like what the government wants to do here. The Australians came to the conclusion that, even though people saved because it was mandatory, the returns on investment did not outpace inflation.

The report commissioned by the Australian government attributes these discouraging results to the high costs and fees, even though it was thought that competition among the banks would, as we just heard, lead to reduced costs and economies of scale. So much for that argument; it does not fly. Let us have the wisdom to learn from our Australian counterparts and avoid making the same mistakes.

What Canadians want is not another incentive to save more money. The average Canadian is already trying to save and can barely manage. First we have to come up with a solution closer to the source of the problem. Canadians want to have a decent income that will allow them to save. The solution is job creation.

The excessive debt of Canadian households has made the headlines again, and 1.6 million Canadian seniors are living in poverty. By OECD standards, the CPP system is relatively miserly since other similar countries have much more generous public pension plans.

In 2010, one in four workers had a low-wage job. Does the government think that a Canadian who earns $13 an hour will be able to meet his needs and the needs of his family and contribute to his PRPP, where his hard-earned money will be at the mercy of the stock market as it operates today?

Canadians must understand that the measures proposed here are superficial and risky. The government has not taken the time to carefully consider the problem.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Madam Speaker, that is just another cherry-picking of the impact of this bill. Of course there are some things that all of the members support. It is the issues around mandatory incarceration for minor non-violent offences, and the use of mandatory minimums for broad, vague underlying offences that will result in unjust, grossly disproportionate sentences.

To sum up, the Canadian Bar Association has been absolutely clear that this bill will do nothing to improve the state of affairs that we are already seeing in terms of prison overcrowding and all of the results of that. It ignores the reality that decades of research have shown, that what actually reduces crime is addressing child poverty, providing services for the mentally ill, diverting young offenders from the adult justice system, rehabilitating prisoners and helping reintegrate prisoners into society. Bill C-10 ignores these facts and would actually be redistributing funds that would have been spent on those issues to more prisons, dealing with the overcrowding and all of the problems that causes. Therefore, this is a bad bill.

The Conservative government should be listening to Canadians on this matter, but it simply is not because it--

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Madam Speaker, let us review Bill C-10.

The hon. member has raised the issue of judicial discretion. Part 2 of the Safe Streets and Communities Act includes former Bill S-10, the Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act. These reforms were introduced in three previous parliaments, passed by both chambers but never by both in the same session.

Bill C-10 proposes to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, to impose mandatory minimum penalties or MMPs for the offences of trafficking, possession for the purpose of trafficking, production, importing, exporting and possession for the purpose of exporting drugs, all serious drug offences.

Drugs covered are schedule 1 drugs such as cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and schedule 2 drugs such as marijuana. These offences would only carry an MMP where there is an aggravating factor, including where the production of the drug constituted a potential security, health or safety hazard, or the offence was committed in or near a school.

Importantly, there is an exception that allows courts not to impose a mandatory sentence if an offender is eligible for and successfully completes a drug treatment court or DTC program. The program involves a blend of judicial supervision and incentives for reduced drug use, social services support and sanctions for non-compliance. There are six DTCs in Canada: Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton and Vancouver.

If there is no drug treatment court in a particular jurisdiction, the court can delay sentencing to allow the offender to attend another approved treatment program. The Canadian drug treatment court model was initiated by federal prosecutors looking to effectively deal with repeat offenders whose crimes were motivated by drug addictions. By assisting the offender to overcome addiction, criminal recidivism is reduced and success is being achieved.

Bill C-10 also aims to further restrict the use of house arrest and conditional sentences never intended to apply to serious and violent crimes. Bill C-10 includes amendments that explicitly state that a conditional sentence is never available for offences punishable by a maximum of 14 years or life, for offences prosecuted by indictment and punishable by a maximum penalty of 10 years that result in bodily harm, involve the import, export, trafficking and production of drugs or involve the use of a weapon, or for specific serious property and violent offences punishable by 10 years and prosecuted by indictments such as criminal harassment, trafficking in persons, motor vehicle theft and theft over $5,000.

Do the critics of our law reform agenda really believe that an offence with a maximum sentence of 14 years should ever be served in the comfort of the offender's home, even under the strictest of conditions? Do these critics believe that drug traffickers should serve a conditional sentence? This government is committed to ensuring that conditional sentences are only an option for appropriate offences. This will result in some offenders serving time in custody. Some will receive other types of sentences. This is as it should be.

Bill C-10 also proposes to denounce all forms of child sexual abuse through the imposition of new and higher mandatory minimum penalties and the creation of two new offences to target conduct which facilitates sexual offending against children. These amendments were included in former Bill C-54, which had been passed by this House with all party support and was at third reading debate in the Senate when it died on the order paper last March. I would be surprised if these reforms are not still strongly supported.

The government intends to keep its promises. One such promise is to better protect our most vulnerable, including children. There will always be critics, but we will be quick to defend our public safety approaches because we do so for the--

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have the pleasure of rising to continue debate on a question that I asked the government in October. That has to do with the mandatory minimum penalties in Bill C-10. This bill removes a judge's discretionary power to determine an appropriate sentence based on the crime and circumstances. Since that question was asked, this bill was rushed through the House with time allocation and closure. It is on its way to being the law of the land, unfortunately. This is another expression of the government's disrespect for Parliament, parliamentarians, Canadians and stakeholders who are represented in the House of Commons.

Bill C-10 had no consultation on some of its elements. They were new. They were not bills that had been previously discussed. Worse than that, the bill had many aspects that had been discussed, debated and brought forward in committee. It had input from stakeholder groups and experts across the country, and all of that expert testimony was ignored. The vast array of troublesome aspects of Bill C-10 had no modifications, no amendments permitted and, essentially, the expert advice from Canadians who knew about these issues was brushed off.

It is not my word on this. I want to put on record the voices of people who know about these issues. While the government claimed that Bill C-10 would make Canadians and streets safer, that is clearly completely false. It is a marketing ploy by the government. In fact, the vice-chair of the Canadian Bar Association's National Criminal Justice Section said:

We believe the substance of this legislation [Bill C-10] both to be self-defeating and counterproductive, if the goal is to enhance public safety. It represents a profound shift in orientation from a system that emphasizes public safety... rehabilitation and reintegration to one that puts vengeance first.

The executive director of the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute stated:

Republican governors and state legislators in such states of Texas, South Carolina, and Ohio are repealing mandatory minimum sentences, increasing opportunities for effective community supervision, and funding drug treatment because they know it will improve public safety and reduce taxpayer costs. If passed, C-10 will take Canadian justice policies 180 degrees in the wrong direction, and Canadian citizens will bear the costs.

The Assembly of First Nations' national chief said:

—the Conservative government's tough-on-crime bill will hurt First Nations people, who are already disproportionately represented in federal, provincial and territorial jails.

In fact, it will hurt first nations people and discriminate against them, as well as youth and people with mental illness.

The justice minister for Newfoundland and Labrador was clear that “incarcerating more people is not the answer”.

The bill's approach is contrary to what is known to lead to a safer society.

That was a statement made by the Canadian Bar Association.

I have pages and pages of testimony, all ignored by the Conservative government in Bill C-10, which is going to create more crime, greater costs and less justice.

National Flag of Canada

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am here today to speak to Bill C-288, An Act respecting the National Flag of Canada.

I read this bill with interest over the weekend and noticed there are really three key clauses in it. The first is, of course, to prohibit or stop people from preventing other folks from displaying the national flag of Canada; the second is to allow the courts to grant injunctions against violators or potential violators of the first clause; and the third, if this injunction is ignored, allows prison sentences of up to two years for violators.

I am lucky that my wife, Jeanette Ashe, is also a political scientist. She puts up with these kinds of discussions over the weekends about these important private members' issues that come forward. We thought, as we were walking by the Peace Tower last night, looking at the Canadian flag billowing over this magnificent Parliament, that the bill was extraordinary for a number of reasons and worth discussing at length. I am glad we have the time today to do so.

First, I would like to state that I am very proud of the Canadian flag. I have worn it on my backpack while hostelling through Europe. As I stayed at various hostels, people would stop me, at least they did in the 1990s, and say how happy they were to meet a Canadian, as identified by my flag. They would say that Canada was a symbol of all that was good in the world. We have very strong national health care. We welcome immigrants. We are a peacekeeping nation. We try to promote peace internationally. I think that is why I was proud to wear the flag then. I am happy that people are proud to fly it on their own houses and to wear it on their backpacks around the world.

However, as much as I do support the flag and flag-flying, I really cannot support the bill in its current form. There are number of reasons for this. The first is the cost of this bill. I think as a responsible opposition, one of the first things we have to do is to speak about costs and think about being in a deficit position. Unfortunately, the Conservatives have brought us into a deficit position. We have to think about every penny and think about spending our pennies wisely.

To throw somebody in prison for two years would cost about $200,000. It costs about $100,000 a year to put somebody in prison. That does not even include all of the prosecution fees, all the police fees, and the various other fees that are entailed. There are about 12.5 million households in Canada. At a cost of about a dollar a flag, we could actually provide a flag to every Canadian household for the cost of about 65 prosecutions. I thought, is it worth it?

I read the member for Don Valley West's speech in Hansard. Actually, my wife and I perused Hansard as I was getting ready for this speech. He brought this bill forward based on a few bits of anecdotal evidence from his constituents; for example, a renter of an apartment flew a flag and the landlord forced him to take it down. What would be the implications of this act, this extraordinary act? At the furthest extent, that landlord would be put into jail for two years. Is that really the right way to handle this type of dispute, to allow the Attorney General of Canada, through the superior courts, to press charges against a landlord and then take that person out of the economy and put him or her into jail for two years at a cost of at least $200,000? Perhaps this is not the best way to go forward. Perhaps this is a wasteful use of taxpayer money.

There has been some talk in this House about allowing this bill to get to committee to allow more discussion of these clauses. However, the bill itself is very short and there do not seem to be any clauses to discuss, other than this one to throw people in jail for two years if they somehow interfere with the flying of a flag, or may do so in the future.

There are, in public policy, really two main instruments. They are referred to as carrots and sticks. There is the stick, where people are punished and beaten into submission to elicit a certain type of behaviour, and there are carrots, where people are rewarded for undertaking particular actions. The government seems particularly prone to using the stick. I would propose that a two-year prison sentence for interfering with, removing or intending to remove someone's flag some day is a very big stick. Putting people in jail for two years does not seem to make much sense.

On the cost side of things, if we are going to spend this enormous amount of money on this type of action, it would be much better to supply flags to every household rather than throwing a very small number of people in jail. It would cost millions of dollars. Again, I point out to the member that perhaps this is one reason he should reconsider this bill.

The second reason the bill should not go forward and why I cannot support it is the thought of who pays. There would be these prosecutions ongoing, during which time the attorney general would perhaps not be pursuing other prosecutions while going after these violent flag offenders. Because it is a sentence of less than two years, it would be served in provincial prisons. This bill seems to continue the theme of the current government of not only using a stick as a policy tool but also not absorbing the costs of using that stick.

This bill could perhaps have been added to Bill C-10, which we all know is the omnibus crime bill that rolled nine pieces of legislation into one larger piece of legislation. Perhaps the most famous clause in Bill C-10 is the one that requires six months for six plants, that is, if someone is caught with six marijuana plants in his or her window box, plants the size of a person's little finger, the mandatory minimum sentence is six months in jail. Of course, the federal government can pass these big stick laws without any fear that it is going to drive up the federal deficit because all of these costs are offloaded to the provinces. The Quebec government was the first one to come out and say that Bill C-10 would cost the province perhaps upwards of $1 billion. Now other provinces have come out and said this is offloading by the federal government.

Bills like Bill C-10 are going to cost provinces billions of dollars. It is irresponsible for the Conservative government to go ahead with bills like this without any discussion with the provinces and for it to say it is going to impose punitive laws, things that most Canadians would not agree with, and that it is not going to pay for them but make provincial taxpayers do so. Bill C-288 is in the same nature as Bill C-10.

Another forthcoming bill that would also offload costs to provinces concerns health care. The federal government, without really having any discussions with the provinces, is looking to offload health care costs to the provinces. This is a dangerous trend.

The last point I would make is there is very little empirical evidence the bill is needed. Perhaps the member senses there might be an escalation in people tearing down flags because they will be upset with government policy. For me, the only reason people would remove a flag is they are upset with the government. Perhaps the purchase of F-35s, perhaps the government becoming an international scourge in regard to climate change, and perhaps our moving from being a peacekeeping nation to an aggressor nation are reasons that people might be angry with the government. I think maybe this is a Freudian slip type of bill, where the member is perhaps anticipating with great nervousness what damage his government is going to do this country and is trying to get ahead of that problem by introducing such a bill.

I cannot support this bill going forward.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to give my last Thursday statement of 2011. The fall has been a productive, hard-working and orderly session. It has been capped by results that we have seen in the House during delivering results month since we returned from the Remembrance Day constituency week.

Of particular note, this fall the House passed Bill C-13, the keeping Canada's economy and jobs growing act; Bill C-20, the fair representation act; Bill C-18, the marketing freedom for grain farmers act; and Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act.

Other things were also accomplished, from the appointment of two officers of Parliament to the passing at second reading of Bill C-26, the Citizen's Arrest and Self-defence Act. I would like to thank the opposition parties who made these accomplishments possible. Nevertheless, the House has a lot of work to do when it returns in 2012.

The things I am looking forward to in 2012 include, after 48 speeches so far, returning to Bill C-19, the ending the long-gun registry act; after 75 speeches so far, continuing debate on second reading of Bill C-11, the copyright modernization act; after 73 speeches so far, continuing debating the opposition motion to block Bill C-4, the preventing human smugglers from abusing Canada's immigration system act from proceeding to committee; and, after 47 speeches so far, continuing debate on second reading of Bill C-7, the Senate reform act.

This winter, the government's priority will continue to be economic growth and job creation. We will thus continue to move forward with our economic agenda by debating legislative measures such as Bill C-23 on the implementation of a Canada-Jordan free trade agreement; Bill C-24 on the implementation of a Canada-Panama free trade agreement; Bill C-25, which is designed to give Canadians another way to plan for retirement through pooled registered pension plans; and Bill C-28 on the appointment of a financial literacy leader.

Needless to say, I am looking forward to the 2012 budget, the next phase of Canada's economic recovery, from the Minister of Finance, and I am looking forward to what I am sure it will deliver for the Canadian economy. This will be the cornerstone of the upcoming session.

With respect to the precise business of the House for the week of January 30, 2012, I will advise my counterparts in the usual fashion in advance of the House returning.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, please let me wish you, my fellow house leaders, all hon. members and our table officers and support staff a very merry Christmas.

In particular, I want to thank the pages, many of whom, as we know, spent their first significant amount of time away from home with us this fall. I wish them a pleasant time back home with family over Christmas. Perhaps we have provided some good stories for them to tell around the dinner table.

Merry Christmas, happy new year and all the best for the break. Here is to a productive, orderly and hard-working 2012.

Merry Christmas and happy new year. May the members of the House rest up in preparation for the hard work to come in a productive and orderly 2012.

Justice

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

Mr. Speaker, in the summer, our government gave Canadians a gift. We introduced Bill C-10 in order to protect them, and all Canadians will benefit. The cost of crime is roughly $99.6 billion and 83% of that cost is absorbed by the victims. We stand by the victims. The members opposite stand by the accused. Merry Christmas.

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to defence and justice, this government does not know how to count. Their estimates for Bill C-10 are unbelievable. The government claims that the cost of its omnibus crime bill is $80 million over five years, but last March, it was estimated that the young offender provisions alone would cost 10 times more.

Are the Conservatives going to learn how to count before sending the bill to the provinces?

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

Mr. Speaker, the provinces are well aware of the costs associated with Bill C-10. Nevertheless, the opposition does not seem to understand the importance of the objective of Bill C-10. People who break the law will spend Christmas in jail and the victims will be protected. That has always been our objective and the cost is absolutely justified.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, is there a Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs in this Conservative government? If there is, let him or her rise and tell us why he or she was unable to prevent the government from hiding from the provinces the real cost of Bill C-10 to each of them. The bill is regressive, pointless and flawed, and will not reduce crime, but increase the huge, American-style, overpopulated prisons that are nothing more than expensive schools for crime.

Citizen's Arrest and Self-defence Act

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will take the opportunity to wish the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

The member's question is a valid one. That is why I said earlier that the heart of the bill comes from the member for Trinity—Spadina, who is a very strong community advocate and has been a very strong advocate on behalf of the businesses in her community in Toronto.

However, the original bill that was put forward by the member for Trinity—Spadina has been salted and the salting of additional clauses are what generally seems to transpire with the government.

We do not know where the Conservatives find these clauses. We certainly looked at some of the amateurism around Bill C-10. We have to say that this stuff must be done in some back room somewhere on the back of a napkin.

The reality is that, although we support the principle since the basis of this legislation comes from the NDP, we are concerned about the impact of a whole range of those clauses, including the clauses that the member for Vancouver Quadra just mentioned. Because of that, we will be going to committee, as we always do, doing our homework, having prepared the impact and ensuring we get the witnesses in who can really speak to the judicial impact of each one of these clauses.

In committee, we have had Conservatives routinely deny witnesses who have great expertise and could help to contribute and reinforce legislation. I certainly hope that does not happen again where the contempt for Parliament that we are seeing repeatedly from the Conservative government means that the committee cannot do its due diligence in looking at every aspect of this legislation, because it does need to be examined and every impact needs to be thoroughly studied. We also need to have due regard from all parties in this House to ensure that what comes out of committee does exactly what the government says that it intends to do.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the member speak to Bill C-10, for which he has not much respect and which we in the Liberal Party call the “more crime, less justice and spiralling costs” law. There is much I would say in agreement with the NDP member.

I want to return to Bill C-26 with my question. The member is probably well aware that on Tuesday a 30-year-old man in a Tim Hortons restaurant in Vancouver was shot on the spot but managed to survive. It is possible that someone might have intervened to protect the person in that situation.

One of the controversial parts of Bill C-26 is the broadening of the allowance from just protecting one's own life to intervening to protect another person's life. In the situation I mentioned, we can see that it would have been a positive thing if someone had disarmed and held the shooter, but there is also a concern that it could lead to vigilantism.

I would like to hear the member's comments on that provision in the new law.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government in Britain has just that kind of approach right now. It has a goal of reducing the number of prisoners by half through prevention and treatment programs. In our prisons, according to the prison ombudsman, 85% of prisoners cannot get the treatment programs that they are required to take by their own correction plans. That means they stay in prison longer, they plug it up more, and end up with greater re-offending rates. This is a backward approach. The Conservative Bill C-10 is making things far worse.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-26. The bill would amend subsection 494(2) of the Criminal Code to enable private citizens who own or have lawful possession of property, or persons authorized by them, to arrest within a reasonable time a person who they find committing a criminal offence on or in relation to that property.

As the Liberal critic said, the Liberals support the bill in principle, but we have some concerns about the scope of the self-defence provisions. They need to be further examined in committee.

I note that in this debate some Conservative members have assured the House that potential amendments will be discussed and considered and maybe incorporated. I want to point out that has certainly not happened in this 41st Parliament so far. All of the bills that have come forward have been rushed through, including Bill C-10, a very substantive bill that needed amendments. Even the minister recognized that amendments were necessary. He tried to put them in later and failed because they were rejected out of hand at committee where they should have been accepted.

We are optimistic that the Conservative government will shift its process of unilaterally pushing through its bills. We are optimistic that the government will start listening to the opposition parties and the diverse voices from different parts of the country.

Bill C-26 does not contain any new powers or concepts, as I noted previously in a question in this debate and as was said by the member for Northumberland—Quinte West.

However, Canada's self-defence laws are complex and out of date. This bill would bring provisions with respect to self-defence that are spread over four sections of the Criminal Code into one defence provision.

The Liberals have some concerns about the bill which we feel need to be thoroughly explored in committee. Our critic, the member for Mount Royal, has laid out those concerns clearly. They boil down to what could be seen as gender discrimination in the bill. The reasonableness of someone's self-defence action refers to size, age and gender of the parties to the incident. We contend that size and age may be critical factors, but gender could reinforce the concept of “the weaker sex”, which is an anachronism in today's world. It is not appropriate. Women are just as capable of wading in as anyone is.

I have a personal incident with respect to a property crime. The member for Winnipeg Centre described his difficult situation, but mine was resolved much easier.

I returned to my company's office late at night, which many parents of young children do after the children are in bed and everything has settled down. This is a large building of 5,000 square feet and contains a number of offices. Clearly it had not been properly alarmed. When I went into the office I encountered a hefty individual probably in his late twenties. He did not belong there. He had been rifling through the petty cash and the drawers and personal effects of my staff. Alone at night in my office, I was completely shocked to encounter this individual. I used a very potent weapon to deal with this situation, my tongue. I reacted by telling him all of the reasons he should leave right away. I told him he had no right to be there as it is a family business where we work hard to provide a good service. Essentially, I succeeded in shaming the individual and he left.

However, I later realized he might have had a gun or a knife. He might have decided he did not want to leave because he had not completed his efforts to secure funds for whatever purpose. He might have resisted and I would have had to take a different measure, which I would have done in defence of my property.

I appreciate that the laws should be clear and that people, who are in situations where they are defending property or persons, should not have to worry that they may be charged under the Criminal Code because of confusion. I support this.

Many of the members on the Conservative benches have talked about their broader approach to crime. I have deep concerns about the Conservative government's broader approach to crime. It is partly because it does absolutely nothing to help prevent these very incidents of property and personal crime for which Bill C-26 provides citizens with a recourse.

Why are we not finding ways to reduce crime? Why is the government actually committing billions of taxpayers' dollars to a crime agenda or regime that goes completely contrary to the evidence and advice from states like Texas and California that have experimented with the kinds of provisions built into the Conservative government's approach to crime? They have failed, they have been costly, they have reduced justice, and they have actually increased crime. The government is going down that road.

As the member for Northumberland—Quinte West has already said, there are no new concepts or new powers in this bill. It clarifies an existing law that protects citizens in situations where they must defend their lives, and so forth. Furthermore, we are being given the same amount of time to debate this bill as we were given to debate Bill C-10, which included nine bills. Bill C-10 has very serious ramifications that would radically alter how youth are treated by the law. A number of professionals said that it was a bad bill, but we did not have time to debate it in this House, in this 41st Parliament, with the new MPs. Bill C-26 is much smaller than Bill C-10 and yet we were allocated the same amount of time for debate in each case.

I want to know why we are not seeing prevention but the warehousing of mentally-ill Canadians and Canadians struggling with drug addictions, who should be provided funding for treatment and prevention. In Vancouver, the youth skills connect program has been cut, so prevention programs for youth are being cut. The balance is completely out of whack and will be tipping over Canada's justice system in a very negative direction.

Liberals support this bill, but certainly not the overall approach to crime by the Conservative government.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I can tell my friend that the bill deals with reforms and clarifications that are needed in the Criminal Code as it pertains to citizen's arrest and the protection of property and protection of self.

What we are doing with Bill C-10 and other legislation in the House is providing more tools to police officers, more tools to our court systems so that we can address the issues of property crime, sexual offences, home invasions. This is just one part of the overall picture.

In the absence of having police officers nearby and in pursuit of criminals, the clarification and reforms regarding citizen's arrest, which were well presented by my colleague from Northumberland—Quinte West who is a former police officer, will provide the tools to individuals. Even though not everyone has the physical capability or the training to make those arrests, those who feel empowered enough to attempt a citizen's arrest would know that the Criminal Code had been clarified within the justice system and that they would not be prosecuted by the crown because of an arrest they would have made.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the reasonable and informed commentary on the bill by the member for Selkirk—Interlake. However, I also listened to the member for Northumberland—Quinte West. What really struck me is that one member is saying that the bill is essentially a set of clarifications. It is almost housekeeping, no new powers and no new concepts. Other members talk about the issue of crime, the fear and concerns that people have and the importance of this, that and the other. There are two divergent explanations of what the bill is about.

The bill which the Liberals support does nothing to reduce or deal with any of the root causes of property crime or crime against a person.

If the member for Selkirk—Interlake believes that addressing crime is an important priority for society, does the bill deserve the same level of consideration and debate as we saw with Bill C-10, which has a much broader reach? Is this really the answer to reducing crime?

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am proud to speak to this bill which will introduce reforms to the Criminal Code so we can have the clarifications required in the courts to know when it is appropriate to make a citizen's arrest and when it is appropriate to conduct self-defence.

I come from a rural riding. We know that policing services are often quite well removed from people who live in the country. We have heard a number of members of Parliament speak today to the problems that are often encountered in having the RCMP get to a remote rural location. There are rural detachments that are often 20 miles or 30 miles removed from the communities they serve. Often the individuals who are staffed at those attachments are busy performing other policing services, such as patrolling highways or responding to public safety issues. Therefore, it is important that Canadians know there will be clarification with respect to what they can do to protect themselves, their families and their property.

We have been discussing the case of Mr. David Chen and the issues that he endured as a result of his making a citizen's arrest in Toronto a couple of years ago. When that happened, I went through sections 34 right through to sections 42, 44, 45 of the Criminal Code and read everything that related to self-defence, citizen's arrest and protection of property. I found it extremely confusing.

There has been a number of decisions and judicial commentaries made with respect to the need for a reform of the Criminal Code. This section of the Criminal Code was put in place back when it was first written in 1897. Therefore, it is over 100 years old and does not provide the clarity that prosecutors need or that police officers require to make decisions concerning investigations of criminal activities and the laying of charges. As well, it definitely does not provide the clarity that judges need to make proper rulings. Therefore, this is timely.

When we look at the problems we have in rural Canada, one of the criminal elements being experienced right now is with youth, often those who a lot of us would call “punks”. They coming out to the farms and steal property. They are not after little things. They are not running into the houses and stealing watches and jewellery. They are grabbing quads, trikes and snowmobiles from the garages. They jump on them and drive them down the road.

There was a situation in my riding a couple of years ago where one of my constituents gave chase to a couple of young guys. In his situation, he was able to get an ID, make an apprehension and charges were laid. We definitely do not want people to take unnecessary risks that would cause them to endanger themselves. Nor do we want to see them get involved in vigilante movements. This bill would clarify that this would not be tolerated. We will not have a bunch of posses formed, with people running around doing their own self-policing. We are still telling people to, first and foremost, contact the police, or phone 911, to ensure police officers are aware of the situation so hopefully they can respond quickly.

However, we see a lot of criminal activity especially in rural areas, although we often see it in urban centres as well. As the member for Winnipeg North stated earlier, Winnipeg is a dangerous community. We are leading the nation in auto thefts and are near the top with respect to the number of murders, home invasions and sexual offences. Therefore, when citizens are put in harm's way on such a frequent basis because of these criminal elements, we have to empower them so they can take the necessary measures to protect themselves, their families and their properties.

Therefore, I applaud the Minister of Justice and our government for bringing forward this legislation.

When we look at the definitions of what the courts will use to determine whether an individual has used excessive force, the current code provides for that clarification. Therefore, we do not need to go into any more detail. If someone is breaking into a house, essentially going in unarmed, we are not going to have people running around shooting these people. That will not be tolerated.

If we have a situation where people come in and every reasonable peaceful means is taken to apprehend the individuals, if people are in peaceable possession of the property and do not want it to be removed, whether it is in a business or a home invasion, those individuals who conduct that activity need to know that Canadians will not tolerate it.

I believe by empowering Canadians in this way, it will send a strong message to offenders who commit these crimes. Canadians will be prepared and willing to take action if they feel they are physically able to protect themselves, their families and their property.

We want those criminals to think long and hard about this type of behaviour. We want to ensure they know they will unable to have some lawyer lay charges against those who try to apprehend them for a citizen's arrest. Criminals need to know they will be held accountable under the new, stronger justice measures that we have instituted, not only through this bill but through Bill C-10 and the other criminal justice bills that are being moved into law. They need to know they will be held accountable, that they will do the time for the crime and that this type of behaviour and criminal element will not be tolerated in Canada.

The number one issue for Canadians, from coast to coast to coast, and especially in my riding of Selkirk—Interlake, is they want to be safe in their homes, on their streets and in their neighbours. They do not want young offenders and the criminal element in our society overtaking their lives.

As was pointed out earlier, all we hear about in the news in Manitoba is criminal offence after criminal offence, murders, sexual offences, property damage, gang violence and drug activity. Those elements are there. The police are overwhelmed in dealing with those types of criminal elements in our communities.

Because the police are so overwhelmed and are often well removed from where a criminal offence takes place, it is important that we allow citizens the opportunity to protect themselves, their property and their families.

I personally have not had a situation where I have had to deal with it, but I know in my heart of hearts that if somebody tried to endanger my family or if the person came onto my property to steal, in the absence of police services being available, I would be prepared to take the necessary measures. I would not want to put anybody else into personal harm, but I would make that citizen's arrest. In speaking to so many people in Selkirk—Interlake, I know they are prepared to do the same.

One business has received repeated break and enters and the theft of quads and snowmobiles. Unfortunately the RCMP has been unavailable when those offences have taken place. The business owner has gone through the process of working night shifts, staying at his business to catch those individuals who have repeatedly attacked his property and stolen from him. He knows full well that he will replace that property and the criminals will return and steal again.

I encourage all members of the House to support the bill to ensure that we have the right reforms in the Criminal Code to provide the clarification that the justice system needs so badly.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. NDP member for his speech. He talked about Bill C-10 and the need to have prevention programs and care for people with mental illness or problems with drugs, instead of putting them in prison.

In his opinion, if we had more prevention and rehabilitation programs, would the problem that Bill C-26 is trying to correct be less significant? Would there be fewer crimes against property and persons?

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Committees do work, Madam Speaker, and I said that four or five times in my presentation. If members have amendments, they should bring them forward at committee. There is a process involved in the development of legislation, and it is through committee. If amendments are based on politics and are not in the best interests of Canadians, then it is true that they will not go far, but if they are true, legitimate amendments that Canadians want, then the House would consider them closely.

The opposition complained about Bill C-10, for example. My colleague who spoke before me was very clear. That piece of legislation was made up of five pieces of legislation, and it was debated for four years in the House. It had had a great deal of debate, so there was no reason to delay. Canadians were asking us to get the bill passed and get it done. They told us that we did not need to hack away at it again. They said they had heard all the debates and all the arguments and they asked us to make a decision, and that is what we did: we made a decision. We moved forward.

If my colleague has some thoughtful amendments that are based on the best interests of Canadians, then I would ask him to please bring them forward, and we will consider them seriously.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to follow up on the question from my colleague from Winnipeg North. He asked whether the government would look at potential amendments based on merit.

The answer he received was that Bill C-10 had been widely discussed and amendments were considered. Of course, we know that zero amendments were accepted. In fact, there were several amendments put forward by my colleague from Mount Royal that were rejected out of hand at the committee railroading process, which later the minister decided actually were worthwhile. The minister tried to bring them forward at report stage but the amendments were rejected by the Speaker because they should have been done at committee stage.

This is exactly what we want to avoid. We want those reasonable amendments to be considered, discussed and potentially accepted in committee where it should happen. Will the member advocate for that with his minister and colleagues?

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to respond to the two key points that I think the member tried to raise.

One is the whole issue of the big jails mentality. The member must not have been listening to my speech when I pointed out the prevention and rehabilitation aspects that our government is heavily involved in. I hope he has read the transformation agenda on the Correctional Service of Canada website. It clearly outlines the government's preventive, restorative and rehabilitative efforts. It is important that we keep that message clear.

Bill C-10 did not address these issues; that is not what Bill C-10 was about. Bill C-10 was a compilation of five years of work on the part of this government. The bill's individual components had been before the House and committee many times. I do not know the total number of hours, but they had received intense scrutiny. Yes, this government was open to the input of committee members at every stage along the line. Does that mean the government automatically accepts, endorses and implements amendments to the legislation? Of course not. That is not the function of government. Government needs to hear all the evidence, weigh the evidence and upon the best information take action. That is the responsibility of the government.

I am proud to be part of this government that has taken decisive action to restore balance to our criminal justice system.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am somewhat encouraged by the member's comments. He gave the impression that the government would be open to having amendments.

I want to send a message directly to the Prime Minister. People are concerned about crime and safety in their communities. They expect that legislation will have a direct impact on preventing crimes. There is a great sense of disappointment in terms of Bill C-10 as an example, which has the bigger jails mentality which is being rejected in the American states that were big advocates for it at one point in time. We brought in amendments to that bill and those amendments were crushed at committee. With the legislation before us, we already get the sense that some changes will be needed.

Is the government prepared to entertain genuine amendments brought forward by the Liberal Party or the New Democratic Party that could strengthen Bill C-26? Is the government open to receiving and approving amendments on merit?

Canada-Jordan Economic Growth and Prosperity Act

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to rise in the House today to begin debate on Bill C-23, the Canada-Jordan free trade agreement. Our government is committed to securing and deepening access to traditional markets, like the United States, and broadening and expanding access to more markets, like Jordan.

Trade accounts for over 60% of our annual GDP and, with one in five Canadian jobs generated by trade, it is a matter of fundamental importance to the financial security of hard-working Canadians and their families.

Our focused pursuit of new free trade agreements helps to demonstrate our government's commitment to helping Canadian workers and businesses compete in markets abroad, as well as our commitment to creating more jobs and economic growth for Canadian workers.

We continue to see fierce competition in the global marketplace, with emerging economies and global players continuing to climb the value chain and establishing themselves in a wide range of sectors.

This government will do everything it can to ensure that Canadian workers and Canadian businesses have the tools and opportunities to build the links needed to succeed in today's global economy. Our government is committed to bringing continued economic prosperity to Canadians by pursuing bilateral and regional free trade relationships. Negotiating and implementing trade agreements with our international partners will also help to level the playing field for our companies in an increasingly complex and competitive environment.

Pursuing free trade agreements sends a clear signal that protectionism is not the right way to achieve increased global stability and prosperity. In these challenging times, deeper trade ties are the best way to create jobs and economic growth. Our government will get that done. That is why we have an ambitious, job creating, pro-trade plan. The Canada-Jordan economic growth and prosperity act is a key part of this plan.

The Canada-Jordan free trade agreement also demonstrates Canada's support for an Arab state that, like Canada, supports peace and security in the Middle East.

We will recall that in 2007, the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister joined His Majesty King Abdullah II in a commitment to take our commercial relationship to the next level. The Canada-Jordan free trade agreement, along with related agreements on labour co-operation and the environment, signed in 2009, are a direct result of this commitment.

Canada's economy is export driven. Canadian families understand that trade is a kitchen table issue that provides jobs and helps put food on the table. We know it is in our best economic interest to seek out new opportunities for our producers, workers and exporters in as many foreign markets as possible.

Moreover, negotiating free trade agreements allows for Canadian firms to specialize and increase their comparative advantage in the global marketplace. By improving access to foreign markets for Canadian workers and businesses, this government is keeping its commitment to support economic growth and create new jobs for Canadian workers.

In a number of countries, Canadian firms are at a competitive disadvantage because their foreign competitors have preferential market access under some form of a free trade agreement. The Canada-Jordan free trade agreement addresses this serious issue by leveling the playing field with key competitors who are already benefiting from free trade agreements with Jordan, namely competition from the United States and the European Union.

Through the Canada-Jordan economic growth and prosperity act, our government is ensuring that Canadian workers and firms are on equal footing to compete with firms from across the world in the Jordanian market. Opening doors to trade and investment is the right approach for creating opportunities for Canadian workers and businesses in global markets.

The Canada-Jordan free trade agreement would create new export opportunities and strengthen bilateral ties between our two countries.

The free trade agreement with Jordan would benefit both Canadians and Jordanians by giving Canadian and Jordanian exporters unprecedented access to our respective markets and eliminating tariffs on a number of key products. World leading Canadian sectors, like forestry, manufacturing and agriculture and agri-food would benefit.

Over the years, Canada and Jordan have built a strong, mutually beneficial relationship. This free trade agreement continues to build on that important start. It is a relationship grounded in common aspirations, like peace, stability and prosperity for our citizens. This new free trade agreement would help to move these aspirations forward.

Despite the recent economic downturn experienced by the global economy, our bilateral trade with Jordan increased to $85.9 million in 2010 from $82.5 million in 2009, indicating that the longer-term trend of our trade relationship is one of growth.

For example, Canada's 2010 merchandise exports to Jordan of $66 million were more than double the $31 million total in 2003. This free trade agreement would provide the opportunity to further enhance this trend of upward growth.

Jordan's current average applied tariff is 11%, with peaks of up to 30% applied on some Canadian exports of interest. In fact, 67% of Jordan's tariff lines, covering over 99% of Canadian exports, will be eliminated when the agreement is first implemented. This is a huge step forward in the growing economic partnership between Canada and Jordan and will help to ensure that Canadian firms remain competitive globally. Jordan's remaining tariff reductions will then take place over three or five years.

Let me give a better idea of the specific sectors that will benefit if the Canada-Jordan economic growth and prosperity act is quickly moved through the House.

Top exports in 2010 included paper and paperboard, vegetables, wood, vehicles and machinery. In 2010 Canada imported some $20 million in goods from Jordan, including both knit and woven apparel, inorganic chemicals, precious stones, mainly jewellery, and vegetables, cucumbers.

Our trade relationship has clearly been growing, despite Jordan's most favoured nation applied average tariff of 11% and peaks of up to 30% on many key Canadian exports.

The Canada-Jordan free trade agreement aims to remedy this situation and promote continued prosperity for Canadian workers, producers and exporters. Once this agreement is brought into force, Canada will immediately benefit from duty-free access for over 99% of current Canadian exports by value.

What does this new agreement mean for individual exporters? Permit me to run through some specific examples, starting with the agricultural sector. Canadian exporters of pulses, lentils, chickpeas, beans and peas will benefit from the immediate elimination of Jordan's tariffs of 5% to 10% on these products. Of Canada's $7 million of vegetable exports to Jordan in 2010, the majority were lentils and chickpeas, which currently face a 5% tariff, and peas that are subject to a 10% tariff, both of which go to duty-free access immediately upon implementation of the agreement.

In 2010 exports of frozen potato products to Jordan totalled some $88,000. These exporters will benefit from the immediate elimination of a 20% Jordanian tariff and place them on a level playing field with competitors in the U.S. and the E.U., which currently benefit from duty-free access to the Jordanian market.

Canadian beef exporters will benefit from the immediate elimination of Jordanian tariffs, which range from 5% to 23% on all beef products, including fresh chilled frozen and preserved meat and offal and processed products such as sausages and jerky.

Jordan lifted its restrictions on Canadian beef products in February 2009, which will allow this sector to benefit from these lower tariffs.

Animal feed will also benefit from the elimination of Jordanian tariffs of up to 23% and some of these are currently subject to an additional 10% tariff that will be eliminated immediately upon implementation of the free trade agreement.

The Canada-Jordan free trade agreement is certainly more than just agricultural products. The elimination of Jordanian tariffs, ranging from 15% to 30% on certain wood products, could benefit Canadian exporters of doors, frames, joinery, shakes and shingles and other building materials.

Canadian exporters of paper goods, such as toilet paper, paper towels, facial tissues, envelopes, stationery, wrapping paper, boxes and corrugated cardboard, will benefit from the elimination of Jordanian tariffs ranging from 10% to 30%.

With $9.7 million in exports in 2010, mainly light passenger vehicles, Jordan is a growing market for Canadian auto and auto parts exports. The elimination of Jordan's tariffs ranging from 10% to 30% will help Canadian exporters to further expand into this market.

Canada exports a variety of mechanical and electrical machinery to Jordan, $9.2 million in 2010, including heavy construction and mining equipment, communications equipment, filtration or purification devices, pumps, machinery and components. The elimination of Jordanian tariffs, ranging from 10% to 30% on a variety of current and potential Canadian machinery exports, will certainly help our machinery manufacturing sector.

Canada's exports of pharmaceuticals to Jordan totalled just shy of a million dollars in 2010, of which 80% were subject to a 5% Jordanian tariff. That will be eliminated upon implementation of this free trade agreement.

Although Jordan is currently a small market for Canadian fish and seafood exports, the elimination of Jordan's 10% to 30% tariffs on fish and seafood could help Canadian exporters expand their presence in the Jordanian market.

I have to admit that I have covered a lot of numbers, but numbers matter to Canadian workers, producers and exporters. In an increasingly competitive world, lower tariff numbers can make the difference for exporters who are considering whether to expand or enter into a new market.

This growing trade relationship is just one of many reasons why our government continues to work with Canadian businesses to ensure closer commercial ties to the Jordanian marketplace. Our government's work to support Canadian firms doing business in Jordan has been recognized by the business community in Canada and has been met with support from a wide range of businesses, including the Forest Products Association of Canada, the Grain Growers of Canada, the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, as well as the Canada-Arab Business Council, all of which appeared before the Standing Committee on International Trade.

Members will remember that our free trade agreement was just one of the agreements we signed with Jordan in 2009. We also signed a bilateral job-creating foreign investment protection and promotion agreement, which came into force on December 14, 2009. This job-creating investment agreement establishes clear rules for investment between our two countries.

Canadian investors are particularly excited about opportunities in Jordan's resource, extraction, nuclear energy, telecommunications, transportation, manufacturing and infrastructure sectors and this job-creating investment agreement provides Canadian and Jordanian investors with the predictability and certainty they need when investing in one another's markets.

I am sure members will agree that this free trade agreement and the 2009 job-creating foreign investment protection and promotion agreement with Jordan are no doubt complementary.

We are living in very challenging economic times and the economy remains our government's number one priority. In order to ensure that our economy continues to grow and continues to be competitive in the global marketplace, trade barriers must be broken down all across the world, through new free trade agreements.

Protectionism is never the answer. Our government believes that Canada's ability to continue to recover from the global economic downturn depends, in large part, on the global trade and investment partnerships that we pursue. That is why we are moving so ambitiously on free trade negotiations with our global partners.

Since 2006, Canada has concluded new free trade agreements with nine countries, most recently, an agreement with Honduras that was announced August 12. Canada is also in discussions with many more countries, including the European Union and India, two of the largest, most promising markets in the world.

This government is dedicated to ensuring that the Canadian economy remains strong through pursuing trade relationships that work for Canadians. This ambitious pro-trade plan is important for Canada.

Passing the Canada-Jordan economic growth and prosperity act will allow for the quick implementation of the free trade agreement with Jordan in order to help Canadian workers and Canadian businesses compete.

Earlier this week, the Canada–Panama economic growth and prosperity act was debated. Unfortunately, the NDP opposed the Canada-Panama economic growth and prosperity act. This should not come as a surprise, as its record is very clear. The NDP has opposed all trade agreements.

Unlike the NDP, our Conservative government is focused on broadening and deepening our trading relationship, as it protects and creates jobs and economic growth for Canadian workers and their families.

I reach out to the NDP and the Liberal Party. We need their support to pass these free trade agreements in the House. They are important for the Canadian economy. They are especially important in these trying economic times. Unfortunately, every time we reach out, we hear the same things in return. The NDP continues to represent some very narrow special interest groups. It continues with its job-killing, anti-trade agenda. It continually invents any reason at all not to support free trade agreements. On Monday, at the end of the day, the NDP said that, once again, it would oppose this agreement.

While we are focused on protecting and growing Canada's economy through our job-creating, pro-trade plan, we continually have to deal with opposition parties that obstruct this. That is the last thing we need. I would urge all my colleagues in the House of Commons to give support for a quick passage of this bill so the international trade committee can begin its work.

We have seen a very clear position come down on the side of the NDP. I do not expect that to be the position of the Liberal Party, the third party in the House. We would hope we do get its support on this bill.

However, let me assure Canadian workers and their families that our Conservative government will be strongly supporting the Canada–Jordan economic growth and prosperity act to ensure we continue to create jobs and economic growth. It is now time to move ahead with the legislation.

Our government and our party will send a clear message to Canadians that continued prosperity for Canadian workers and Canadian businesses is a priority, not just for the Conservative Party but for the House of Commons. The best way to do that is through ensuring a speedy passage of Bill C-23, Canada–Jordan economic growth and prosperity act.

This is important legislation. It was before the House in the last Parliament and it is before the House again. I urge my colleagues to send this to committee as quickly as possible and then send it back to the House post-haste.

Copyright Modernization Act

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I know the parliamentary secretary constantly asks questions in regard to the amount of debate time this issue has had before the chamber. Therefore, I want to start off by making a statement that the bill before us has been introduced on two separate occasions. Most recent, there has been some limited debate, but not as many hours as the parliamentary secretary tries to give the impression of.

The parliamentary secretary needs to understand why the opposition is somewhat skeptical. The government tries to give the impression that it is open to listening to what the public and members of the opposition have to say.

Bill C-10 was the bill that would increase the number of jails, build bigger jails and so forth. The member for Mount Royal had very good amendments that he brought forward in committee on behalf of the Liberal Party and the government voted all of them down. However, after doing that, when we came back to report stage, the government recognized that there were some serious flaws with its legislation.

The government attempted to bring in those amendments, but found it could not because the opportunity was lost. All the government had to do was just listen to the member for Mount Royal and we would not have had the issue that evolved. However, the government was determined to push through its legislation completely unamended.

I will fast forward to what we have today. We have yet another piece of legislation in which a great deal of concern has been expressed. The government's only response is that the opposition has had so much time to debate this issue, that the public has already made presentations in the last session and expressed concerns.

However, the government turned a deaf ear to everything that was being said. It is not as if the government listened and took action on those issues that were brought forward. Now the government says that it is in a bit of a hurry to pass the bill.

The minister is not as powerful as other ministers who have been able to get time allocation on their bills. This minister had to settle for moving a motion that would prevent any other amendment being brought forward. This is the time to bring amendments to make this a better bill. Imagine if that would have been allowed on Bill C-10, the government could have averted that mess.

The point is we have a bill that we are trying to debate. The minister was not able to get time allocation argued with his House leader, but he settled for a motion to have no more amendments brought forward on the bill. However, there is one outstanding issue that has been raised by a number of different speakers. One would think the government would have come up with some sort of creative way to try to appease or deal with the concerns that members of this chamber have, and it is not just members of the chamber who are concerned. I would suggest the viewing audience and other Canadians should be concerned about the bill and the digital locks.

We can all relate to going to a store to buy either an eight track, cassette or even a record in our younger years. I will reflect a little on my past. I would buy a couple of records, take the songs that I liked and put them onto a blank cassette. I believed that since I had purchased the records, I had the right to copy the song onto a cassette for my personal use.

I do not believe I was alone. I believe there were hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Canadians who recognized that they should be able to do that since they legitimately purchased a record. They may not enjoy every song on a record, maybe two or three, and they would copy those songs onto a blank cassette so they could pop it into their CD players in their vehicles or whatever else to listen to the music. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think most people would see that as the thing to do and there should be no consequence for doing it.

Let us look at today when we have CDs. CDs are not cheap, per se. I will provide some comment on artists, but we value their contributions in making those masterpieces, in this case music. Consumers should be able to copy songs from a CD onto a shuffle or some other form of MP3 player. If I go to the store later today and buy a CD for my daughter for Christmas, she should be able to copy her favourite songs onto the numerous gadgets she has so she can listen to them.

I do not believe there is anything within Bill C-11 that would ensure she could do that because of the way in which the government seems to be locked in on the need for digital locks and the impact they will have on the average consumer. The example I gave is a very real, tangible example that Canadians will do every day. I am not talking a few people; I am talking thousands. That is one of the issues that has been talked about a lot, yet we do not see it.

We recognize local artists. The Liberal Party of Canada has recognized the contributions that local artists make. They create jobs, generate economic activity, build on our heritage and culture and identify who we are in good part. I participate, as I am sure others do, in all sorts of local festivities, things like Folklorama in Winnipeg. If members have never been, I would encourage them to participate in it.

There are many different cultures that local artists and they will often have their own CDs. Artists attend fundraising events to promote themselves and encourage others. After giving concerts of sorts, they will sign their CDs because they are trying to promote themselves. The average artist does not make that much money. We recognize how important it is to support artists and we will continue to advocate for them. We would look to the government to recognize that.

The government would do well if it was not in such a hurry. I know the parliamentary secretary takes exception when I say it is in a hurry because he feels there has been plenty of time on the issue. I beg to differ. If the government is not prepared to listen and start understanding why we are appealing to the government to do the right thing, it is doing a disservice. I understand there is no time allocation motion on this, but I recognize it as a form of closure because we can no longer move amendments.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the House will remember Bill C-10, the bigger and more jails bill that the government brought in. When it did that, a number of amendments were moved that even the government members themselves wished they had recognized a bit earlier, so that they could have possibly passed them at committee stage. That was because they were in such a rush to get that bill through.

Now we have Bill C-11, and we are talking a lot about that big rush once again. The government appears, as it did with Bill C-10, to be completely close-minded to any sort of changes. The Conservatives talk about hundreds of hours of debate, which is not true, inside the chamber since the last election.

I know that within the New Democratic caucus, a number of people were just elected in May. Therefore, I ask the member to what degree he feels they have been afforded the opportunity to contribute any time at all to debate on this important piece of legislation for Canadians?

Criminal Code

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to again speak to my private member's bill, Bill C-310, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking in persons).

I will begin by thanking all hon. members who spoke today, as well as those who spoke during the first hour of debate on October 25. The careful attention paid to this legislation, and even more so to the issue of modern-day slavery during the speeches, is quite encouraging. There are few matters of justice that require our constant attention as much as slavery.

Bill C-310 would amend the Criminal Code to add the current trafficking in persons offences, sections 279.01 and 279.011, to the list of offences, which, if committed outside Canada by a Canadian or permanent resident, can be prosecuted in Canada.

Extending extraterritorial jurisdiction to Criminal Code offences is, indeed, a rare step. This was noted by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, as well as the NDP justice critic, during the first hour of debate. In particular, the parliamentary secretary stated that, in the limited number of cases in which Canada has extended prosecutorial discretion, it was because there was an international consensus to do so.

However, I want to refer to an extensive report on the practice of extraterritorial jurisdiction released by the Law Commission of Canada entitled, “Global Reach, Local Grasp: Constructing Extraterritorial Jurisdiction in the Age of Globalization”. This report states that, while most exercises of extraterritoriality are deliberately multilateral, it is open to Canada to act extraterritorially in advance of consensus having been formed; in effect, to attempt to lead international opinion by example.

What is most notable is that the report provides Canada's child sex tourism laws as an example of this and states that the child sex tourism provisions, though now perfectly in line with international treaties, actually preceded the signing of these treaties. Bill C-310 is an opportunity for Canada to again take international leadership in combatting this heinous crime.

I want to note that, during the first hour of debate, I mentioned that I would be seeking a friendly amendment to add sections 279.02 and 279.03 to this clause. These are offences of receipt of material or financial benefit from human trafficking and withholding or destroying travel documents in the process of human trafficking. This would ensure that all of the acts around human trafficking are covered by extraterritorial offences and there is no chance of a Canadian human trafficker falling through the cracks. I am pleased that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice was supportive of this amendment and I look forward to the discussion at committee.

The second clause of Bill C-310 amends the definition of exploitation and the trafficking in persons offence to add an interpretive aid for courts to consider when they are determining whether a person is exploited. The heart of this amendment is to provide an aid to the courts that clearly demonstrates the factors that constitute exploitive methods. In my amendment, I have proposed including use of threats of violence, force or other forms of coercion and fraudulent means.

I will also be seeking a friendly amendment at committee to include the terms “use deception” and “abused a position of trust, power or authority”. These minor changes would ensure that the bill is sound and accomplishes what we all want it to do.

Trafficking in persons is a fast growing crime in terms of profit, and it is incumbent upon us as parliamentarians to confront slavery in all its forms, both within our nation and abroad. That is why I am so pleased to see the unity of members on all sides of the House taking such a strong position on this matter before us today. By supporting Bill C-310, each member of the House plays an important role in strengthening the tools used by police officers and prosecutors and to secure justice for victims of trafficking, both here in Canada and abroad.

Government of Canada

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Mr. Speaker, last spring Canadians elected a government that is listening and keeping its promises.

Canadians told me they wanted a government that would make keeping their children and communities safe a priority. As promised, within the first 100 sitting days of Parliament, we will pass Bill C-10.

Farmers in my riding told me that they wanted the freedom to market their own wheat and barley. We are delivering by passing Bill C-18.

I regularly hear how wasteful the long gun registry is. I am very pleased that the government is passing Bill C-19 to end this discrimination against law-abiding citizens.

People across Canada have also told me of the need for increased transparency and accountability for first nations governance. I am proud that the government has introduced Bill C-27.

We have listened and we have acted.

Business of the House

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

Mr. Speaker, I have been thinking about the importance of leading by example. I think that the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons should do the same. Last week, he said that we would conclude law-abiding Canadians week and that this week would be democratic reform week. That is very ironic.

It is ironic because of what happened this week. We saw the passing of Bill C-10 on Monday, a bill that has been almost universally panned as being ineffective, not even knowing how much it is going to cost the Canadian public at both the provincial and federal levels. It is probably going to increase crime in this country at the end of the day, yet that was supposed to be part of the week when the Conservatives were having their crime agenda.

Then we saw this spectacle yesterday of the Federal Court slamming a minister--berating a minister, actually--in the written judgment for breaking the Canadian Wheat Board Act. It was to the extent, and this is quite unusual, that the federal court judge actually awarded costs to all the applicants against the government for the breach of that act. So that was the Conservatives' crime agenda.

Then, democratic reform is supposed to be this week. What did we see this week? We saw the Conservatives, once again, set the all-time record for closure and time allocation motions by doing so for the 12th time in less than 70 sitting days. The Conservatives beat the Liberal record by almost 40%, if my math is correct. That is what we saw.

In all honesty, after what we have just seen go on, I am almost afraid to ask the question of what is coming this week not knowing the consequences. However, I will close with the question, since that is my duty here, to the House leader of the Government and it is with substantial trepidation that I do this.

I would like to know, and I think Parliament and Canadians would like to know, what is going to happen in the House the rest of this week and the week coming up to next Friday, which is when the House will rise for the winter break? In part, we need to know that. Parliament and Canadians need to know, so they can get ready for what may be some of the consequences if we see the same kind of experience we have seen this week.

Senate Reform Act

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his comments.

One of the arguments that we have heard about the Senate pertains to how it was conceived. I think one of the reasons, in theory, that the Senate exists is to represent the different regions more fairly, given that some provinces are bigger than others.

Recently, we debated Bill C-10. Despite the very clear will of the Quebec National Assembly and Quebeckers, one senator became the government's puppet to a certain extent. He said that Quebeckers and the National Assembly were wrong not to support the bill. So, clearly, the Senate does not really represent the regions. Would the hon. member care to comment further on this issue?

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I always get the most difficult questions from the Liberal Party, but obviously the ones that are best thought out.

I want to thank the member for Winnipeg North. He is one of the hardest-working members. He is always working for his constituents. Meanwhile, the NDP is not fit to govern, and neither are the Conservatives.

In one of my questions today, I spoke about the fact that there are different people with different talents who would not normally run in elections but are selected for the Senate. They may have different points of view, for example, on child issues or the elderly. It was mentioned that Mr. Dallaire is an expert in defence matters. That is one benefit of having the Senate.

The other one is what I mentioned in relation to Bill C-10. If we did not have the Senate, we would have a flawed bill going through the judicial process right now.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we do not think the Senate is broken. We are always ready to reform the Senate because things change over the years, but we are not ready to abolish it. We have recently had proof of that with Bill C-10. The House of Commons has just passed Bill C-10, although it contained a number of errors. Even the government acknowledged that the bill had errors. Who is going to deal with those problems? Who is going to accept the new amendments? The Senate, that is who. The Senate will move its own amendments, which are going to be more sensible, I believe. That is the Senate's job. We are ready to respect the role the Senate plays in Canada's democracy.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the bill the Conservative government has introduced is a travesty of democratic reform and an affront to Canadians’ intelligence.

If the bill is passed, our Senate will no longer be representative either of Canadians’ choice or of the cultural reality of Canada, and we will inherit a hybrid Senate devoid of the independence it needs if it is to be more credible in the public’s eyes.

If I may, I would like to explain why this reform is sloppy, incomplete and scandalous. I would then like to add a few thoughts about genuinely democratic reform of our parliamentary system.

Let us see. This reform would allow the provinces to hold elections in order to participate in the process of selecting senators. The bill proposes a framework for holding these “elections”, which could be held at the same time as municipal or provincial elections, for example. The public would be invited to go and vote for one of the candidates in the running. Citizens would do their civic duty and put their ballot in the box. And then what would happen? The province would submit the list of candidates selected to the prime minister of Canada, who would decide whether to take the recommendations into account. But the prime minister would retain the privilege of choosing the candidates. He would therefore not be at all obliged to take the voters’ choice into account.

Are we really going to ask Canadians to go and vote, and not be able to assure them that their choice will be honoured? And the government calls this a democratic reform? We already have a declining voter turnout for federal, provincial and municipal elections. Canadians are completely disillusioned about our political system, and they are being asked, with a straight face, to take part in a travesty of democracy. Is this a joke?

That is not all. These senators will be appointed or elected, as the case may be, for a maximum term of nine years, and will be allowed to serve only one term. These new senators will be sitting alongside colleagues who are senators appointed for life and will be telling them that since they were elected, they have more legitimacy than they do. This will create a two-tier Senate.

As well, once the senators are elected, they will never again have to account to Canadians. Because they will be unable to stand again, they will not have to face the public and keep their campaign promises. The provinces will be able to decide to hold elections without even knowing whether the voters' choice will be honoured. And who is going to foot the bill for those elections? The provinces, of course.

We might say that this has become a bad habit with Conservatives. This looks like the omnibus bill, Bill C-10, which provides for more prison terms and more prisons. Who will pay for that? The provinces will, again. It is easy to make reforms when you can pass the buck and the consequences on to someone else, but it is hard for the provinces to swallow, given, moreover, that they are not the ones who are making the decisions. This really looks like an ad hoc, sloppy bill. The fact is that this is the third time the Conservatives have proposed a bill relating to Senate elections, and my Liberal colleague has explained that very well. And yet they still have not managed to do any better than this. To me, this looks a lot like a manoeuvre to get us to swallow an ad hoc reform at top speed, in order to circumvent the constitutional rules of this country.

If the government truly wanted to respect democracy, it would follow the rules laid down in the supreme law of this country, our Constitution, which states that any reform relating to the selection and qualification of senators requires an amendment to the Constitution of Canada.

It is true that section 44 of the Constitution Act, 1982, authorizes Parliament to amend the Constitution without the agreement of the provinces in certain circumstances, however paragraphs 42(1)(b) and 42(1)(c) of the Constitution Act, 1982, set out four exceptions to this rule, and in these cases the agreement of the provinces is required. The exceptions are as follows: amending the powers of the Senate; the method of selecting senators; the number of members by which a province is entitled to be represented; and the residence qualifications of senators.

So what is the government doing in order to avoid consulting the provinces? It is trying to make people believe that senators will be elected while continuing to appoint them. It is trying to reform the Senate without asking the opinion of the provinces.

This trick, however, is perhaps not even constitutional. In fact, in a very important decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in 1980, the justices of the highest court in the land stated that Parliament alone cannot make substantive amendments to the “essential characteristics or fundamental features of the Senate”. Moreover, Quebec intends to challenge the constitutionality of this bill, if passed.

What can be made of a bill that is nothing but a parody of democracy and does not respect the Constitution of our country? What can be made of a government that says it supports democratic reforms in Libya and in other Arab nations, touts democracy in China, Burma and Vietnam, and is not even capable of following its own democracy’s rules? What can be made of a government that negotiates free trade agreements and security perimeters behind closed doors and Conservative members who shut down standing committees by systematically directing committees to go in camera and cut short debates in the House? This government is very poorly placed to talk about democracy.

Moreover, the purpose of the Senate must be kept in mind. The Senate was created by the Fathers of Confederation to ensure the independence of our democratic system, a long-term perspective, continuity and equality between the regions, all in keeping with the principle of federalism of our nation. If the government wanted true reform of the Senate—democratic reform—it would modify the upper house to reserve a special place for the first nations, women, francophones—especially francophones outside Quebec, who presently have no national voice in our system—a place to better respect the contemporary nature of our Canadian societies with seats for the cultural communities.

I am convinced that Canadians also have their thoughts on the matter. Why not give them a voice? A referendum on the reform or abolition of the Senate would provide us with a real democratic verdict. We should let Canadians have their opinion on such an important subject. We should give Canadians a real voice instead of having them participate in a mere semblance of democracy. Canadians deserve much better than this botched reform.

Bill C-10

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have another petition related to C-10.

The petitioners wish to draw the attention of the House to flaws in the omnibus crime bill, such as mandatory sentencing, which would turn youth offenders into hardened criminals and prisons into warehouses for the poor, the mentally ill and those addicted to drugs. As well, it is uncosted and unfair to the provinces that have to pay the costs.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to rise today to present three petitions.

The first is a petition on Bill C-10 that was signed by Canadians across the country.

The petitioners wish to draw the attention of the House of Commons to the fact that the omnibus crime bill currently bundles together too many pieces of unrelated legislation, some of which makes sense and some of which does not, and that there is a big problem with implementation because Ontario and Quebec may refuse to pay for the costs of some measures that will be downloaded to them.

The petitioners call on Parliament to separate Bill C-10 into its pieces and allow members to vote on each piece separately. I understand that the bill has already passed, but I wish to draw the attention of the House to Canadians who are concerned with its passage.

Fair Representation Act

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Madam Speaker, my colleagues across the aisle have not given the duly elected MPs who sit in opposition, who were elected on May 2 to represent their constituents just as the government members were, the opportunity to have a full debate on critical issues like the budget. Fancy moving closure on the budget. They did not allow us to have a fulsome debate on Bill C-10. That bill, which encompasses nine bills, was railroaded through Parliament with hardly any debate. There were a number of points I wanted to make but I was denied the opportunity to do that. Then those very same colleagues stand here today and say that in order to improve democracy, we must have more MPs. If more MPs are going to be brought here only to be muzzled, why would we waste taxpayers' money? I am opposed to this legislation.

I would urge my colleagues across the aisle to stop railroading legislation through the House. I would urge them to respect parliamentary democracy and respect the voices of members of the opposition who have a role to play.

Unless the opposition is able to use its voice to critique, support or amend legislation put forward by those who hold the majority, our parliamentary democracy is being undermined and we are moving toward an autocracy, in which case we would not need as many MPs as we have right now. In fact, probably far fewer would be needed if all we got to do was to come here and stand up and have, for example, 61 votes in one evening just so things can be rushed through Parliament.

One of my other colleagues today made a good point, that as we look into the future, we have to look at our history. If our foundation is strong, then changes should not be made willy-nilly. That is what I feel about this legislation that is before us today. There have been so many iterations. Now the government is saying it cannot go all the way to rep by pop so it will go a little way and do it in a hurry.

Why would we do that to Canadians when we are going through some of the most difficult economic times? While Canadians are going through these difficult times we are telling them to tighten their belts. We are telling the public sector to trim its budgets. We are doing all of that while saying that we will spend $30 million to $50 million extra so a few more MPs can sit in the House. Those MPs will not have a chance to speak because history has shown us that the government will move time allocation to cut off debate because it does not want to hear voices that disagree with its ideas.

None of us, whether it is my colleagues on this side sitting at the far end, or whether it is my colleagues across the way, should worry about having a process that engages Canadians in this conversation. If I were to ask my constituents what things they want their parliamentarians to deal with, I would bet my very last cent that changes to the House of Commons would not be in the top five. I would argue that this issue may not even make it into the top 20.

Motions in Amendment

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with one comment that my colleague who just spoke said, which is that there has been a very spirited debate in the House today. Sometimes we do not see that as it is quiet. However, this has been a very interesting debate.

I have been sitting here all morning listening to the debate. I do not know if it is because we are talking about our place or our home, so to speak, that we get so caught up in it. Maybe that is a reason. But it raises fundamental issues in terms of how many members of Parliament there are, how they are selected, and what criteria is used. I do think they are important issues.

However, in looking at Bill C-20, which is supposedly calling for fair representation, I do think that there is an underlying issue that to me is very important, that being that we are dealing with a Conservative government that now has a pattern of putting forward legislation that really is out of touch with the reality of Canadians.

Last night we passed Bill C-10, the mega crime bill, for which there was massive opposition across the country. Every leading expert in the country said it was a bad bill and yet here were the Conservatives hell-bent on pushing it through. They brought in closure, time allocation, because they believed that this absolutely had to be done. When the evidence shows that crime is actually going down, putting more people in prison is a completely failed agenda when one looks at what has happened in the United States.

I wanted to preface my remarks today on that because there is a pattern in that we are now debating legislation that many people do not see as relevant to the real priorities they are facing. Here we have this bill on seat distribution and adding additional seats. However, it completely misses the fundamental issue in terms of our democratic and electoral systems, that being that the basic system by which we elect members of Parliament is fundamentally not fair.

It is not only a question of seats but also the way that we vote in this country, what we call first past the post. It is very revealing that when the government has an opportunity to bring forward these issues, it makes a decision to bring forward a bill that is actually flawed instead of focusing on a debate or a proposal to implement something that would fundamentally improve the democratic process in Canada and would enormously improve the way that people actually relate to politics.

All day I have heard the Liberals' position to actually take seats away. I am sure there are members of the public who might support that position.

What I think would be a good a debate is one that proposes proportional representation. Then we could really engage people and ensure not only fair representation but that when voters vote. their vote is actually counted in a way that is proportional to the aggregate votes for any given party. That is certainly not the system we have now.

It is hugely disappointing that on the one hand we have a bill that deals with the Senate that again did not deal with any issues around proportional representation, and on the other hand we have Bill C-20, which is at report stage today and will be going through third reading I imagine quite soon. It is a bill that will continue a pattern and proposal that is basically not fair in terms of its representation.

I am glad that the NDP put forward its own private member's bill that did lay out the important principles of what we need to look at when we deal with seat representation.

I am from British Columbia and the first to say, as I know my colleagues from the NDP in British Columbia will say, that B.C. has been under-represented in the House, as have other provinces. We understand that. However, when we look at this bill, even from a B.C. point of view, we are not gaining adequate representation. I think the NDP bill that has been put forward really addresses some of the principles at issue here. One of those principles is the historical context of this country and how it was founded.

We cannot deny the reality that we do not have pure representation by population. It is not possible in a country as diverse and as large as Canada. Many people have given the examples of Prince Edward Island or other maritime provinces that on a population basis are hugely overrepresented, or northern communities. We understand that. We understand that there is a balance.

In fact, those balances and those principles have been reflected in decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada and other decisions that recognize the history of this country. Certainly, one of those principles is the place of Quebec within the nation of Canada. I was in the House when the motion was passed in November 2006 where we unanimously declared a nation within a united Canada. That was a very important principle that was enunciated by the House. Therefore, in terms of recognizing what that means to seat distribution and recognizing the historical level of seats within Quebec, this bill fails on that ground.

The Conservative government chose to raise this issue. It chose to bring it forward on its political agenda. It chose to use the particular seat distribution that it came forward with. I find it very surprising and perplexing that it did it in a manner that is not consistent with the historical representation that we have had for the province of Quebec.

I feel there are some very sound arguments here to speak out loud and clear that this bill is flawed. If we are going to do it, should we not be doing it properly? Should we not be ensuring that there is fair representation, and should we not be doing it on the basis of fundamental democratic reform and advancement in this country?

Many of my colleagues have pointed out that we are now really one of the last remaining nations under parliamentary democracy that still uses first past the post. Why are we not having a debate on that? Why are we not seeing a bill that would bring that forward? Unfortunately, we know the answer. The government is afraid to lose what it sees as a monopoly that it has on the system that we operate under. We have seen that with Liberal governments before them.

I am very proud of the fact that the NDP has been a champion of proportional representation and has been in the forefront of that struggle to say that it is a fundamental reform that needs to take place in this country.

We are responding to a bill that the Conservatives brought forward. We have our own bill that lays out very clear principles of the way we believe this issue should be approached. It should be approached as a nation building exercise. What consultation was done here? What provinces, what people were consulted on this bill?

This is another unilateral, arbitrary, dump it down, and rush it through bill. Like many of the government's bills, it is recycled. This is the third time it has come around. There was a choice here if we were going to deal with this issue to deal with it in a way that would have actually advanced democracy in Canada, and would have advanced representation in terms of members of Parliament for the population. Unfortunately, this bill does not cut it. It does not meet that test or standard.

That is why we are here today in the House at report stage pointing out the flaws of this bill and saying that there could have been a better choice.

Safe Streets and Communities Act

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition that has been signed by Canadians across the country from small towns and big cities. It is regarding Bill C-10, which we are going to be voting on later today.

The petitioners wish to draw the attention of the House to the fact that this bill currently bundles together too many pieces of unrelated legislation, some of which make sense and some of which do not. They also wish to draw the attention of this House to the fact that there is a big problem with implementation, because Ontario and Quebec may refuse to pay the costs of some of the measures that would be downloaded to them.

Therefore, the petitioners call on Parliament to separate Bill C-10 into its pieces and allow members to vote on each part separately.

Opposition Motion--Climate Change

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in this House to represent young Canadians, who seem to have been forgotten by this government. I am proud to talk about issues that are close to my heart and to the hearts of my constituents. These issues are already affecting our communities and are threatening our future.

For over 30 years, hundreds of publications have been highlighting the various consequences of our ancestors' choices. For over 30 years, an international movement has been organized around the idea of improving our living conditions to give future generations the gift of a balanced and healthy environment. A number of national and international initiatives have been presented, approved and ratified by previous governments, which has enabled Canada to build a reputation as an international environmental leader.

Our reputation has really been tested since this Conservative government was elected. The government has repeatedly denied and refused to listen to the facts, studies and truths about climate change. I am appalled that a self-proclaimed responsible government is endangering its own children's future by denying well-documented scientific facts.

Many international experts agree on a number of facts that are evident when we look at the effects that have been directly experienced by Canadians. In Canada, temperatures have already increased by 1.3^oC over the past 60 years. This has led to increased flooding in Quebec, for example, and the costs associated with these tragedies keep increasing as well. Something else that can affect the whole country is the transformation of seasonal landscapes. Heavy equipment operators, who transport large loads and equipment to support the economy in Canada's north, have noted that they are able to use ice roads for much shorter periods. Thousands of Canadians depend on these roads to receive essential commodities. A young Inuit man even went to Durban to talk about the consequences of climate change. These effects are threatening Canadians' lives. This many effects cannot be a lie.

The many disasters that have been happening outside Canada also attest to the consequences of climate change: the devastating fires in Russia, major floods in Thailand, increasingly extreme droughts in Africa, increasingly violent hurricanes in coastal regions, and the melting glaciers in Greenland, which will speed up the rise in global temperatures and the rise of sea levels. Concrete examples from around the globe support what scientists are saying. When we do not see these things with our own eyes, it is easy to ignore the facts or try to explain them all individually, without connecting the dots between them.

More and more Canadians need to use their cars, because the absence of a national transit strategy or green alternatives that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions is only making matters worse.

These data are not being invented by political lobby groups. More and more independent experts have condemned this government's failure to act and its laissez-faire attitude. Not only did the Conservatives fire Environment Canada experts who could have produced excellent scientific data specific to our needs, but they also like to ignore all science when it does not serve their purposes. That is what happened with Bill C-10, which is completely irresponsible. To young people, climate change is clearly not just a political theory, but rather a reality they need to face immediately in order to reduce the negative impact it will have on their future.

The Conservatives have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they have failed when it comes to environmental vision and leadership. What is surprising, however, is that they are not taking advantage of this opportunity for Canada to become a global leader in green power production, given that climate change affects everyone. This economic vision would guarantee a future for our businesses and for Canadians, since we would be able to meet the rising global demand while creating thousands of well-paid jobs.

Unfortunately, with the end of government subsidies for programs like eco-energy after just one year, the small and medium businesses are the ones taking a direct hit. Many of my constituents will not have the opportunity to benefit from those subsidies. However, the biggest failure is that Canada has been alienating itself from its economic allies for the past few years. The hope for international co-operation, in which Canada would lead by example, is fading after the many fossil awards we have been winning these past few years.

My constituents have sent me hundreds of reply cards from my householders indicating how important the environment and international leadership are to them. They deplore Canada's new reputation, which does not reflect their many efforts and numerous accomplishments. They simply do not understand why individuals can be prepared to take action but the government is not willing to support them. The people of Terrebonne, Blainville and Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines are worried about the state of our environment.

In each of those towns that I proudly represent, we can easily find agencies, businesses and citizens' groups that struggle daily to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but more than anything, we find people who have taken their future into their own hands in order to ensure a better future for their children.

I would like to highlight the work of Compost Ste-Anne, a not-for-profit organization that helps the Town of Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines reduce its waste while creating jobs. That organization is celebrating its 10th anniversary today.

Young people are also showing leadership by becoming more informed and understanding the impact of their actions. Students from the Collège Saint-Sacrement are contributing to the environmental initiative in my region by setting up a sorting centre at their school. This summer, the young people from Terrebonne formed an environmental patrol that went door to door to inform families about how to protect their environment, how to recycle and how to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Even businesses in my region understand that a healthy environment is essential to a vibrant economy. That is why Tricentris obtained LEED certification.

The environment is such an important issue in my riding that people from one neighbourhood in Blainville fought to stop trees from being cut down in a wetland because they understand that our ecosystem needs those trees.

I have mentioned just a few of my constituents' initiatives. These people are committed to saving our planet because they realize there is a significant problem. The young patrollers and the Saint-Sacrement environmental committee know that we must take action now or our generation will inherit a massive problem. None of these people understand why their government is not on board with these initiatives. On the contrary, the government has decided to ignore the problems and to work against initiatives taken by the people.

Young people are increasingly cynical about politics, but I am proud to see that those in my riding realize that they can take their future into their own hands. I believe that it is my duty to support them during my term of office.

That is why I am pleased to represent the NDP, which has the courage to put forward bold environmental solutions to secure our economic future and offer Canadians an even more promising path: a path that recognizes the responsibility of the people's representatives towards youth and future generations; a path that recognizes the need to act now in order to lessen the economic and environmental burden that will be placed on my generation and those to come; a path that ensures that industry and the private sector work together to ensure a transition towards a clean environment and a green economy that is not dependent on fossil fuels.

In short, the Conservatives' lack of vision and responsibility is punitive for our children. The government is acting like an absent parent who does not take his or her responsibilities seriously. It is time to restore hope to future generations.

We need practical, science-based, fair, ambitious and binding legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We will not reach our targets with good faith and promises about taking action in the future, which is what this government is doing. It is time to revive the climate change accountability bill.

We need carbon emission regulations that will provide economic motivation for reductions to ensure that we can reach the targets to which we have made committed international commitments.

We need money to make this transition to a greener economy. It can be done if we make major emitters pay higher taxes and stop subsidizing the oil sector, the richest sector in Canada.

We must remain ahead of the game in order to take advantage of the considerable economic benefits resulting from the inevitable transition to a green economy. In the next 50 years, the oil sands resources will be depleted. We must build sustainable industries that will create more and more jobs across Canada. We must make long-term investments in programs such as the eco-energy initiative in order to motivate Canadians to decrease their energy consumption.

We must take action that reaches beyond policies and laws—not like the Liberals, who gave us the Kyoto protocol but, in the long term, failed to honour the commitments they made in that regard.

Finally, we must work together. We must recognize that we have an international responsibility since our choices influence other nations. We are all in this fight together. Young Canadians are growing up in a country that is currently seen by the world as a pariah because of the Liberals' broken promises and this government's complete lack of action.

It is time to act courageously. It is time to help Canadians regain their pride in their country. It is time this government recognized that science is right, that excellent solutions exist and that action will drive the economy and provide more sustainable jobs for future generations.

Service Canada

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if there are no national directives, there is a very clear Quebec directive in any case.

It is not just the employees who are deprived of the magic of Christmas in their workplace. The Conservatives also want to deprive hundreds of members of the public of these annual festivities.

By banning any decorations in public areas and in workspaces accessible to clientele”, they are taking away the little joy that sometimes accompanies the too long hours spent waiting in Service Canada offices because there is not enough staff.

One question is bothering me. Did the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development ask the Minister of Justice to include last-minute amendments in Bill C-10 to impose minimum sentences on everyone who dares to celebrate the Christmas holiday?

Corrections and Conditional Release Act

[Sylvain Chicoine, NDP, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative member for Scarborough Centre has introduced Bill C-293 to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. This bill has two objectives: first, to deal with offenders who make vexatious, frivolous or multiple complaints; second, to reduce the number of complaints handled by the corrections administration.

The NDP supports legislation that will make our prisons safer. We also support legislation that will allow our prisons to operate in a quick, fair and efficient manner. However, we are particularly concerned about the impact that this bill could have on prison management in Canada.

This bill will give disproportionate discretion to the commissioner of Correctional Service Canada. With this power, and based on his own opinion, the commissioner will be able to designate an inmate as a vexatious complainant. Decision-makers, such as penitentiary wardens, can refuse to hear the complaint of such an inmate if they consider the complaint to be vexatious or frivolous. With Bill C-10, the inmate population will increase significantly, which will result in more complaints.

It is unacceptable to grant discretionary power to designate an inmate as a vexatious complainant without placing limits on this power by establishing clear criteria that will make the decision transparent and fair to all inmates. It is important to establish clear criteria because the concept of a vexatious complaint is problematic given that it is based on completely subjective factors.

How can we ensure that every decision by the commissioner to designate an inmate as a vexatious complainant will be just and fair to all inmates if there are no clear criteria for making a decision that is informed and, above all, fair to all inmates?

In light of the fact that the simplest things in life are very important in a correctional institution, this difference of opinion makes the designation of a vexatious complaint a complicated matter. For that reason, a decision about vexatious complaints is subjective and biased and requires clear criteria to guide the commissioner's decision-making.

When the inmate is designated as a vexatious complainant, he will have to prove the merits of every new complaint with additional material. The material required will be at the discretion of the commissioner. Once again, there is no formal process to select the material; it is left to the discretion of the commissioner. This does not legitimize the process or make it any more credible in the eyes of inmates. This request for additional material could serve to deter inmates from filing complaints because of the red tape involved.

Furthermore, by compelling inmates to prove the merits of their complaint, the burden of proof is being reversed, which goes against our justice system. This bill creates a presumption of bad faith for all complaints filed by certain complainants, despite the fact that some of the complaints could be completely justified.

The problem of vexatious complainants cannot be generalized, as the Conservatives would have us believe. Many inmates who file vexatious complaints have mental health problems or have little education. The number of vexatious complainants who want to attack the administration or the complaints process is pretty small. What is interesting is that the complaints process can be used to identify these kinds of people, but by denying them access to the complaints and grievance process, we will be unable to identify them and therefore unable to help them. Many vexatious complaints are not entirely vexatious. In many cases, one part of the complaint is completely legitimate and, as a result, we cannot completely write off the complaint.

The designation of vexatious complainant will in no way reduce the volume of complaints to be addressed in institutions. When the administration receives a vexatious complainant, it will not be able to simply ignore it. The complaint will still need to be processed, coded and classified. Accordingly, the time devoted to analyzing the complaint will cancel out any time that is supposedly saved by creating a vexatious complainant designation.

Although it is possible for inmates to have a judicial review, the reality is a different story. There is an internal process to go through before the inmate has access to a judicial review. However, the internal process can take months or even years, which essentially blocks their access to a judicial review.

I should note that the complaint process was created after a number of prison revolts in the mid-1970s.

In an attempt to reduce violence resulting from prisoner discontent, a parliamentary subcommittee created a complaint and grievance process. This resulted in a fairer system for inmates, which meant that they could be heard. The objective of the complaint process is to use a constructive process to channel the frustrations of inmates. Limiting access to the complaint process will likely push inmates to use more violent ways of expressing their frustration and discontent. This is a matter of security for all inmates and prison workers.

The NDP is sensitive to issues dealing with rights and freedoms, and the Supreme Court has ruled on the fact that incarcerated individuals do not lose their rights. Furthermore, section 4(e) of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act states “that offenders retain the rights and privileges of all members of society, except those rights and privileges that are necessarily removed or restricted as a consequence of the sentence”.

We therefore believe that the complaint and grievance process is a tool that helps ensure transparency and accountability. It shows that some corrections policies are ineffective and that there are problems in Canadian prisons. As a result of the measures proposed by omnibus Bill C-10, the prison population will no doubt grow rapidly, which will lead to major problems in terms of prison management. The government should therefore focus its efforts on increasing the correctional investigator's capacity to investigate so that he can quickly identify the problems in prisons. Instead, the Conservative government is using this bill to try to limit his capacity. In my opinion, the Conservatives do not want us to see just how much worse their policies will make the situation in our prisons. I do not think that they want us to be able to measure the negative impact that these policies will have on prisons.

We also believe that the number of complaints is a problem. However, we do not believe that reducing access to the complaint and grievance process is the solution. This new bill will reduce the safety of inmates, guards and other prison staff. We also believe that the most effective way to guarantee open access to the complaint and grievance process, while reducing the volume of complaints, is to create mediator and complaints coordinator positions. The Conservatives ignored all the recommendations of the experts and internal and external review committees. Many of them mentioned the importance of establishing these types of positions, which would allow prisons to maintain an open-access complaint and grievance process while reducing the volume of formal complaints through informal resolution. Our approach is supported by many stakeholders in the corrections field, including the John Howard Society and many correctional law and criminology experts.

To summarize, the bill will give disproportionate and unbridled discretion to the commissioner making it possible to have the inmate designated as a vexatious complainant. Set criteria for decision-making must be established so that decisions are not made in a subjective and biased manner. I find it quite unreasonable to make the administrative process more cumbersome and to discourage inmates from complaining.

Is the government trying to muzzle inmates who would like to shed light on prison problems?

The changes that the Conservatives would like to make to the complaint process are contrary to the principles of our judicial system because they would reverse the burden of proof. The internal process mechanism would limit access to judicial review for inmates. That is completely unacceptable. Access to judicial review is a basic principle of our judicial system.

The complaints and grievances process was instituted to channel inmates' frustrations and discontent and to deter them from using violence to express their dissatisfaction. The process was also established as a tool for ensuring transparency and accountability when identifying problems in our prisons. This is a vital tool that allows correctional investigators to carry out their work in an appropriate manner.

I will repeat, the government does not want us to discover that its prison policies are ineffective and exacerbate existing problems. The government does not want to be accountable for these problems.

Finally, I would like to point out that the government is trying to depict prisoners as a group of complainers whose complaints are not justified. As I explained previously, the picture of inmates painted by the Conservatives bears little resemblance to the reality.

For these reasons the NDP cannot support this bill. We are opposed to the bill not only because it limits the government's accountability with respect to prisons, but also because it will reduce the safety of guards, workers and inmates in the correctional system.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

moved that Bill C-293, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (vexatious complainants), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, Canadians gave our government a strong mandate to deliver safer streets and communities with our tough on crime agenda. That includes holding offenders accountable and building a correctional system that actually corrects criminal behaviour. That is why I am particularly pleased to rise today to talk about this important piece of legislation that will help complete part of that task, a task which Canadians have sent us here to do.

My private members bill, Bill C-293, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (vexatious complainants),, would correct a costly problem that currently exists in Canada's correctional system.

Correctional Service of Canada receives approximately 29,000 grievances a year from various offenders. Out of a total of approximately 23,000 offenders in CSC custody, a small group of approximately 20 offenders file more than 100 grievances per year. This accounts for a whopping 15% of all complaints filed. In fact, there are even a few cases where offenders have filed in excess of 500 grievances.

The increased volume of frivolous complaints significantly delays the process for other inmates to have actual legitimate concerns addressed. High complaint volume also ties up resources and has become taxing on our hard-working, front line correctional officers.

Bill C-293 would allow the Commissioner of Correctional Service of Canada to label an offender as a vexatious complainant when the offender submits multiple complaints or grievances that are of a vexatious or frivolous nature or not made in good faith. The bill would enable CSC to minimize the impact of those who file such grievances and it would ensure that the grievance process maintains the integrity to accomplish its intended goals.

I will explain for my colleagues the fair grievance process we currently have here in Canada. Currently there are four levels through which a complaint may progress. Complaints may be resolved at any stage. However, it is the inmates who get to determine if they are satisfied with the outcome of the decisions made by a warden or regional deputy commissioner.

The first level in the grievance process is called the complaint level. A prisoner fills out paperwork at the institution, which is then reviewed by the department or section manager and, if unresolved, makes its way to the warden. For high priority cases, the file will be reviewed within 15 working days or in 25 days for routine priority files.

CSC distinguishes high priority complaints and grievances as those that have a direct effect on life, liberty or security of the person, or that relate to the griever's access to the complaints or grievance process. Once reviewed, a decision will be made by the warden who will either approve, approve in part, or deny the inmate's claim. Should the prisoner be unhappy with the decision, the prisoner has the right to appeal.

Grievances at the complaint level can be an extensive process. Documents are filled out by the offenders and placed in mail boxes. Submissions are collected by a grievance coordinator who assesses and assigns it to a department. The complaint will then be logged into the computer system.

Next, the individual responsible for the area of the complaint will seek out more information and may interview staff or the offenders as required. The complainant will then receive a formal response from the institution. The status of a file will be noted in the computer system, depending if the offender believes that the complaint has been resolved.

It is important to note that offenders can request an interview at any time during this process. This can quickly increase the processing times of complaints due to staff and scheduling constraints.

Complaint processing initially occurs at the lowest level possible, which means that this whole process can cascade three times from the individual involved, the department or section manager and then to the warden.

While every effort is made to resolve an offender's grievance, it is apparent that the complaint level of the grievance process requires a great deal of resources to properly administer. Many institutions will also provide offenders the opportunity to be hired as inmate grievance clerks. These offenders are interviews and, if hired, will be provided the appropriate training and education.

Inmate grievance clerks play a role in reducing the number of complaints as they are attempting to resolve the situation without resorting to the formal grievance process.

CSC deals with hundreds of complaints per day which are dealt with by this very informal manner. This is a useful tool for standard grievances. However, dealing with these situations informally is not always enough for some offenders who make it a hobby of filing complaints.

The second level of the grievance process occurs at the regional level. CSC has five regions and the files from the first complaint level are sent to the appropriate regional office. The regional deputy commissioner will review the files and in the same timeframe as the initial complaint level. Once again, if unhappy, the prisoner is granted the opportunity to appeal.

At the next stage, level three, the senior regional deputy commissioner will review the prisoner's grievance. This person must now assess the original grievance and additionally consider the responses provided by the institution warden and the regional deputy commissioner. Due to the increased volume of documents, the review times at this stage are 60 working days for high priority and 80 days for routine priority files. Again, if unsatisfied with the decision of the senior regional deputy commissioner, the inmate may appeal, which moves the claim to the fourth and final stage.

It is important to note that, up until this point, grievances can be in the system up to 150 working days. If appealed, the level four grievance means the prisoner's claim will be sent to the commissioner of CSC. At this stage, grievances will again be approved, approved in part or wholly declined. This is a much shorter review timeframe since the commissioner's office will receive summaries from all other levels to assist in making the final decision. Furthermore, the timeframe is much shorter because the commissioner's office has a greater number of staff and expertise as its disposal.

It is important to also note that, throughout the entire grievance process, prisoners may also approach federal courts, the office of the correctional investigator and tribunals as methods for addressing their complaints. These other avenues for addressing grievances require that the offender has exhausted the complaint process currently available in their own facility.

This process is generous, extensive and provides three opportunities for an inmate to accept solutions to his or her complaints. The current system does not prevent all inmates from filing frivolous grievances and, as such, prevents the necessary jurisprudence to allow CSC personnel to do their jobs appropriately and efficiently.

The current legislation is not as efficient and fiscally responsible as law-abiding Canadians deserve and expect it to be.

How does the current process fail us? I will explain this in six brief points. First, the current system does not require that grievances be filed in good faith. Section 90 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act states:

There shall be a procedure for fairly and expeditiously resolving offenders’ grievances on matters within the jurisdiction of the Commissioner....

A system required to process all claims regardless of merit diminishes the fair and quick resolution of legitimate complaints.

I am certain that by amending section 91, the labelling of vexatious complainants, it would improve offender access to section 90, fair and timely resolution, of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which is central to the purpose of this bill.

Second, the current system is a financial burden on the taxpayer. An incredible amount of resources and tax dollars are wasted when inmates are able to control a system that moves through four reviews and up to 150 days of processing time.

Third, the system allows prisoners to act like they are the victims. Proceeding through the correctional system with a sense of victimization is a problem. Our government was given a mandate to support Canadian families and law-abiding citizens, and this means supporting those who are the real victims of crime.

Fourth, allowing prisoners to file numerous frivolous complaints detracts from their ability to focus on their rehabilitation. Inmates should be focused on their correctional plan, the end result of which will mean their more effective reintegration into society. Making a hobby of filing meritless grievances makes a mockery of our correctional system and the entire grievance process.

Fifth, the present system creates a negative impact on the morale of staff involved in managing the grievance process. The knowledge that inmates are continuously filing grievances to cause trouble is not helpful to the morale of staff. On my recent visit to a prison, front line prison staff expressed the challenges of spending large amounts of time processing meritless complaints, especially when offenders choose not to seek resolution through informal channels.

Finally, the current system is too generous when it comes to the initiation of grievances. Inmates are attempting to manipulate a fair correctional system. Prisoners are in jail for one reason and that is to pay their debts to society. This certainly does not include bogging down the system with undue administrative hardships. It is evident that vexatious complainants are attention-seeking inmates who wilfully abuse the fair complaint process and prevent it from functioning properly.

Do members know that offenders are currently permitted by law to file a second complaint while a first is already in process? Often this second complaint will be an exact duplicate of the first. Offenders may do this because they are displeased with an initial response or they may not believe that their matter is being addressed in a timely fashion.

One particular example of this was an inmate who had an issue regarding a radio that he owned which, after his transfer to a new institution, no longer worked. He filed a complaint and while this grievance was in process he began to work through claims against the crown process as well. He then filed another complaint on the same issue while his first grievance was still being evaluated in conjunction with the institution that he had been transferred from.

When corrections staff attempt to resolve inmate issues in a timely manner, offenders should not be breathing down their necks for an answer or bogging down the system. Solutions take time and this procedure should be respected.

CSC staff noted that the offender saw the grievance process as a game and was determined to take advantage of it. It is important to note that staff feel the complaint process is an extremely important and useful tool but only when it is used for legitimate complaints.

As I said, our government believes in delivering a correctional service that actually corrects. There are key programs with CSC that have a real impact in the effective rehabilitation of inmates, for example, CORCAN. CORCAN is a key rehabilitation program of Correctional Service of Canada. CORCAN's mission is to aid in the safe reintegration of prisoners into society while providing employment and employability skills training to offenders incarcerated in federal penitentiaries and sometimes even after they are released back into the community.

Inmates who co-operate within the system also have access to an adult basic education program. This program offers inmates the opportunity to pursue a grade 12 education and is available year round in Canadian correctional institutions. This program is offered to offenders who have education in their correctional plan or who require upgrading in skills as a requirement for either continuing education or reintegration programs.

Correctional plans are professionally developed and implemented documents that outline an inmate's needs and what he or she needs to do to become responsible and accountable individuals in society. Under Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act, these correctional plans would play an even more fundamental role in the way inmate rehabilitation is structured. As they pay their debts, these are the efforts inmates ought to be taking for reintegration into society. It is important to realize also that these programs come at a substantial cost to taxpayers and should not be taken lightly.

What are the exact changes proposed in my Bill C-293? In simple terms, the bill would allow the commissioner of Correctional Service of Canada, or his assigned representative, to designate an offender as a vexatious complainant. Once this has occurred, the offender would be held to a higher standard of proof for future claims.

Additionally, someone designed as a vexatious complainant could have his or her complaint shut down in the initial stage if the institution decided that the claim was vexatious and not made in good faith. Bill C-293 would considerably improve how grievances are processed in our correctional system.

Who exactly would benefit from the bill? Vexatious complainants themselves would benefit from the bill. They would be held accountable by focusing more attention on paying their debts to society. Their time will be better spent completing their correctional plan. This bill would work within the existing process to ensure prisoners are learning responsibility for their actions. Continuous complaining is counterproductive to those goals.

Taxpayers would benefit from a system that no longer forces correctional staff to process large volumes of meritless complaints, resulting in better use of tax dollars.

Correctional staff would also benefit. They would be freed from processing claims made in bad faith.

Our existing system would benefit. The existing grievance process would function more effectively and in the manner that it is supposed to. It would be able to resolve grievances in the way that it was intended to and actually focus on legitimate complaints.

By cracking down on vexatious complainants, Bill C-293 would help to make offenders more accountable, ensure greater respect for taxpayers and take the unnecessary burden off hard-working front line correctional officers.

I hope that all hon. members will support this legislation.

Citizen's Arrest and Self-defence Act

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues who have spoken so eloquently on the bill today.

We on this side of the House generally support the thrust of at least one-third of the bill dealing with the so-called Lucky Moose event a couple of years ago in Toronto. My colleague, the member for Trinity—Spadina, introduced legislation to deal with that unfortunate incident some time ago. It was collected up by the members opposite in Bill C-60, which, unfortunately, failed to pass and died on the order paper.

First, I want to thank my colleague for Kitchener—Conestoga because I believe he said that the government would be willing to listen and to make amendments to the bill. I hope he said that because so far we have not seen a whole lot of willingness on the part of members opposite to accept any kind of reasonable amendments to any of the bills that have been before us.

My other comment has to do with the apparent priorities of the members opposite and the government. It appears that we have an inordinate preponderance of bills dealing with guns, crime, punishment and defence of personal property, but we are not spending a whole lot of time dealing with other very serious issues in our country, such as jobs.

The number one complaint I hear from my friend from Prince Edward Island is that his constituents need jobs. The same is true in my riding. People seem to have given up in large measure looking for jobs because there just have not been any for so many years in my riding.

We also have a serious first nations issue that appears is being glossed over by the government. Apparently no action is being taken to help the citizens of Attawapiskat, except to blame them.

We have reported cuts to services for seniors and for persons seeking EI such that they cannot even get answers on the telephone to their issues. They come to my office, as I am sure they do in many other members' offices, saying that they cannot get through and can I help. Our role should not be to replace the civil servants of the country.

I am hoping that, once this bill is disposed of, we can start moving into some real priorities and move away from the crime, punishment and gun agenda that seems to be dominating what we have been talking about.

The bill contains two essential ingredients. One is to give better permission to a citizen's arrest. There already is permission for a citizen's arrest in the Criminal Code, but citizens have to apprehend people in the act. They cannot find them later and arrest them. That is essentially what the bill hopes to accomplish.

It seems to be fairly clear on the surface. We look forward to the day when the committee will have a chance to study the bill in some depth, have representations from witnesses and experts in the field and to make amendments to make it absolutely certain that what we do will not have any unintended consequences.

I have a personal experience with citizen's arrest. It was a dark and stormy night, if members will pardon the use of the term. One night a couple of years ago, it was pouring with rain when I pulled into my driveway and saw a brand new bicycle sitting at the end of my neighbour's driveway. It seemed quite out of place. I picked up my cellphone and called my neighbour. He did not answer right away, but I heard his car door slam. I thought he was putting the bicycle in his car.

When I went over to his car, I discovered that it was not my neighbour, but somebody else who was about to get on the bicycle. I stopped the gentleman and asked him what he was doing. He said that he flat tire, that he had been at a friend's house and that he was trying to find a way to fix it.

He was quite drunk too. By that time, my neighbour, who had seen that I had phoned but had hung up on him, came out to the street. I asked him if it was his bike. He said that it was not his bike and asked what the gentleman was doing there. I looked at my neighbour and told him that he was just fixing a flat. However, the gentleman with the bike had a little box in his hand. The little box was a very unique piece of equipment for resting the tip of a welding torch that came from Princess Auto.

My neighbour looked at it and said, “I bought one of those today. Where did you get that”? The gentleman said a friend of his had given it to him. My friend went back to his car and looked, and it was gone. He accused the man of stealing it, which he denied. We ended up discovering that not only had he stolen that, but he had a couple of other things from my friend's car. At that point he got on his bike and tried to ride away, and I stopped him. I said, “No you don't. You're not going anywhere”.

This was not an act that was very smart because who knows whether this guy had knives, guns, or whatever else, but it was an instinctive reaction. That is part of what we are trying to deal with here. The instinctive reaction was that he should not go.

I picked up my cellphone and dialed 911 while I was holding his bike. He was too drunk to ride it anyway. I got 911 on the phone. The response was, “Police, fire, ambulance”.

I said, “Police, there is a man breaking into a car and I have apprehended him”.

They said, “Are you sure”?

I said, “Yes, he's standing right here. Do you want to talk to him”?

They said, “No, but we'll send somebody right away”.

Well, within two minutes, there were six police cars in front of my driveway. Clearly, the message is that if we tell them we have apprehended somebody they will come quickly.

Then an ambulance arrived because the guy had a cut on his hand. Then the fire truck arrived. I asked the fireman driving the fire truck why they had come. He said the guy might set himself on fire and they would put it out.

My point is, I acted out of instinct, not out of having read the law that says what I can do in a circumstance like that. That is part of what we are trying to deal with here, to make a reasonable instinctive reaction lawful. If my neighbour had not been there with me, if I had just apprehended this man while he was stealing from my neighbour's car, I would have in fact been in violation of the law. That will not be the case any more under this change, I think. It is a little unclear.

In retrospect, I probably should not have done what I did because who knows what he might have had. As it turns out, when the police did arrive, it was still pouring rain. They made him take off his coat and when they emptied it they found all kinds of stuff that he had already stolen. The bicycle was something he had probably already stolen. He had been out of jail only two days. He really wanted to go back there because it was dry and warm, and this was his way of getting back into jail and to someplace safe in the riding. He was actually, in some way, trying to be a better person because they discovered that he had put some air freshener, that he had stolen from the local drugstore, in his underwear.

The point of the story is, as citizens we react instinctively, not because we have read the law. It is that which we have to keep in mind as we craft these things. We do not actually act, necessarily, in our best self-interest when we are reacting to what we see and know is a crime.

The other story that I mentioned a few moments ago happened a year ago in my riding. An ice cream truck was robbed at gunpoint in the middle of a sunny afternoon, with children and parents all around the ice cream truck, and two very obviously bad people with a gun. The only person, at that point, in any immediate serious danger would have been the ice cream truck driver/operator, who was facing the wrong end of, we assume, a loaded gun.

The current laws on self-defence have given people the ability to defend themselves under the current legislation. They have the right, maybe, if they feel an immediate threat, to pull their own gun, if they have one. I do not know of too many ice cream truck drivers who carry around guns, certainly not in Toronto. Maybe they do in some more rural areas of Canada, but not in Toronto.

The issue then is, at what point does this become dangerous to the rest of the people. The concern I have is that the bill would change the rules from someone who is feeling their own personal threat to a threat of force being used against them or another person. We would expand the notion of self-defence to include another person.

Maybe the jurisprudence actually covered that in the past. I cannot find that on a layperson's reading of the law. I am not a lawyer. I do not have the kind of background that some of our colleagues do. We hope that through committee they are going to be able to tell us that this legislation would actually just repeat what used to be there. However, when I read it, I immediately thought of that incident with the ice cream truck.

If this law had been in place, and if everybody had read it, which I am going to say most law-abiding citizens do not go around reading the law, but if they had read it or if it was common knowledge that we could defend the life of someone else, then the concern I have is that we end up with someone across the street who sees the ice cream truck being held at gunpoint, or who thinks it is being held at gunpoint, maybe they do not actually see clearly enough to know what is going on, and they reach into their cupboard to get their unregistered long gun. I am hearing cackling from the other side of the House.

That unregistered long gun then becomes a use of deadly force in a situation involving children, in a situation involving ordinary civilians. We have now created a situation that should not have been created. We have now escalated this into what is perhaps going to become a deadly shooting spree. We do not need that to happen. We do not need vigilantism. We do not need people to feel they have the right to use force in situations that endanger themselves and endanger others as a result of a bill that may have been written with some unintended consequences in it.

I hope that as a result of serious thought and serious study at committee, the bill will in fact have possible flaws like that one corrected, where we create problems where there are none, where there are unintended consequences, where the mere notion that the law permits someone to use force to defend someone they do not even know and someone that maybe does not need defending, and create a sense of vigilantism.

That is not what we want in this country. We are not a country of vigilantes. We are not a country of people who go around raising arms against other people in order to defend life, limb and property. That is not what we do in Canada. That is not how we behave.

I am not trying to justify, in any way, any criminal acts by people with guns at ice cream trucks. It was one of the most disturbing stories I had heard in a long time about the level to which the violence in my riding has gone to. It is not something that I appreciate. The police are well aware and the police, I believe, have now arrested the perpetrators. They are in jail and we can rest a little easier.

However, my concern is I do not want to have a situation where we pass a law that somehow gives people the thought that they can enter into a fray like this and start shooting. That is not what we want. That is not what we expect from our ordinary law-abiding citizens.

As it turns out, no one was harmed in that robbery, except the owner of the truck who lost some money. However, there were no guns fired. There was no violence and no damage to anyone. Yet, this law might give some the thought that they should enter into this with guns blazing. That is not the country we live in. That is not the country we want. That is not the country I think I want to belong to.

So, we have a situation where this bill ought to go before a committee and be studied in a reasoned and unpressured way. The last two bills that the government brought forward were rushed to the point where closure was invoked on several occasions and in the case of Bill C-10, there were 208 clauses dealt with in clause-by-clause analysis in two days. Two days is not an appropriate amount of time to give serious sober thought to a bill that has enormous consequences.

We understand that the committee was rushed to the point where witnesses were crammed together, were not given sufficient time to answer questions, and questions were not able to be put to these witnesses in a thoughtful and reasoned way because there was so much rush put on this. I hope, based on the statements made by my friend from Kitchener—Conestoga, that the government is actually going to sit down and listen, pay attention, and accept reasoned amendments to this bill put forward by the opposition.

As I understand it, on both Bill C-10 and Bill C-19, many amendments were put forward, but—

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I wish I could say yes, but, quite frankly, I have not. Actions speak louder than words. I am the associate justice critic for the Liberal Party, so from time to time I am pressed into duty. So far in this session of Parliament, in the limited time I have spent in the justice committee, what I seen does not inspire confidence. I am primarily involved in the veterans affairs committee and the conduct of the party that controls the committee is such that there is not room for consideration of amendments from the other side.

It strikes me that some of the amendments presented in Bill C-10 were rejected by members in committee, but are now adopted as their own. Let us hope that something like that will not be necessary and that it can be dealt with in committee. There seems to be a will on that side of the House. Let us hope that a new leaf will be turned.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to address Bill C-26, yet another crime bill from the Conservatives. I will begin by just commenting on this preoccupation with crime.

Since the election, we have seen bills introduced in this House on human smuggling. We had the omnibus crime bill, which wrapped together nine separate statutes. We have seen no fewer than eight private member's bills addressing issues of crime and law and order, whether it is increased sentences for someone involved in an unlawful act with their face covered, whether it is taking away rights of people who are on employment insurance, whether it is mandatory minimum sentences over and above those contained in Bill C-10, the private member's bill on hate speech, the imposition of sanctions on someone who proposes to prevent the flying of the Canadian flag.

Crime rates in this country are declining, the severity of crime in this country is declining but we have an ideological focus and preoccupation on crime.

We have some big and pressing problems in this country. We have problems with a patchwork of health care conditions and health care regimes across the country. We have serious poverty issues that are not improving. We have an outstanding report from a committee that has not been addressed in this Parliament. We have unemployment right across the country. Unemployment is a particularly bad situation in my riding. The single most common constituent inquiry that I get in my constituency office is asking for a job. We have the conditions of first nations, in fact that is what we addressed in our last opposition day, where we have Canadians living in third world conditions.

However, here we are with another bill on crime, not poverty, not jobs, not economic development, not health.

What I propose to do in my remarks is initially set forth some of the background, then review the provisions of the law that presently exist, go over the changes that are proposed, talk about some of the concerns that we have and then, as I do expect that this will go forward to committee, address some of the concerns that we have with respect to how legislation has been treated at committee so far in this Parliament.

By way of background, the legislation proposes to expand the legal authority for a private citizen to make an arrest within a reasonable period of time after he or she finds a person committing a criminal offence either on or in relation to his or her property. This expansion would not affect the role and responsibility of the police. The preservation and maintenance of the public peace remains the responsibility of the police.

The legislation would also bring much needed reforms, quite frankly, to simplify the complex Criminal Code provisions on self-defence and defence of property. It would also clarify where reasonable use of force is necessary.

When we get into talking about the specific offences, we will see that where there presently are multiple sections with respect to citizen's arrest and defence of property, they are being actually streamlined into one, which, on its face, certainly seems like a sensible thing to do.

Quite frankly, in principle, the bill is a good one. We do believe that more discussion is required. We have some concerns about whether the provisions in it with respect to self-defence are overly broad. We do hope that our frank and informed discussion, which is respectful of the views of all at committee, will address those concerns. We hope that there will be some openness that, quite frankly, we have not seen so far, to considering reasoned amendments. That was by way of background.

The bill addresses citizen's arrest and defence of property. The current law with respect to citizen's arrest is found in section 494 of the Criminal Code. In 494.(1) we find that:

Any one may arrest without warrant (a) a person whom he finds committing an indictable offence; or (b) a person who, on reasonable grounds, he believes (i) has committed a criminal offence, and (ii) is escaping from and freshly pursued by persons who have lawful authority to arrest that person.

In 494.(2) of the Criminal Code, the provision sought to be expanded by the bill, currently provides that:

Any one who is (a) the owner or a person in lawful possession of property, or (b) a person authorized by the owner or by a person in lawful possession of property, 2rrest without warrant a person whom he finds committing a criminal offence on or in relation to that property.

“Find committing” is defined under the Criminal Code as meaning situations where a person is basically caught in the act of committing the offence. This extends to a situation where the accused has been pursued immediately and continues, after he or she has been found committing the offence.

Also the law requires that when a citizen's arrest takes place, the individual must be delivered to a police officer without delay. That is the law as it presently stands.

The proposed amendments with respect to citizen's arrest would authorize a private citizen to make an arrest within a reasonable period of time after he or she finds someone committing a criminal offence that occurred on or in relation to property. It expands the time frame.

This power of arrest would only be authorized where there are reasonable grounds to believe that it is not feasible in the circumstances for the arrest to be made by a police officer.

The legislation would make it clear, by cross-reference to the Criminal Code, that the use of force is authorized in a citizen's arrest, but there are limits placed on how much force can be used.

In essence, the law permits a reasonable use of force, taking into account all the circumstances of the particular case. A person is not entitled to use excessive force in a citizen's arrest.

A citizen's arrest is a very serious and potentially dangerous undertaking. Unlike a police officer, a private citizen is neither tasked with the duty to preserve and maintain the public peace, nor properly trained to apprehend suspected criminals. In most cases, an arrest consists of either actually seizing or touching a person's body in an effort to detain the person, or a person submitting to an arrest.

A citizen's arrest made without careful consideration of the risks may have serious unintended consequences to those involved. When deciding to make a citizen's arrest, people should be aware of the current law.

The considerations for people who decide to embark on this course of action can essentially be summarized in three points: first, people must consider their safety and the safety of others; second, they must report information to the police, which is essentially the best course of action instead of taking action on their own; and third, they must ensure that they have correctly identified the suspect and the suspect's criminal conduct.

That is the current state of the law and the amendments that have been proposed with respect to citizen's arrest. In principle, the bill is a sound one in terms of expanding the time frame within which a citizen's arrest can be made.

There are some other concerns that I will address toward the end of my remarks. However, our concerns with respect to the bill and to what needs to be carefully scrutinized at committee, quite frankly, do not come under that clause of the bill.

The other issue that is dealt with in the bill is self-defence and defence of property. Of particular concern to us on this side of the House are the provisions with respect to self-defence.

The existing law with respect to self-defence and defence of property is found in multiple sections of the Criminal Code, which is in need of reform. The bill is on the right track in terms of streamlining and consolidating into one section the provisions with respect to self-defence and defence of property.

The current laws with respect to self-defence can be found in sections 34 to 37 of the Criminal Code. Distinct defences are provided for a person who uses force to protect himself or herself or another from attack. These depend on whether he or she provoked the attack and whether he or she intended to use deadly force.

The provisions with respect to defence of property are found in sections 38 to 42 of the code. There are multiple defences for the peaceable possessors of property, consideration of the type of property, whether it is personal or real property, the rights of the possessor and of other persons, and the proportionality between the threat to the property and the amount of force used. These are all things that must be taken into account when the defence of property is raised.

I have one final comment with respect to the use of deadly force. The use of deadly force is only permitted in very exceptional circumstances, and rightly so. For example, where it is necessary to protect a person from death or grievous bodily harm. The courts have clearly stated that deadly force is never considered reasonable in the defence of property alone.

The legislative reforms currently being proposed would not make any changes to the law with respect to deadly force, and quite frankly, none are necessary. It is absolutely clear enough and not in need of reform. The courts will therefore continue to make any necessary changes on a case-by-case basis, developing the common law where it is appropriate.

That is the current state of the law with respect to self-defence and defence of property.

As I indicated, the amendments proposed to streamline it deal with the fact that the current law has provisions in multiple sections. The Criminal Code provisions that are being proposed would clarify the laws on self-defence and defence of property so that Canadians, including police, prosecutors and the courts, can more easily understand and apply the law. Clarifying the law and streamlining statutory defences may assist prosecutors and police in exercising their discretion not to lay a charge or to proceed with a prosecution.

Amendments to the self-defence provisions would repeal the current complex self-defence provisions spread over those four sections of the code, sections 34 to 37, and create one new self-defence provision. That would permit a person who reasonably believes himself or herself or others to be at risk of the threat of force or of acts of force to commit a reasonable act to protect himself or herself or others.

The debate, and the discussion in courtrooms across this country, will be on the legal interpretation to be applied to the word reasonable. Plenty of jurisprudence exists now with respect to that within the criminal law. We are not exactly forging new ground by using the word reasonable in multiple places within the Criminal Code.

The amendments with respect to the defence of property provisions would repeal the confusing defence of property language that is now spread over five sections of the code, sections 38 through 42. One new defence of property provision would be created, eliminating the many distinctions regarding acts a person can take in defence of different types of property. There are different provisions for different types of property.

The new provision would permit a person in peaceable possession of a property to commit a reasonable act, including the use of force, for the purpose of protecting that property from being taken, damaged or trespassed upon. Again, the provisions with respect to defence of property do appear to make good sense. This is an appropriate way to add clarity to the provisions of the code.

The provisions of this bill that require the most careful examination at committee are those with respect to self-defence, I believe.

The concerns with respect to self-defence and the concerns with respect to defence of property, citizen's arrest, the concerns with respect to the bill generally, relate to vigilantism. The concerns relate to people taking the law into their own hands and taking unreasonable risks to prevent crime or defend themselves.

I have been involved in a medium-sized business, a business which has 16 retail stores across the country. We would constantly advise our store managers that if they found themselves in a situation where someone is coming in to rob the store, they should not be heroes. They should pass it over, be as observant as they possibly can and then let the police do their job.

This will be outside the actual parameters of the legislation, but I think it is absolutely critical for the government department responsible for this bill, when it comes into effect, to have a pretty substantial public education campaign. People need to know exactly what the impact of the bill is and what the changes are to us in everyday life. Industry associations should be involved.

The biggest concern about this bill in my mind is not so much the contents of the bill but how it is going to be perceived in the public. If it is perceived in the public that now their rights to defence of property, to self-defence and to citizen's arrest are greatly expanded, the unintended consequences could be very severe. It could, quite frankly, be scary.

To summarize, our party will be supporting the bill in principle. We have some concerns about the scope of the self-defence provisions. We agree with the provisions with respect to property defence. It is appropriate for this bill to go to committee.

The discussions and the conduct of the justice committee with respect to Bill C-10 do not inspire confidence. The imposition of time allocation with respect to such an important bill, the automatic defeat of any opposition amendment without substantive discussion or consideration is something that we sincerely hope will not be repeated with respect to this.

If there is a discussion, if there is open consideration of constructive amendments, then we do have a chance to do something good here. I hope we do.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank all my colleagues in the House from all political corners for allowing me to speak to Bill C-26, which deals with changes and amendments to the Criminal Code regarding citizen's arrest and the defences of property and persons.

We have a bill that would streamline in many fashions many of the laws concerning the defence of property which are good and necessary. Some things need to be studied in committee to see if some of the provisions may be a little overbearing. Nonetheless, we do have the responsibility, and I think we are on the right track in dealing with this issue so far as we have evidenced in the media in the past year.

Several incidents took place, one in particular in Toronto. Other members in the House have talked about it so I will leave it at that for now.

The rationale of all this needs to be looked at in a broader context when it comes to self-defence. Self-defence, in many cases, has been used but with a very narrow definition. Other jurisdictions around the world have certainly made better use of it. I would look at it in the context of making it far easier for our court systems, our prosecutors, certainly, and our judges and juries.

In some cases the complex and out of date rules we are talking about were highlighted by recent high profile cases. Primarily the concern is that the old Criminal Code provision concerning self-defence provided that “Every one who is unlawfully assaulted without having provoked the assault is justified in repelling force by force”. Thereby, it is confining self-defence to assault and noting that it could not have been the result of provocation.

The new legislation would remove the assault requirement entirely in speaking of force or threat of force, and also removes provocation. As such the bill may run into some aspects that may be going a little overboard, but nonetheless, it is certainly something we should analyze and discuss at committee. The principal thrust of the bill is one that is just.

People may invoke self-defence, both in common law and under statute itself. It is not as though, without the legislation, there is no right to self-defence in Canada. The legislation would reform and streamline the Criminal Code, which I have mentioned.

In regard to self-defence and defence of property, which is where the emphasis lies on that second part, the concern that should be addressed by committee is whether the Criminal Code would be changed too significantly.

The self-defence provision in section 34 now reads, “Every one who is unlawfully assaulted without having provoked the assault is justified in repelling force by force”. That confines defence to assault, whereas this legislation makes no reference to assault or provocation, for that matter, and it speaks to the force or the threat of force.

Beyond the general risk that the bill may encourage vigilantism, there are concerns just how far the bill broadens itself with self-defence, which can be invoked and by whom it can be invoked.

I know we discussed this in the former bill, which was Bill C-60 in the last Parliament, and it was brought forth as a result of these high profile cases, one of which took place in Toronto.

The current law in Canada discussing self-defence is in section 34 of the Criminal Code, which defines the extent to which force is justified in repelling an unprovoked assault. Subsection 34(1) is a general defence that can be employed only by non-aggressors who never intend to cause grievous bodily harm or death through their actions.

This section requires that the following four elements be established by a person accused of using force against another person: first, the accused was unlawfully assaulted; second, the accused did not provoke the assault; third, the force used by the accused was not intended to cause death or grievous bodily harm; and fourth, the force used by the accused was no more than was necessary to defend himself or herself.

Back to section 34(1) of the Criminal Code. It states:

--permits the accused to stand his or her ground, even when there is a possibility of escaping the situation. The question for the court is whether the force used was necessary to enable the accused to defend him or herself, not whether such a defence was wise in the circumstances.

Let us move on to subsection 34(2), which is interesting. It applies where the accused causes bodily harm or death, whether intentionally or unintentionally, in responding to an assault. Therefore, the accused is justified in using such force where he or she was under a reasonable apprehension of death or grievous bodily harm from the initial or continuing violence of the assault and believed, on reasonable grounds, that he or she must use such force to preserve himself or herself.

Section 35 of the Criminal Code outlines the application of self-defence in those instances where the person seeking to rely on self-defence initiated or provoked the assault. It applies where the accused first assaulted the other person, but without intent to cause death or serious bodily harm. The law permits a limited defence where the response of the person attacked escalates matters and the accused must respond to defend himself or herself.

Therefore, we see the myriad of circumstances that are being painted by all of this and how, by streamlining the legislation, this would certainly make a lot of sense.

The proposed amendments that we are discussing here to the Criminal Code, section 494.1(2) on citizen's arrest, would authorize a private citizen to make an arrest within a reasonable period of time after he or she finds someone committing a criminal offence that occurred on or in relation to property. This power of arrest would only be authorized when there are reasonable grounds to believe that it is not feasible in the circumstances for the arrest to be made by a police officer. Therefore, we must not take it upon ourselves to replace an existing security service that is in charge of maintaining peace and the law.

The reasonable use of force is also stressed in this particular application because it is very important that we outline this in order to make it easier for the courts to interpret, certainly for prosecutors, judges and juries.

It makes it clear in this legislation, by cross-reference to the Criminal Code, that the use of force is authorized in what we know is a citizen's arrest, but there are limits placed on how much force can be used.

In essence, the laws permit the reasonable use of force, taking into account all the circumstances of this particular case. A person is not entitled to use excessive force in a citizen's arrest. Therefore, we see, in this clear parameter that is set out, how this is to be enforced, how reasonable people, if we want to use that test, which we should, are to enact or protect themselves and their property.

Under section 494.(1)(ii), with respect to the current law itself, anyone may arrest a person whom they find committing an indictable offence of a person who, on reasonable grounds, they believe has committed a criminal offence and is escaping from, and freshly pursued by, persons who have lawful authority to arrest that particular person.

If we are caught in that situation where we are defending ourselves or protecting our property, and we are in a situation where we do not know if we have crossed the line in a particular case because we certainly do not want to, hopefully with legislation like this and the lengthy debate that hopefully will follow, we will be able to flesh out an idea as to just how in certain circumstances like this a reasonable person can behave.

A citizen's arrest may, without careful consideration of the risk factors, have serious unintended consequences for those involved. When deciding whether to make a citizen's arrest, a person should be aware of the current law. In the current law there is safety or the safety of others, reporting the information to the police, which is usually the best course of action of course as we all know, instead of individuals just taking action on their own. Therefore, there is also a great deal of responsibility on individuals to notify the authorities in addition to defending themselves or their property.

One must also ensure that they have correctly identified the suspects and their criminal conduct. Therefore, we must be clear of mind on the offence.

Of course, being rational human beings, sometimes rationality takes over and, in particular cases, acts of desperation take place. Nonetheless, in these circumstances, I believe what we need to provide the courts with the ability to interpret and bring justice to the fore so that this particular case can be looked at in the right way. Again, I remind all members in the House that the function there is to provide that type of clarity for judges, prosecutors, and of course juries.

Moving on to the proposed amendments, there are new Criminal Code provisions being proposed to clarify the laws on self-defence and defence of property, so that again the police, prosecutors and the courts can more easily understand and apply the law. Clarifying the law and streamlining statutory defences may assist prosecutors, and certainly the police, in their discretion not to lay a charge or proceed with prosecution if it is found to be excessive.

Amendments to the self-defence provisions would repeal the current complex self-defence provisions I spoke of earlier. In particular, it ranges over four sections. The sections I speak of are sections 34 to 37. This is part of what this bill would do, which is to provide that clarification, certainly in this particular case. As we saw the high profile cases unfold, we realized that discrepancies took place and it was hard to interpret. Therefore, we have done this in a responsible way. When I say “responsible”, it leaves this House, it goes to committee for further study, and that I look forward to seeing.

Amendments to the defence of property provisions would repeal the confusing defence of property language that is now spread over five sections, those being sections 38 to 42. One new defence of property provision would be created, eliminating the many distinctions regarding acts a person can take in defence of different types of property. The new provision would permit a person in “peaceable possession” of a property to commit a reasonable act. Again, that reasonable person test that I spoke of. Therein lies the key to this. The person has been defined as owning a piece of property, a possession, and therefore the spirit of this would assume that the person would be allowed to act accordingly to protect that peaceable property, and for the purpose of protecting that property from being damaged or trespassed upon.

Under sections 34 to 37 of the Criminal Code, distinct defences are provided for people who use force to protect themselves or another from attack, depending on whether they have provoked the attack and whether they intended to use deadly force. Again, I understand that the impacts of this could be severe in many cases. They are in defence of an irrational act and therefore, when in that position, defending their own property or person, under irrational behaviour. It is not an easy circumstance to be in. However, certainly for the sake of the courts dealing with and prosecuting cases like this and coming to a logical conclusion, we must provide that clarity for prosecutors, judges and juries in many of these particular cases.

The use of deadly force is also something we have talked about, both with Bill C-26 and Bill C-60. We realize that the use of deadly force is talked about quite a bit and there is not a great understanding of it, but it is permitted in very exceptional circumstances; for example, where it is necessary to protect a person from death or bodily harm.

The courts have clearly stated that deadly force is never considered reasonable in defence of property alone. The legislative reforms currently being proposed would not make any change to the law relating to deadly force, so the courts would therefore continue to make any necessary changes on a case by case basis, developing the common law if and where applicable. As I mentioned before, this is the common law aspect and also the statutory law.

There are some issues that have been raised by stakeholders. Many people remember the high profile media reports that came from many cases where self-defence was used, not just for the right of individuals but also for property, as I mentioned in the high profile case that took place in Toronto. One of the issues that came up was that of encouraging vigilantism. People have been sounding the alarm bells over that and it is something that needs to be discussed and filtered when it comes to committee.

In principle, I think we are on the right track here, but certainly this is something that has to be of great concern. Obviously there are legal minds far greater than mine, as I have no formal training in law, so I look forward to hearing some of the witness testimony that will come at committee regarding the particular ways in which this could be abused. Nonetheless, I am sure that potential witnesses would agree that the intent here is to make this a clear, decisive law that allows our courts to function, and to prosecute any particular cases where the defence of one's self or property pertains.

A Canadian press article notes that “Several provinces have complained the new legislation will cost them millions as jail and prison populations inevitably rise”. That is a debate we have had here before. It is an extension of Bill C-10. I have mentioned this before in my deliberations about Bill C-10 and I will not go into it further.

A lot of the provinces have complained that they are now in a position where the incarceration of individuals and the increased rate of incarceration will have an effect on how they handle their budgets and how they spend money on health care and education. That applies to people who are sentenced to less than two years. We have heard from several provinces over the past little while that this could be particularly onerous for them in light of some of the budget deficits that they want to downgrade.

Section 35 of the Criminal Code outlines the application of self-defence in those instances where persons seeking to rely on self-defence initiated or provoked the assault. That is an important part of this. This is the part of the Criminal Code that we need to consider.

Other criteria apply is that the defender did not at any time before the need to protect himself or herself from death or bodily harm endeavour to cause the death or bodily harm. There is an obligation upon the defender to decline further conflict and leave or retreat as far as is feasible before the need to defend from death or bodily harm arises. This could be contentious in many forms.

As I reiterated earlier, I believe there is a case here in principle and scope for us to push this legislation forward, send it to committee and take notice of potential witness testimony, so we are able to change legislation if need be by amendments and make the necessary changes to the Criminal Code regarding the defence of oneself and the defence of property. We can do this for the efficiency of our courts.

[Sylvain Chicoine, NDP, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government introduced Bill C-26, which covers and provides clarification on citizen's arrest. This bill is very similar, identical even, to Bill C-60, which was introduced by the hon. member for Trinity—Spadina during the last Parliament.

The changes made by Bill C-26 will allow citizen's arrests without a warrant within a reasonable period of time. Right now, under section 494(2) of the Criminal Code, a citizen's arrest must be made while the crime is being committed. Bill C-26 also includes changes to the Criminal Code related to self-defence and the defence of property.

Sections 34 to 42 of the Criminal Code pertain to self-defence and the defence of property. Sections 34 to 37 of the Criminal Code are repealed and replaced with a single self-defence provision that applies to any offence. The current distinctions between provoked and unprovoked attacks, as well as any intention to use deadly force, are eliminated.

Bill C-60 also sets out a non-exhaustive list of factors that the court may consider in determining whether the act committed is reasonable under the circumstances. The bill will repeal sections 38 to 42 of the Criminal Code, which pertain to defence of property, and replace them with a single defence of property provision. As a result, the bill will eliminate the current distinction between the defence of personal and real property.

The bill amends the citizen’s arrest section of the Criminal Code, but only section 494(2). Thus, the powers of citizens to make arrests set out in section 494(1) remain as they are. These powers mean that anyone may arrest without warrant a person whom he or she finds to be committing an indictable offence or believes, on reasonable grounds, has committed a criminal offence and is escaping from and freshly pursued by those with lawful authority to arrest that person.

The bill amends section 494(2), which applies to the owner or person in lawful possession of property or a person authorized by the owner or lawful possessor. At present, such a person may arrest without warrant a person whom he or she finds committing a criminal offence on or in relation to that property. But the amendment goes on to allow such a person to make an arrest within a reasonable time after the offence is committed. Such an arrest can be made if the person making the arrest believes on reasonable grounds that it is not feasible in the circumstances for a peace officer to make the arrest.

In addition, a new section 494(4) is added to the Criminal Code, clarifying that a person who makes an arrest under section 494 is authorized by law to do so for the purposes of section 25 of the Criminal Code. The purpose of this amendment is to make it clear that use of force is authorized in a citizen’s arrest, but that there are limits on how much force can be used.

The government says that it is bringing forward this bill in order to make necessary changes to the Criminal Code that will clarify the provisions pertaining to self-defence and defence of property. The changes will also clarify the reasonable use of force.

We are very pleased that the Conservative government has decided to clarify the changes to citizen's arrest, especially since we had introduced a similar bill to that end.

Just like the Conservative government, we do not want honest Canadians who are victims of crime to be victimized again by our judicial system.

We support the amendments to the legal provisions on citizen's arrest, particularly because various courts have indicated that there are problems with the interpretation of the law. For example, they have said that the Criminal Code provisions concerning self-defence are too complicated and confusing. The provisions have been subject to much criticism. In R. v. McIntosh, Chief Justice Lamer wrote that sections 34 and 35 “are highly technical, excessively detailed provisions deserving of much criticism. These provisions overlap, and are internally inconsistent in certain respects.”

The judgment of the majority in R. v. McIntosh has been called “highly unfortunate” for further muddying the waters around self-defence provisions.

However, we believe that a more in-depth study will be required, given the complexity of this issue, as the courts have indicated. We must ensure that the bill clarifies the sections of the Criminal Code to help the justice system do its job. We will also have to look at the impact and consequences of this bill to ensure that these clarifications are acceptable to the Canadian public. We want to avoid having the clarifications to the Criminal Code encourage self-proclaimed vigilantes. In addition, we do not want people to put their lives in danger. We know that that is not the objective of this bill. However, a number of concerns about this have been raised by some of our constituents. That is why it will be important to allow parliamentarians to properly discuss this bill in committee.

We are obviously asking the Conservative government not to limit debate in committee, as it did with Bill C-10, for example. Bill C-26 will have serious repercussions on Canadians who must defend themselves or their property. That is why it is so important to properly debate this bill in committee.

I would like to remind the House of the facts that gave rise to the recent legislation on citizen's arrest. On May 23, 2009, David Chen, the owner of a grocery store in Toronto, arrested Anthony Bennett, who had stolen something from his store. After being caught in the act on security cameras, Mr. Bennett went back to the store about an hour later. At that time, the owner and two employees managed to tie Mr. Bennett up and held him in a delivery truck. When the police arrived, they charged Mr. Chen with forcible confinement, kidnapping and carrying an edged weapon—a box cutter, a tool that many merchants have in their possession. The crown attorneys later dropped the charges of kidnapping and carrying an edged weapon, but they maintained the charges of forcible confinement and assault.

According to the Criminal Code as it is currently written, a property owner can make a citizen's arrest only if the alleged wrongdoer is caught in the act. Mr. Chen and his two co-accused were found not guilty of the charges of forcible confinement and assault on October 29, 2010. In August 2009, Anthony Bennett pleaded guilty to theft and was sentenced to 30 days in jail.

At present, the citizen’s arrest authority is very limited and is authorized only when an individual is caught in act of committing an offence on or in relation to one's property. Accordingly, this bill authorizes an owner, a person in lawful possession of property—or a person authorized by them—to arrest a person within a reasonable amount of time after having found that person committing a criminal offence on or in relation to their property.

The bill authorizes a citizen’s arrest only when it is not feasible in the circumstances for a police officer to respond, which is often the case in the event of shoplifting, for example. The time it takes for the police to respond is often too long and they arrive much too late. Furthermore, this bill stipulates that the use of force is authorized in a citizen’s arrest. However, a person is not entitled to use excessive force.

In addition, the person making the arrest must take the risk factors into account and ensure that their safety or the safety of others is not threatened. They must also ensure that they have correctly identified the suspect and their criminal conduct. Furthermore, reporting the incident to the police remains the best solution.

I would like to point out that thousands of Canadians work as security guards in buildings or businesses. Many of those guards have told me about the problems they have properly protecting the property of the merchants. They have to catch the criminal in the act and that is not easy. Often, they discover the crime after the fact, after reviewing the security camera footage. However, that is often done after the fact and the security guards cannot take any action against the wrongdoer. The worst part is that some wrongdoers return a number of times to commit theft and the guards hired by the businesses cannot do anything about it even if they saw the individual in question commit a crime before.

They have to again catch the wrongdoer in the act and they cannot arrest him for the previous offence. What is more, the complexity of a citizen's arrest makes security jobs risky. Security guards have to be 100% certain of what they are doing because if they are not, there could be legal consequences for their company and their own job could be on the line. It is very important that the provisions on citizen's arrest be clear so that these security guards are in the best position possible to protect businesses and the property of the merchants.

The new provisions on self-defence will also help these guards enforce the law, because the current provisions are too restrictive. Many security guards have told me that when they intercept an individual who committed a criminal offence, the individual generally becomes aggressive and does not want to be arrested by the security guard on duty. For a number of reasons, that individual will simply be asked to leave the premises, because the guards do not want to risk their safety or the safety of others. They would not want to risk being tried for assault. As a result, the individual who commits the crime gets away with it.

In summary, we support this bill at second reading so that it can be sent to committee and some of its provisions, which are quite complex, can be examined in greater detail. That is why the opinions of experts and legislative drafters will be key in the examination of some provisions of this bill. I would like to emphasize the importance of not limiting the debates, as the Conservative government has a tendency to do. I am asking the Conservative government to let parliamentarians do their job properly.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we do recognize that there have been some significant changes. That is why I am somewhat optimistic with the member's comments in terms of the bill going to committee. We might be able to make it better. We will have to wait and see.

The member said that the government is open to input in general. He will have to excuse me for having a tough time with that comment, especially given such things as the time allocation motion on Bill C-10, which is a crime bill. That bill encompasses eight or nine significant pieces of legislation which could have been separate bills. Very little time was afforded to members for debate.

For members who were first elected a few months back, the chances of having the opportunity to speak to the bill was not there. There was no opportunity for all members to participate fully in the debate. Nor was there an opportunity for governments, such as the governments of Quebec and Ontario, to provide input. British Columbia also has huge concerns in regard to Bill C-10. They did not think the government was doing the job that was needed in answering basic questions such as what the costs will be.

Business of the House

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

Mr. Speaker, I would indeed like to ask the Thursday question. The government is continuing this week with its antidemocratic use of closure for the 11th time since the beginning of this session, this time, for Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill.

The end result of forcing bills like that through the House is that we end up with the ridiculous spectacle we had earlier this week of one minister of the Crown standing up and making amendments to the bill of another minister of the Crown and then having those amendments ruled out of order by you, Mr. Speaker. That is the end result of trying to force bills through the House this quickly.

We also end up with the result, if this bill does go through, of a severely flawed crime bill that will do this country absolutely no good.

Why does the House leader not agree with the official opposition, take the bill off the order paper and send it back to committee so it can be properly dealt with in an appropriate period of time?

We would also like to know when the last allotted day will be for this supply period and what will be the rest of the calendar for the coming week?

Justice

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, during committee deliberations on Bill C-10, I introduced a series of amendments to the important justice for victims of terrorism act, but these amendments were regrettably rejected by the Conservative majority on committee. The government then tabled the same amendments at report stage in the House, which the Speaker rightfully ruled out of order.

Now that we agree that these amendments are warranted and that they should never have been rejected in the first place, what will the government now do to see that these desirable amendments are in fact implemented?

Citizen's Arrest and Self-defence Act

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Lucky Moose case is interesting and shocking; however, I must admit that, quite frankly, this bill is the first opportunity I have had to really understand what happened and the problems that Mr. Chen had with the law. Mr. Chen lives in my colleague's riding of Trinity—Spadina. I think that the intentions of the bill that she introduced during the 40th Parliament are more or less identical to those found in Bill C-26, which we are discussing today.

I think there are two important factors to consider. We are talking about the power to make citizen's arrests, as in Mr. Chen's case, but I also think that we have to qualify that. Mr. Chen is the owner of a local business that does not necessarily have the money for insurance or security the way a big business such as McDonald's does.

The members of the NDP—and I am sure the members opposite will agree—believe that this is one very important aspect. We want to give ordinary citizens, particularly entrepreneurs who are at risk of becoming the victims of such crimes, the ability to defend themselves. That is very important. However, there is also another factor to consider, and that is the fact that we all live in a community, we all have the right to protect ourselves—at least we should have it—and we all have the right to help and protect each other.

The hypothetical example that came to mind as I read this bill and thought about it was that of seniors in my riding. There are many seniors in my riding and we know that they need help with many aspects of their daily lives. This is the perfect example because, if a person wants to help someone in need but is not certain of the provisions of the Criminal Code, it becomes very difficult and worrisome for that person to help. We should not have to worry when we find ourselves in a situation where we want to help someone in a reasonable manner, as mentioned in the bill. Once again, the word is “reasonable”, and it is used again and again; I will come back to this point a little later.

I think that is what is important. To go back to what the hon. members for St. John's East and Mount Royal said, we have to truly find a way to create clear legislation when we are talking about citizen's arrest, defence of property and self-defence. As the hon. member for Welland said—it seems we are all essentially in agreement—we want to have clear legislation to ensure that the defender acts swiftly in an urgent and critical situation. We have to avoid the situation where the person wonders what is in subsection 494.2 and how it will affect them. People should have the power to react.

That being said, I think we have been quite clear on this side of the House, that this has to be done within reason. I am not a legal expert, but it is common knowledge that the term “reasonable” is well defined in the legal field. It is everything considered reasonable by any reasonable person. That is usually what it means. Hon. members with law degrees will correct me if I am wrong or add clarification. With a bill like this one, we want to be certain that it not only includes these terms, but that they are understood by the public.

We have a perfect example when we look at the self-defence or defence of property provisions.

I would like to take this opportunity to quote the Supreme Court ruling in R. v. McIntosh, where Chief Justice Lamer said:

...ss. 34 and 35...are highly technical, excessively detailed provisions deserving of much criticism. These provisions overlap, and are internally inconsistent in certain respects.

This is very important because it shows us that even the Supreme Court of Canada justices are unable to fully understand the Criminal Code. Hence, it would certainly not be clear to an individual who is not necessarily a legal expert, especially, as I mentioned, if they were to find themselves in a dire or urgent situation where their life was potentially in danger.

What is being proposed is fairly straightforward and clear. This has been said many times and I will repeat it. We must allow experts, victims and lawyers to thoroughly examine this in committee. I know that most of my hon. colleagues who sit on the Standing Committee on Justice are lawyers or are quite knowledgeable about the law. Like my colleague from Welland, I am very pleased to see that our colleagues opposite feel the same way.

We also want to study this bill because we want to ensure that the bill is clear, not just so we have the right to defend ourselves, as I already mentioned, but also so that we do not get caught up in what I call the “Clint Eastwood phenomenon”, where we all become cowboys acting in self-defence. By defending ourselves, we end up causing more harm than good. We all assume the role of police officers. That would go against what we believe to be the purpose of this bill. Once again, we come back to the term “reasonable”. I believe this concept will be very important.

A few years ago, there were some cases of home invasions in Quebec—in Brossard and Montreal's West Island—that received a great deal of media coverage. In these highly documented and very revolting cases—which sometimes had tragic consequences—there was a great deal of reporting and commentary, by both the media and the public, as to the fact that it was not clear. We must be in a position to fully understand our rights and the restrictions in order not to have to think in such circumstances and to be able to defend ourselves. We also have to agree that, in some cases, we must use some judgment.

Let us take the hypothetical example of a couple. The man pushes the woman and she attacks him very violently, in a way that could be classified as too violent, excessive or unreasonable—to use that term again. However, we do not know the history between them.

We must really take the time to study the bill to ensure that in specific situations, such as ones where there is a known history, measures are in place to ensure that police officers and judges can take adequate and appropriate action.

The work we do in committee is very important. We are talking about experts. I am not a legal expert and many of my colleagues are not, either. That is where our responsibilities as parliamentarians become very important, both during debate in the House and in committee. We must make good use of the resources available to us. Those include not only legal experts, but also victims and people who have experienced serious situations, like Mr. Chen. Although this was a very high profile and surprising case, there must certainly be other circumstances that are similar.

I must talk about another aspect. I mentioned seniors, but there are other groups too.

I am not entirely familiar with Mr. Chen's case, so I will be careful about what I say. In his case, there was some racial profiling, as happens in other ethnic communities.

Mr. Chen belongs to an ethnic community and he was charged with kidnapping, when in reality, he was simply defending his business. Making the bill more specific gives police officers tools so that they will be less likely to judge or accuse people who act in this manner.

I find it unfortunate to have to raise the next point, but since my colleague from Welland already did, I would like to take the opportunity to do so now. Since the beginning of this parliamentary session, work in committee has been very rushed, as have our debates in the House of Commons. That is too bad, since we talk about the bills.

Let us take the example of Bill C-10, which has to do with the Criminal Code. There is no doubt that this is a very complex issue.

We should have been taking advantage of these opportunities, both in the House and in committee, and deferring to the expertise and wisdom of our colleagues. As we all know, the hon. member for Mount Royal is very knowledgeable in this area, as are many other members. We should be taking advantage of our colleague's knowledge in order to fine-tune this very complex matter. Indeed, the Criminal Code is very complex. It is full of nuances that we need to pay attention to. That is what we are looking for.

The NDP's position is very clear: we want to find the nuances. We want to defend victims, but we also want to ensure that the measures are reasonable in that regard. That is where the nuances become important.

In the clauses of the bill, some examples talk about timeframes. In the case of Mr. Chen, the time that passed between when the crime was committed and the citizen's arrest was too long.

We need to have some degree of flexibility. However, we must also ensure that if a business owner thinks he or she recognizes someone who committed a crime 10 years ago—someone who stole candy in a corner store, for instance—that individual cannot be arrested. Business owners are vital to the local economy and must be able to defend themselves.

As MPs, we all go through these kinds of situations. My colleague's riding of Welland is half urban and half rural. Earlier he talked about cuts to police services. We have to remember that rural areas are not the only areas with more limited services. My riding is considered to be located primarily in the suburbs, and we are experience the same thing. In some cases, different municipalities are even sharing police officers. The municipalities do not necessarily have the same resources, so they are sharing them in order to provide better services.

That happens in some cases, but in others, when something is considered more urgent, the police forces focus on that, and rightly so.

At other times, there is no chance to benefit from these advantages. I can think of a few examples, such as petty thefts committed in small, local businesses.

In those cases, the response time can be quite long, at least in my experience and in others' experiences. That is where the problem lies.

Given that our police officers work very hard and do not necessarily have the resources to do everything they would like to do, we all have to help each other.

I also mentioned that we have to be careful that we do not all become police officers. We have to consider other aspects, including students who work part-time at a store to pay for school.

If a thief enters the store, public pressure—if I can use that expression—should not make the clerk feel forced to intervene.

Although we have the right to make a citizen's arrest, we also have the right to protect ourselves and to not necessarily intervene in a potentially dangerous situation.

To come back to this example, pressure might come from colleagues who feel pressured by the boss. The legislation should not be drafted in a way that a person feels pressured by his or her boss, a store owner for example, to intervene at all costs. That would not be appropriate.

As I was saying earlier, this would cause more harm than good in some circumstances. It is not worth risking one's life for a petty theft. Everyone agrees that life is priceless.

What is more, we must not lose sight of the fact that many situations are hypothetical. That is the problem. Not all of us have experienced what Mr. Chen went through, but the important thing is peace of mind, as I was saying earlier. We all share the desire to live free from such concerns in our communities.

I want to mention the Supreme Court's decision once again. There was also a problem in that case. However, cases involving a citizen's arrest are usually much more straightforward. If someone is caught in the act of stealing from a corner store, the case is fairly black and white. The person was apprehended while actually committing a crime.

Cases involving self-defence are harder to judge. Earlier, I mentioned cases in which we are less aware of the previous history.

The way in which the incident is reported to the police is also important. To use an example that is something of a cliché, a person who is in a dangerous neighbourhood or an area that is less safe gets attacked. That person would then exercise his right to self-defence.

He may defend himself and then run away. He calls the police because, clearly, he would not wait there with the attacker against whom he just defended himself. Clearly, he had to run away and think about his own safety.

Later, depending on how the facts are reported, the police will have to use a certain amount of judgment, and they are very qualified to do just that.

However, our responsibility as parliamentarians is to provide the tools need by both the police and judges—when the time comes—to exercise that judgment.

It is thus very important to work together to ensure that all the nuances are clearly understood. Together, we can come up with a very good bill.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join the debate on Bill C-26, albeit not as eloquently perhaps as my colleagues before me since I am not a lawyer. I know they have billable hours, but I am not sure if they have billable words. Nonetheless, it has been very insightful to listen to folks talk about what is and is not codified in law, subsection this and that. However, for lay folks living in communities, they do and have seen the reality.

Fortunately, my family has not gone through the trauma of someone breaking into our home. Someone did make off with my brand new snow blower last year, but it was in the shed. They did not break into my house, just my shed, but twice they broke in and made off with the snow blower and other sundry items. This did not affect me or my family personally as we were not there. I am sure the dogs barked like crazy, but they were in the house. The snow blower is out there somewhere in this country and someone is using it quite happily I guess.

Although I was joking earlier about billable hours and billable words, clearly there is a delicate balance of these difficult aspects. We are trying to balance the needs of those folks who are victimized by someone breaking into their home or assaulting them, with what my colleagues term, reasonableness. As my colleague for Edmonton—St. Albert said, eventually the issue would be determined by fact, which then becomes making a determination.

Clearly, there are difficulties in the present law, such as in the R. v. McIntosh case. When the rendered judgment came back to us, the lawyers said it was more muddied than before. What people thought may have been a clarification, for the legal profession, it became a muddied place.

If it is a muddied place for those folks who work with the Criminal Code on a daily basis, whether they be lawyers or judges, what is it for the rest of us who do not study the law? For those of us who may be trying to make a citizen's arrest or something in self-defence, how do we determine what is a reasonable or unreasonable act?

This reminds me of the old adage: if one can flee, then one should flee. It there is an opportunity to get away, one should, in some cases, rather than fight. We need to take that into consideration.

I am not for a moment suggesting that this amendment to change the legislation tries to suggest that somehow one should fight more often than flee. I simply raised this so that folks would keep it in mind when they find themselves in a position where they are present during a break and enter or a violent act is committed against them. There are times when if one can get away, one should just simply get away and call the appropriate authorities. Unfortunately, there are moments in life when that is not going to be the case and one has to take into consideration how that can happen.

There are instances dating back to the 1100s in English common law where a citizen's arrest was allowed. Therefore, this is not a new practice. The legislation being brought forward by the government is certainly not a new practice. It seems to be an attempt to clarify the waters that we presently have with the present act or code as to what exactly it is.

The member for Trinity—Spadina in the last Parliament brought forward somewhat similar legislation, albeit not quite the same. It talked about the incident in her riding with Mr. David Chen. Many of us will remember that he had arrested someone who had burglarized his store on multiple occasions. Mr. Chen made a citizen's arrest and then was charged himself for forcible confinement, kidnapping and all manner of charges. Fortunately, most of those charges were dropped and eventually he was acquitted.

We do not want to see another Mr. Chen or Ms. Chen somewhere down the road going through that experience. All Mr. Chen wanted to do was protect his property and make what turned out to be a reasonable citizen's arrest. The perpetrator eventually pleaded guilty to stealing from Mr. Chen and spent 30 days in jail. Clearly, Mr. Chen, in a reasonable way, had tried to stop the person who had been victimizing his property by stealing from him on numerous occasions.

It seems the gentleman who was stealing from Mr. Chen felt like he was a regular customer, except he never paid for anything. He simply would take what he needed. I guess he thought he had an account and would pay it off later, but clearly, that was not true.

How do we balance those things in the legislation that comes before us is the trick.

I am heartened by what I heard from the government benches, that those members want to take the time to listen to experts, to victims and folks who have great expertise in this area. They want to sit down and find a balanced law that will defend the rights of both sides. There are rights on both sides of this issue. There are the rights of those who have taken reasonable grounds to protect property and persons, themselves and their family, and there are the rights of the accused. Ultimately, making a citizen's arrest is simply allowing one to say that a person is accused of something. It is for the courts to decide, not those who make the citizen's arrest, whether someone is guilty of a particular offence.

We have to strike a balance. We cannot have more Mr. Chens where a regular law-abiding citizen in the due course of his business is victimized and then finds himself in a predicament where he has to hire a lawyer and go to all that expense, as well as the trauma of going to trial, for doing what he thought was a reasonable thing.

It strikes me that when the government is saying it intends to do something, I am not too sure why we did not do it in some of the other aspects. Bill C-10 is a prime example. The member for Mount Royal brought forward some amendments to Bill C-10 in committee. The government did not deem them to be worthy enough or was not interested enough at the time, and said no thanks, which is the government's right to do. Unfortunately, the minister brought ostensibly the same amendments forward and was ruled out of order because it was too late because the government had cut off the time available to make any reasonable amendments.

If the government believes this is worthy of study, and it is, I would suggest that when we work on big pieces of legislation such as Bill C-10, that they are also worthy of the same type of consideration, analysis and due process. We should go through them item by item.

Here we have one single solitary bill, Bill C-26, that speaks to one aspect of the law, not multiple parts. It speaks to citizen's arrest and what a reasonable person is expected to do.

I know it is hard for some of us to define what is a reasonable person. My colleagues, the member for St. John's East, the member for Edmonton--St. Albert, and the member for Mount Royal,, have engaged in these things in their previous careers. Lawyers and judges of this land find it hard to figure out what a reasonable person ought to be allowed to do, but by the right of sitting on the bench or being called to the bar, we give them that right and then we live by their decision. That is how we have the rule of law.

Ultimately it is about ensuring we find a balance. It gets to the very point of why we need to do it.

We have seen things happen in the past that some of us would say were egregious against those who we see as the victim. People have been assaulted, or mugged, or their houses have been broken into while they were sleeping, as we pointed out in a couple of examples. How do we find a way to say to people that they can protect their property and family if someone comes through the door of their house or steals from them? How do we determine how to do that? That is the balance ultimately all members should try to define.

Members on either side of the House do not want to victimize a victim. That is the essence of what we are saying to Canadians. We understand they have been victimized once already and because of a law we have the powers to change and enact, we do not want to victimize people once more. That is a fair thing to want to achieve.

As my colleague from St. John's East said earlier, the law has been there for over 100 years. It has been debated and decisions have been rendered to help build a body of decisions which the courts and the law profession can look to, to indicate when something is reasonable or not. As the government quite rightly has pointed out, it has been skewed in a few instances where folks are uncertain. If the courts are uncertain, how is the average person who is not in the legal profession supposed to understand what he or she can or cannot do?

If someone came through the door of our house, in a moment of an adrenalin rush we would not necessarily think about what the courts would say, or what the law says, or what section 494(1) says about when someone breaks in to a house. Folks know how to act in a responsible way to deter a person or persons from entering their home and they need to do the things to protect their children, their loved ones and their property. In my case I would have a couple of big dogs outside and I would lock the door. That might be a reasonable enough deterrent to discourage a teenager from breaking in because he or she would not want to be bitten by the dogs.

It may take a physical intervention by the person or persons who would want to restrain the offender. Most of us understand how to act in that moment of what could be described as panic, in a reasonable and responsible way. Ultimately, that is what we are trying to confer with the legislation, but that is why on this side of the House, as my colleague from St. John's East said earlier, we want to send the bill to committee and government members want to do likewise.

At committee we can study and have folks speak to the bill so that when we eventually pass the bill, victims who act, as is their right, as citizens to make an arrest or defend themselves in a legal way, will know that they will not face being charged. That is the balance we are trying to find. I welcome the government taking that opportunity with us to find that balance, because we do not want to have the waters just as muddied as they are now. Even the judicial branch is saying it is not helpful if it is muddied. Heaven knows, if the judicial branch is saying it has difficulties with it, then what are we to make of that. Clearly, as we go down that road, it is important to work to get the legislation right.

I would hope my colleagues on the justice committee would take their time and make sure we actually get it right. In haste, we can get it wrong. We will be doing a disservice to folks in the broader community if we rush it through simply because we think we have it right.

As my friend and colleague from Edmonton—St. Albert said, this is a balance. It is always the most difficult thing to do in life. We all remember when we were young, sitting on a teeter-totter with someone we hoped was of about equal weight or at least who did not get off the teeter-totter before we did, letting us slam to the ground.

One would hope we could find that scale of balance, so that it does not tip in one direction or the other. I know the government wants to find the balance between the rights of those who find themselves in those precarious situations when they are under threat of harm or threat of their personal property being taken from them, and they want to take that opportunity, as is their right under the law even at present, to protect themselves, their loved ones and their property.

Our party's critic has said that we welcome the opportunity to send the bill to committee after second reading, because we believe we can help the government make this good legislation. The Prime Minister has said on numerous occasions, “If you have good ideas, we welcome them”. With this bill, we have some good ideas.

What I am hearing from the government side this morning is that this may be a time when, I would not go so far as to say we would join hands, we find ourselves singing from the same hymn book on this legislation. We will have some good suggestions and we hope the government will be open to those good suggestions. We could eventually find that this is a piece of legislation which members of the House have worked on together and which the House can then pass. We could say to the folks that we worked on this legislation together for all of them because it was important to them.

It may have taken a bit of time for us to get there, as quite often happens. Sometimes we have to build a body of evidence in law and see decisions to finally realize that what we thought was working reasonably well no longer is working. I think the government recognizes that we have come to that point, and I congratulate it for recognizing that.

My colleagues on the justice committee will be pleased with what we heard from the government this morning, that it welcomes the debate, and it welcomes bringing in experts to make sure that we find the balance that all of us are seeking.

This can be a good piece of legislation if we take the time to study it, if we take the opportunity to listen to each other. We need to build a piece of legislation that truly meets the balance of our broader society and the citizens across this country.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that I fully understood that question. What I said in my comments was that the bill before the House, Bill C-26, clarifies the existing provisions, specifically sections 34 to 42, which create a rather complex and convoluted set of circumstances with respect to when reasonableness in defence of property would apply, depending on whether it is real property or personal property. This bill aims to, and I think succeeds in that aim, clarify when the defences of property and person would apply.

The member made some reference to Bill C-10 that I did not quite understand. However, certainly this bill fits in the entire umbrella philosophy between this bill and Bill C-10 in that the government continues to stand up for the rights of victims. This bill fits into that umbrella because when victims of crime take measures to defend themselves or to defend their property, as long as they act reasonably they ought to have the protection of the law.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Edmonton—St. Albert for his presentation and clarifications. Reasonably discussing Bill C-26 presently before the House is a very good exercise and I really appreciated his presentation.

I understood from his presentation that he has a legal background. He mentioned that just for this special provision in this bill the Criminal Code is very complicated and complex. I want to compare and contrast that with Bill C-10 that we just passed at report stage in the House, which contains many provisions of the Criminal Code. Why did we not have the same approach in breaking down Bill C-10 as we are doing right now with Bill C-26?

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member has been very attentive and present at the deliberations of the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, and knows of what she speaks.

I hope that when our committee deliberations return, we will do so in a way that permits for the informed and considered appreciation of legislation before us. I still believe the real problem with regard to the deliberations on Bill C-10 was that it was not, as some feel when they look at it, one bill; it was nine bills. They should have been unbundled. We should have addressed each of them separately.

My colleague mentioned the justice for victims of terror bill. I proposed four amendments, which were rejected by the committee. The government then reintroduced those same four amendments that it had rejected in committee. The Speaker, understandably, ruled them out of order. Maybe if we had time and consideration to put on that one bill alone, we could have come up with a better bill. The bill, as I have said, is transformative legislation that would have had a positive historical impact to give victims of terror a civil remedy that they had not yet had. It would have allowed them to hold their perpetrators liable.

I believe that is the same with the other eight bills that we had to consider altogether in one big bundle.

I would like to see the government take that principle of bundling and attach it to the whole question of a comprehensive reform of our criminal law, which is long overdue. Also, we need to reinstate the Law Commission of Canada to assist us in this very compelling, overdue and necessary task of comprehensive law reform in our country.

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

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the speech by the hon. member for Mount Royal, particularly for bringing us back to the need for broader Criminal Code reform, particularly to look at bringing back the Law Reform Commission of Canada.

We have a situation where we generally agree with the objects of the bill, as I know the hon. member for Mount Royal and I did back in June when we looked at the megatrials bill. The efforts made to improve that bill so that it would work were gavelled out of order and we went right through to passing a bill with no changes.

We have just experienced the same thing with Bill C-10. The efforts made to improve that bill in the government's interest and toward the goals that it put forward were rushed through and, unfortunately, the amendments put forward yesterday by the Minister of Public Safety, which were so closely parallelled with what the hon. member for Mount Royal had put forth before, were ruled out of order, and appropriately, by the Speaker.

What chance do we have of his very sensible approaches being taken seriously at committee? Does he have any indication that we will have a different atmosphere around the committee with respect to Bill C-26 from what we have had with previous bills in this session?

Bill C-10—Time Allocation Motion

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue]

Madam Speaker, I want to talk about something that happened in my riding last week that was reported on the front page of our local newspaper.

There was a big article on a sexual predator who had been released. He kidnapped someone and abused this person. It was a horrific incident in our community. Right below that was an article on the little protest at my office where a few people showed up with signs protesting against Bill C-10.

Many people called me and said that this fellow was out and he should not have been as he was high risk to reoffend. They said, “Look what he has done to this person in our community”.

I would like to ask the justice minister, why is it important? Why can we not spend the next five to six months debating this legislation? Why do we need to move forward and act now?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Madam Speaker, I wish the hon. member would just be absolutely frank. There is no amount of debate and no amount of explanation that would cause the NDP members to change their minds and not oppose every single element of this bill.

They have a record in this particular area. They say they want to support victims; I say they can start supporting victims by supporting legislation like this, the legislation that we have before this Parliament.

However, I hear the same thing from over there. They say they want to do this; well, then, they should just do it. They should start supporting bills like Bill C-10 and legislation that this government has been introducing since 2006. Every one of those bills stands up for victims in this country and is doing the right things to protect Canadians.

The NDP should get on board, just for a change, and mix it up.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, everyone on this side of the House also wants to see justice for the victims and wants to see that those committing crimes in this country are given the right sentences. However, the only thing I am unable to tell Quebeckers and Canadians is that we are certain that Bill C-10 will have the effect the government is after.

I am unable to say so because ever since Bill C-10 was introduced and ever since my election on May 2, 2011, the government has done nothing but focus on getting everything passed as quickly as possible. There is no time for us to debate. I know what I am talking about. I was in that committee, and we had to fight for hours just to get clause-by-clause consideration of this infamous bill.

Three of these nine acts had never been studied. Witnesses came and went at lightning speed. People came from the Canadian Bar Association and the Barreau du Québec, but we did not get to ask them all our questions. They continue to write to me to decry this problem and it is not—

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Madam Speaker, over the past weekend, on my way home last Friday, I did an interview with our local paper on Bill C-10. The article came out on Saturday. On Sunday at church I had already had two calls to my house, and very seldom do I ever get a call on an article.

On Sunday after church, a couple I respect very highly took me aside. They do not talk business at church, but the gentleman said “Gary, I'd just like to say thank you so much for standing up for the victims and standing up for people. I think this bill should go through right quickly”. He said he recognized he was doing business after church, but he wanted to thank me for getting this bill through.

With that, I would like to ask the minister if he has had any responses like that?

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I believe I am in a very special position to reply to the government, and to the Minister of Justice in particular, who says that these bills have been around for a long time.

The people of Kingston and the Islands were served by a most notable servant of this House for many years, the Honourable Peter Milliken, who served as Speaker. He performed his role as Speaker very admirably, remained neutral on all sorts of disputes, did not speak in debates and did not sit in committees when these bills that the Minister of Justice refers to were discussed.

When the government says that we have talked about these bills a lot, that they have been in committees and we do not need to talk about them much more, people in Kingston and the Islands beg to differ. The reason is that their representative in the House was not able to participate in the debates, and they deserve a voice.

It is no accident that I have all these petitions to table here in the House of Commons on Bill C-10. The people in Kingston and the Islands are very much interested in expressing their views on Bill C-10. The Minister of Justice will know that Correctional Service Canada has a very large presence in the riding of Kingston and the Islands, and roughly 2,000 people are employed by Correctional Service Canada in the Kingston area.

I believe it is very unjust to the people of Kingston and the Islands for the government to invoke closure yet again on this particular bill--

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

Mr. Speaker, in its history, when the government was in opposition, it was highly critical of time allocation and closure motions and extremely critical of former governments that used this. As of earlier this week, the Conservatives set the all-time record. We had three time allocation motions prior to the summer break. We have now had eight, including the one we have today, bringing the total to eleven motions in a total of 57 sitting days. The Liberals, setting the all-time record prior to this, had nine time allocation motions or closure motions in 122 sitting days. Therefore, the Conservatives have the record.

We have to put this in a position with this bill. The government actually came forward with amendments on Bill C-10 therefore admitting this bill was flawed. How can the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons possibly justify time allocation motions in those circumstances, a flawed bill, and repeated times. The government clearly has done undemocratic process in this Parliament on a regular basis?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I move:

That in relation to Bill C-10, 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, not more than one further sitting day shall be allotted to the consideration of the report stage and one sitting day shall be allotted to the third reading stage of the said bill and, fifteen minutes before the expiry of the time provided for government business on the day allotted to the consideration of the report stage and on the day allotted to the third reading stage of the said bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this order, and in turn every question necessary for the disposal of the stage of the bill then under consideration shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.

Crime

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present again a petition signed by Canadians from across British Columbia. It concerns Bill C-10.

The petitioners say that the omnibus crime bill crudely bundles together too many pieces of unrelated legislation, some of it makes sense and some of it does not. They say that there is a big problem with implementation because the provinces of Ontario and Quebec may refuse to pay for the cost of implementing parts of the bill which would be downloaded on them.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to separate Bill C-10 into its pieces and allow members to vote on each of its parts separately.

Safe Streets and Communities Legislation

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table a petition wherein the signatories express their concern that the bundling together of nine separate bills in one omnibus bill, Bill C-10, prevents the informed consideration that each bill independently warrants.

They further express concern that the costs for implementing these bills have not been properly assessed, and that the provinces of Quebec and Ontario have expressed their refusal to pay for these measures. The petitioners call upon Parliament to separate the bills and allow members to consider each of the bills separately.

Justice

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

Mr. Speaker, the vast majority of Canadians and Quebeckers—except for those across the floor—understand the important objective of Bill C-10, that is, protecting Canadians from violent criminals.

Furthermore, an eminent Quebecker, former minister Marc Bellemare, recently said, “Minister Fournier did not speak for all Quebeckers in Ottawa. I think this bill is in line with Quebec's values.”

It is time for the opposition to stop deceiving Canadians and Quebeckers.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, talking to the Conservatives about Bill C-10 is like talking to a brick wall.

Yesterday in the House, the government finally admitted that its crime bill, Bill C-10, is seriously flawed. Experts agree. Police chiefs agree. The provinces agree. This bill is bad and unbalanced and will cost the provinces a fortune. After months of ignoring everyone, the government finally seems to understand that it made a mistake.

Will the government send the bill back to committee so we can make the necessary changes, or will it continue down the wrong path, to the detriment of the provinces and Canadian families?

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

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the government admitted that its prison agenda bill was flawed. The Minister of Public Safety tried to introduce 11th hour amendments to Bill C-10 only to be ruled out of order by the Speaker. It seems that the mountain of opposition from experts, crown prosecutors, the provinces and the public has struck a nerve.

Now that the government has admitted its bill is flawed, will it finally work with others to make improvements, or will it continue to insist on ramming the bill through Parliament?

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

Mr. Speaker, the government's prisons agenda in Bill C-10 is being rammed through despite overwhelming opposition from all sides. Police chiefs say it is unbalanced. The Canadian Bar Association and crown prosecutors say it will overload our justice system. The provinces are unable to pick up the tab. Even the government itself recognized flaws and proposed amendments here today, which were ruled out of order.

Why is the government's approach to go it alone? Why do the Conservatives refuse to work with others on crime prevention and insist on rushing through this flawed bill?

Telephone Calls to Mount Royal Constituents

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will respond to the two interventions from the other side.

Some references were made to ten percenters. Mr. Speaker, your predecessor ruled that there was a prima facie breach of my privileges because of false and misleading ten percenters that were targeting households in my riding, at that time targeting only the Jewish households in my riding.

It is part of a pattern. I know the Conservatives covet the riding. I know they would like to win the riding of Mount Royal, but they have to do so on their merits, not by false, misleading, and prejudicial information as took place in the ten percenters, which your predecessor ruled was a prima facie breach of privilege, and with a repetition now with these false and misleading phone calls.

This is not a question of rumours of a byelection. We are all subjected to that kind of thing. People in my riding or in any riding might be asking their member, “I heard you might be resigning” or “I heard you might be going elsewhere”, or whatever. That is part of constituents sometimes asking a legitimate question to their member of Parliament. This is not what is being asked here.

These are constituents who have been told, in false and misleading phone calls, by an agency supported by the Conservative Party that there is an imminent byelection and that the member has resigned or is about to resign. It is not people coming up to me and saying they heard rumours as is part of the normal give and take. However, I should not have to be back in my riding this weekend and have people coming up and saying they were called and told that I had resigned or that they were called and told that there is an imminent byelection going on.

Under the principles of breaches of privilege, that is what is called “sowing confusion in the minds of the electorate”. That is what is called “impeding the member of Parliament in the performance of his duties”.

I can speak with my constituents in regard to rumour, but not when they are telling me that they are getting calls making statements of fact, when these are not statements of fact but false and misleading misrepresentations of fact. That is the fundamental difference. This is not a matter of chilling speech. The opposite member elevated this to absolute freedom of speech.

If we look at our whole constitutional law in this country, there is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech. We have laws with respect to limitations on speech with regard to perjury, so people can have a right to a fair trial. We have limitations on false and misleading advertising, directly on point, so the consumer can be protected against false and misleading advertising. We have laws against obscenity, so people can be protected with respect to their human dignity. I can go through the whole law of free speech. I happen to have a certain degree of expertise, having written on it and pleaded it before the Supreme Court.

This has nothing to do with free speech. This has everything to do with false, misleading, and prejudicial information held out in a representation to constituents and held out as if it were a statement of fact, clearly causing prejudice and clearly undermining the role of the member.

If the members opposite say that they are happy to see that I am very active and involved, yes I am active and involved. That is our responsibility as members, to be active and involved.

However, when constituents believe not only that we are not active and involved but that we are not even a member anymore, that we have stepped down or are about to step down, this transforms the entire relationship between the member and his or her constituents.

Equally, when I was asked this past weekend, after my constituents had heard that I had stepped down, I began to tell them about some of the things I was doing with respect to Bill C-10 in this House, which is somewhat ironic that we are speaking on this today or maybe not so ironic that we are supposed to enter into a discussion on Bill C-10. It is a nice diversionary approach on the government's part. However, let us leave that aside.

The point is that the members of my riding were not aware of the work that I have been doing and that was precisely what I said in my point of privilege. It is not only false and misleading but it overtakes and overshadows, and effectively obscures, if not excises, the work that I am doing and the opportunity to engage in what the government has called political dialogue. I would love to be in political dialogue. I do not mind criticism. I do not mind voters coming up and saying, “Your position on Bill C-10, we totally disagree with it”.

That is fine. That is fair comment. That is fundamentally different from a voter coming up to me and saying, “How come you are not even involved on Bill C-10? You are not even there”. That is where the prejudice is: the reduction of the member of Parliament as if he is no longer a functioning member of Parliament.

There is no knowledge of all the work that I have been doing in the last two weeks, whether it was standing in the House to speak to Bill C-304, a private member's bill on the issue of freedom of speech and hate speech, where I thought the intervention was important, or that I have undertaken the representation of an Egyptian blogger, a leader in the Tahrir revolution, now being played out in Egypt, to have been imprisoned for allegedly insulting the Egyptian military, a rather dramatically important case. My constituents had no knowledge of that. When I held a press conference in that case, the questions that I was asked by journalists were, “Are you resigning? Have you resigned? Is there a byelection?”

Therefore, it did interfere with my work. It interfered in my exchanges with the media. It interfered with my exchanges with my constituents. It interfered with the public perception of the work in which I was engaged.

I want to conclude by saying that there is no suggestion here that any speech be chilled or suppressed. What is suggested here is that I practised a misconduct that misrepresents matters that relate directly to the performance of members in their duties as members of Parliament.

To say that it does not address what is being done in this House, it addresses the capacity of members, not only me, to perform their duties in the House and as members of Parliament when outside the House with their constituents, among the public, the media and the like.

It has a pervasive and persistent prejudicial fallout impeding, if not prejudicing, the members in the performance of their duties. It comes directly within all the principles and precedents that I cited in my two statements respecting the request for a prima facie finding of a breach of privilege.

Safe Streets and Communities Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition today from Canadians, primarily from the Montreal and Ottawa areas, also concerned with Bill C-10, making the same point, that we have nine separate bills put together into this omnibus crime bill, the so-called safe streets and communities act, that many petitioners believe will not deliver safe streets in communities.

The petitioners ask that this House consider separating Bill C-10 into its component parts so that each part can be dealt with separately.

I present this petition in hopes that this House will still come to its senses and not pass the omnibus crime bill as drafted.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition on Bill C-10 that has been signed by Canadians across the country.

Bill C-10 is the omnibus crime bill. The petitioners say that it crudely bundles together too many pieces of unrelated legislation, some of which makes sense and some of which does not. There is also a big problem with its implementation because Ontario and Quebec may refuse to pay for the costs of some of the measures in this bill that would be downloaded to them.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to separate Bill C-10 into its pieces and allow members to vote on each part separately.

Protection of Children

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to the attention of the House a petition I received that calls upon Parliament to enact stronger legislation to deal with child sexual abuse. Statistics show that 39% of those who possess child sexual abuse materials have images of children between the ages of 3 and 5 and 83% have images of children between 6 and 16 being sexually assaulted.

Section 163 of the Criminal Code currently allows sentences as little 90 days for making criminal child sexual material and only 14 days for the possession of criminal child sexual materials.

Well over 5,000 signatories of this petition are requesting stronger mandatory minimum sentences that would protect children, provide justice and deter pedophilia.

I should add in closing that the Canada Family Action, which is sponsoring the petition, applauds our government for addressing the issue in a meaningful way with our crime legislation, Bill C-10, which is currently before the House.

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will share my time with the member for Churchill.

Canadian democracy is falling apart. We need only look at the protests happening across Canada and Quebec to see that this is the case. Bill C-10 is another example. Instead of dialogue, the Conservatives issued a gag order to force the passage of a very controversial bill on safe streets and communities. They are doing the same thing with Bill C-18. I will briefly go over what this bill proposes.

It proposes that we dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board; put an end to the single-desk marketing of wheat and barley; replace the board with an interim structure with voluntary membership; and privatize it or dissolve it completely if, in the coming years, it is not profitable for any private firms. Bill C-18 is a reflection of the neo-liberalism that underlies this government's economic policy.

Representatives of prairie farmers and other independent experts have raised concerns about the repercussions that dismantling the Canadian Wheat Board would have on farming families and on the economy, not only in the Prairies, but also in Canada as a whole, during this period of economic uncertainty. But the Conservative government is obsessed with its own ideology and it refuses to listen and take these concerns into consideration.

The Canadian Wheat Board is an economic structure that has proven its effectiveness and its impact on the prairie economy. Since it sells Canadian farmers' grain products in about 70 countries around the world, there is no doubt that the Canadian Wheat Board contributes to our country's international presence and helps improve the living conditions of the farmers for whom it brings in some $4 billion to $7 billion a year. In other words, it pumps billions of dollars into our economy.

The numbers prove that the Canadian Wheat Board is economically viable. There is absolutely no doubt, and the Conservatives' arguments in favour of dismantling it were ripped apart by speakers before me. The Conservatives are using the failure in Ontario, which withdrew from the single-desk system, to justify dismantling the Canadian Wheat Board. That argument is indefensible. It does not apply to the reality facing farmers in western Canada. To compare the two is specious and even irresponsible.

It is not possible to compare apples to oranges on the grounds that apples and oranges are both fruit. In fact, it was through a democratic process—led by farmers themselves—that Ontario farmers decided to abolish their single desk. Prairie farmers, in contrast, voted to keep the Canadian Wheat Board. Furthermore, the wheat grown by Ontario farmers is used only in pastry, cookies and cakes for local consumption. The wheat grown by prairie farmers is used for bread and pasta for which there is no significant local market.

While Ontario's farmers rely more on grain companies to handle their crops, prairie farmers, on the other hand, count on the board for fair market access for everyone, including those who ship in producer cars.

The Conservatives claim that Bill C-18 will improve farmers' ability to market their wheat and barley by giving them a choice of who to sell their grain to and how to do so. But the reality is quite different: this bill is not compatible with their desires. It removes some freedom of choice from the farmers. At present, the board is controlled, managed and financed by farmers, for farmers.

With Bill C-18, the government will begin to intrude rashly into the board's management, which is the responsibility of the farmers. They do not need the government's help.

We have to wonder whether the Conservatives' desire to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board is not driven by major grain companies, especially American ones, which are rubbing their hands together at the thought of having free access to Canadian grain.

The Canadian Wheat Board owes its impact to a certain number of parameters that we must remember in order to make an informed decision. Before coming back to the repercussions that dismantling the Canadian Wheat Board will likely have, I should mention that the Canadian Wheat Board manages a supply chain from the farm to the table. The international reputation it enjoys, because of the quality of its constant supply and the quality of the services it provides, is envied by other countries.

It has a flexible and democratic organizational structure. Since it is not a grain corporation, the Canadian Wheat Board, which the government is seeking to dismantle today with Bill C-18, does not have any grain handling infrastructure—such as grain elevators or port terminals—to receive the grain production from the farmers and to load it onto ships. It is not overly staffed either. What is more, it does not run on a very big budget. Its only major asset is, and remains, its mandate, defined by a law authorizing it to sell western Canadian wheat, durum and barley through a single desk.

In light of these many advantages, we are appealing to this government to maintain the Canadian Wheat Board, because abolishing it would be disastrous, not only for the prairie economy, but also for the lives of prairie families, for whom farming is their bread and butter.

In closing, I would like to point out a few of the repercussions I alluded to. First of all, abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board will reduce profits for large-scale farmers. Indeed, since it is the sole seller of western Canadian wheat and barley, the board generates significant premiums for prairie farmers. With a single-desk model, not having competition among suppliers means that prices are not driven down for the same grain buyer.

Second, abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board will jeopardize the funding of activities for any future entity. Indeed, under the Canadian Wheat Board Act, the board cannot keep any profits or own any real assets. As a result, it has no financial base. It will have to acquire a significant financial base in order to prosper in a free market.

Third, abolishing the board will require whoever liquidates it to pay all the costs associated with the liquidation, so that a new entity cannot be forced to take them on. Given that the government—and not farmers—wants to liquidate it, farmers should not have to assume the cost of this government's ill-advised decision.

Fourth, abolishing the board will have negative repercussions on producer car shippers and on short line railways.

This bill is dangerous. It will be disastrous for prairie farmers in these difficult economic times. We believe that any decision on the future of the board should be made by farmers for farmers.

These are some of the reasons why we oppose abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board.

Opposition Motion—Closure and Time Allocation

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

Mr. Speaker, let us just make sure we get one thing straight here.

While the NDP members are complaining that they are not given enough time to debate a piece of legislation, they are not really interested in debate. Their motive and their rationale is to try to defeat government legislation. That is it.

They do not want to debate; they just want to kill the bills. They have tried to kill so many bills, Quentin Tarantino would be impressed. That is what NDP members are attempting to do here.

I would simply ask the member, does he not think that over 100 speeches and over 50 hours of debate on bills like Bill C-10 is adequate?

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to speak to the NDP motion. And quite sincerely, I am especially pleased to speak since it directly concerns your role, Mr. Speaker, which you fulfill so well out of respect for your title in the House. I am a new member. I have the advantage of a fresh outlook, and I can say that I truly appreciate the work you do.

I have a quote here from May 2, 2011: “We must be the government of all Canadians, including those who did not vote for us [I would like to repeat that last part: “including those who did not vote for us”], and that includes the great Quebec nation.”

That is an excerpt from the first speech the Right Hon. Prime Minister, our current Prime Minister, made as the leader of a parliamentary majority.

That was how he felt on May 2, after years in opposition and years of leading a minority government. And now here we are, just a few months later, having to defend the idea of the opposition's right to speak in the House.

I would also like to quote an excerpt from an excellent column that was published in Quebec in La Presse on November 23, 2011. It does a wonderful job of expressing the opinion of a very large majority of Quebeckers and likely Canadians as well:

...sometimes, when a leader reaches his goal [in this case, a majority in Parliament for the current Prime Minister's party], blind partisanship gives way to some magnanimity [lending a compassionate ear, let us say], a word that apparently is not in the vocabulary of...[I will not quote directly, since we cannot use the current Right Hon. Prime Minister's name in the House] and his key ministers.

Do not forget that this government enjoys a majority in the House, but it was elected by only 39.6% of Canadians (16.5% in Quebec, a province particularly badly crushed by the bulldozer).

When, on the night of his victory, [our hon. Prime Minister] declared that his would be a government of all Canadians, it was apparently just empty words devoid of any real intention....

The column used the Prime Minister's last name followed by the words “the bulldozer”.

That is what the columnists who are by far the most popular among Quebeckers are saying in black and white, without mincing words. The same thing is happening in English Canada. We should be worried that things have gotten to this point and that something like this is happening in a democracy as old as ours.

It is all caused by a problem involving overuse of what is called the “gag order”. Before digging more deeply into the problem, I would first like to correct a statement by the government, which is inaccurate to say the least, in response to our motion today. It relates to Bill C-13.

I would simply like to point out that the bill is to implement certain provisions of the budget. We are not postponing passage of a budget, this is about implementing it. Bill C-13 was introduced on October 4, 2011. Contrary to what some of my colleagues opposite have said, we have not been delaying passage of a budget since the throne speech in June. That is simply not the case. We were questioning an extremely important document. One of my colleagues has said it was as thick as a phone book. It was only introduced on October 4. The budget is 644 pages long. There have been only seven days of debate in the House and there was time allocation at each stage. There was time allocation at second reading, at report stage and at third reading.

It is completely incorrect to use this example when we look at what has in fact happened and the very proper behaviour of the opposition, which was simply asking for more time to discuss the 640 or so pages of the budget.

Let us come back to the main problem. The government has the unilateral power to invoke rule 78 concerning time allocation. This is where we have a problem. Canadians already have a democratic deficit.

With our first past the post electoral system, we can end up with a House like this one, where 60 % of Canadians find themselves represented by a minority of members in the House. So we have a serious democratic deficit that has been corrected in a number of modern democracies. I could talk for 25 minutes on this subject alone, so I will not dwell too long on it.

This means we are stuck with this flawed poor first past the post system which distorts the results. What is left for the Canadians who make up that 60 % and more? There is only one thing left for them: the right for their representatives, who have been relegated to a minority, to speak, to introduce numerous suggestions by motion and to be heard. If we take away the very essence of the very little bit of what is left of democratic rights in the present system, we have to wonder what will remain of democracy in Canada. It is as serious as that.

Gagging the opposition seven times in a short time span means gagging six Canadians out of ten, seven times in a few months. If we still think that the government is a responsible government, that the House is a House of representatives, gagging this side of the House seven times means gagging six Canadians out of ten, seven times in a few months. I would like to hear it, if a single one of my colleagues opposite disagrees with this perception or this view of democracy. Can they rise in the House and say that if the opposition is gagged seven times, that is not the equivalent, in the present situation in the House, of gagging six Canadians out of ten, seven times in a few months?

The gag was applied in the case of Bill C-18 on wheat management, a foundation of the economy, a foundation of Canadians’ food supply, which is a somewhat important question. The gag was applied twice. The gag was applied in the case of Bill C-10. It was even done in committee, even in that separate kind of place where we are supposed to be able to hear experts and speak with them. Even there, the gag was applied. And we still have to point out over and over again in the House that Bill C-10 is opposed by the Canadian Bar Association, by the lawyers’ organizations in all provinces and by a majority of the provincial governments. And the gag was applied.

I want to come back to the speech by the Right Hon. Prime Minister about governing for all Canadians. He had a perfect opportunity to prove that between his words and his actions, there might one day be some consistency. We moved a very simple motion more than six times to introduce a Bill C-10A on everything to do with sexual assault against minors. The House would have stood up the next day and adopted the motion. Those six motions were never once considered by the current government, led by a prime minister who began, on the first evening of his first-ever win as a majority government, by saying he would govern for all Canadians.

The first definition that appears after a simple little search on the Speaker's site is as follows:

To ensure the orderly flow of business, the House of Commons observes parliamentary rules and traditions, both written and unwritten. It is the Speaker's duty to interpret these rules impartially, to maintain order, and to defend the rights and privileges of Members, including [the first right mentioned in black and white] the right to freedom of speech.

What the motion is calling for is quite simple, Mr. Speaker. It is to give you this responsibility, which is part of your role, and to give you more powers. We are not playing with something here that does not exist in other countries or inventing a very complex democratic mechanism. We are simply saying that the role of Speaker is indeed to be impartial—a role that the current Speaker is fulfilling very well in the House—and that we are all giving him the role to address this antidemocratic abuse of Standing Order 78 to gag debate to no end, and to ask why there needs to be a gag order.

We have to ask if there are excellent reasons to gag debate and why the government should quickly silence the official opposition, which, in our system, represents the majority of Canadians.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for allowing me to speak to this motion. I also thank my colleague for Windsor—Tecumseh for bringing this motion forward at this point. I want to look at the motion in detail because it is not just a simple statement that this is a bad sort of thing and that the government should not use time allocation as much as it does. The member provides some detail in the motion that I would like to talk about.

For instance, the motion states:

...a study and make recommendations to amend the Standing Orders with respect to closure and time allocation, such that: (i) a Minister would be required to provide justification for the request for such a curtailment of debate;

That is certainly something we ought to talk about simply because when time allocation is brought into this House we hear little justification for doing so. We are given short explanations that are basically passed over. The reason for that, on many occasions, is that there is no justification and no requirement to justify it. I agree with the member in many respects on that. I think that justification should be brought to the House and presented to all of us. A big reason for doing that is that some of the fundamental questions as to why time allocations are brought sometimes go unanswered, such as, if bills have passed over a certain period time such that members of Parliament could consult their constituents. A lot of the time, items are promised during campaigns, which is what the Conservatives go on about, and on which hey are now delivering.

In 2008, there was a basic promise in dealing with Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia regarding the Atlantic Accord and some of the money that would be withheld within the province because of oil revenues. The promise was that the equalization formula would be made such that non-renewable resources would not play a factor in tabulating each provinces' ability to raise money.

However, when the budget implementation bill came out, much later than the broad principles, it was realized that the devil certainly did lay within the details of what was happening in the budget implementation. It ended up that the promise, by which 100% of non-renewables was to come out of the formula, was not in the budget implementation. Essentially, they had put an agreement that was outside of normal equalization and brought it back in. Former member, Bill Casey, was one of the members who left the party as a result of this. He voted against the budget for that and sat on the opposition side shortly thereafter.

I only put that into context because there is a certain amount of time from when the broad principles of the budget are announced by the finance minister to the time of budget implementation. Once we look at the legislation and a lot of the details that are involved, sometimes these broad principles get watered down or are not what they had appeared to be. Therefore, I think time allocation works against this principle.

The government will remark that the Liberals did this back when they were in power, but a lot of times, such as the Species At Risk Act, time allocation was brought in at third reading. At that point there had been a substantial opportunity to discuss and debate.

Canadians can review the cut and thrust of debate, enough to see what the principles are about, how the legislation is laid out and then, coming back from committee, how the proposed legislation was fine-tuned or not.

I commend my hon. colleague for bringing this motion. I think he brings up some decent questions as to how we can deal with time allocation, filibustering and the limitation of debate within the House.

We also now use the terminology “constituency weeks”. For instance, when the House is shut down for a week, people say that members have a week off. However, no, they are in their constituencies dealing with constituents and they can find out at that point how their constituents feel about certain pieces of legislation. Time allocation works against that, in my opinion.

One of the comments that was made earlier was that we have had so much time to deal with this, that the budget implementation bill has been in the House for quite some time and that we have dealt with it thoroughly, therefore, no bills, as was stated, have received royal assent. However, that is not true. At the end of June, we had Bill C-2, Bill C-4 and three other bills that received royal assent at that time. Those measures went through.

When the Conservatives say that the budget implementation bill needs to be passed in 2011 because it is budget 2011, that may be a valid point but, if it is valid, why are we spending all these hours talking about copyright legislation, the long gun registry and other measures, such as Bill C-10?

What the Conservatives could do is put that on the agenda each and every time. Every member in the House, at that point, could certainly speak their piece on how they feel about the budget implementation bill or the budget bill for this coming year, 2012.

I do want to point out that in this motion the other thing that it goes on about is that:

(ii) the Speaker would be required to refuse such a request in the interest of protecting the duty of Members to examine legislation thoroughly, unless the government's justification sufficiently outweighs the said duty....

There is a great deal of responsibility in what the Speaker must bring to this legislature, beyond the obvious, which is the running of the House. The Speaker also the responsibility of judging whether the normal legislative process is adhered to. We saw examples of that when our former speaker was here. He made big rulings, certainly rulings that made history, and will always be looked upon as a key moment in the speaker's career, because of the judgments that he brought.

Mr. Speaker, if we look at the way you do your job, one of the key responsibilities is to look at legislation that has been accepted in principle and scope in second reading, then you must decide if, within the committee, its work went beyond the scope and principle of the bill. You have the authority to overturn those amendments, even if everybody in this House, as I have said time and time again, says that they agree with the amendments that were made, you, Mr. Speaker, have the authority to turn them down despite that.

It has been done before. It happened in a private member's bill some time ago on back-to-work legislation, or what people call “anti-scab” legislation. There was an amendment to exclude essential services and there seemed to be a lot of agreement with that, certainly the majority of members agreed with that, but the speaker turned down that particular amendment because it went beyond the scope and principle of the bill.

Therefore, this brings up a good point, which is that this motion would say that you, Mr. Speaker, should have that responsibility to turn this time allocation down, if it is not justified, certainly in dealing with the history, the principles and the spirit of how this House of Commons operates. I think that is a good thing. Why can the Speaker not be involved in this and say that he or she finds that it is not a very justifiable answer as to why we have to slap time allocation on this when we are dealing with something as large and complex as the budget?

Another valid point, I believe, is the fact that following the election there seems to be a lot of new members in the House. I only say “seems to be” because I think all the new members in this House of Commons are doing a fine job. I think they are holding the bar up there when it comes to representation of their constituency.

Time allocation runs in the face of that because a lot of these new members have not had their say. It is their first time in the House and I think compassion should be given, if not by the government then certainly by the Speaker to say, “Well, just a moment”. This legislation in regard to budget 2011 needs to be done soon, therefore, new members in the House should have a chance and the opportunity to speak to that.

I think that, in and of itself, is a good reason why we should have a filter upon which time allocation is used in this House. It has been used throughout history. I cannot justify a lot of the time allocations that have been used because, in many cases, it was wrong. Does the minister not agree? Whether it was red, blue, orange or any other colour, it was wrong in many cases. Depending on the issue, depending on the people involved and depending on the fact that some people have not had their say about this legislation, and that there has not been as much consultation, time allocation is used in a very crass way.

If we look at the situation in front of us now, there are several pieces of legislation deemed important, but some more so than others. Therefore, I would humbly suggest to the House that we should support this simply because it brings a new element into the House where no one party has the authority—

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will share my time with the hon. member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor.

I find it a little sad that, with this government, we always start with the end instead of the beginning. Regardless of what we may think, this government does what it wants and cares little about parliamentary procedures and tradition.

Since the last election, we are seeing too much abuse. This government is abusing its majority, thinking that with the support of 39% of Canadians it can do anything. And this is an inflated number because it does not include the 40% of Canadians who did not vote. So, it is not even 30% of Canadians who supported the government. Therefore, it should at least respect the opinion of all Canadians. It is not the first time that we raise this issue.

Today, we are talking about the government cutting debate short after introducing a bill, and not even after several hours of debate. This government has shown repeatedly its contempt for our institutions. In the case of Senate appointments, it has also shown that it does not respect its own promises. Indeed, the government had committed to appointing only elected senators. However, two weeks after the election, the Prime Minister not only appointed to the Senate individuals who had lost their election, but he did so without consulting the provinces, as he had promised to do.

Recently, we saw that this government had even set criteria to appoint an officer of Parliament. I am not going to get into details, but there were two basic and very simple criteria to select the Auditor General. First, the individual had to be an accountant and, second, he or she had to be bilingual. This government ignored the fact that the appointee had to be bilingual and it hired an accountant who had some experience in a small province. We can already see the abuse of power.

As we have seen so far, there is always a double standard with this government. We believe the government is abusing its power by constantly resorting to closure to avoid debate. That is the only motive we can find today. It has already done it close to ten times over a period of a few weeks, when none of the bills involved were urgent.

We have seen time allocation invoked on six out of 10 bills. That does not mean time allocation has been invoked 6 times. It means time allocation has been invoked on 6 bills at different stages. Just so that listeners are aware of how many stages a bill would go through, normally a bill would go through second reading, report stage and third reading. If we multiply six bills times three, that would be 18 times that the government could potentially invoke time allocation. To date, we have a calculation of about 10, so we can look forward to seeing more of these bills undergoing time allocation for the next few steps.

The government House leader has stated that the issues on the government's legislative agenda so far this session have been discussed in detail since the government took office. I do not understand it.

The point is that during the elections the Conservative government made promises. However, if we look at the makeup of the House, at least 40% of the members are new parliamentarians, so this debate never took place. Also, what was said during the election campaign was not necessarily in a legislative format. Our job as parliamentarians is to debate these pieces of legislation.

That brings me to another subject, one that is not necessarily tied into the debate today. I am a member of the scrutiny of regulations committee, and we see that if legislation is not properly worded, then a lot of this legislation and, in turn, a lot of its regulations get bogged down. We then have things that are not necessarily clear, Canadians are not happy with how the legislation is worded, and the courts have to get involved. It is all just a churning of bureaucracy and a waste of money.

The claim that the government has already consulted Canadians is far from what the government has actually done. It has not consulted Canadians.

It is saying that three or four hours of debate it is sufficient for a bill. However, let us look at some of the bills that have been tabled. As an exaple, the budget is made up of 600 pages of legislation. It is a government omnibus bill. As a lawyer, I sat in on some of the committee hearings and I can tell members that it was not the easiest thing to follow. I just cannot imagine how a couple of hours of debate would suffice for a proposed bill that is going to affect all Canadians, not just the criminals. It will affect all Canadians, because one day they will have to deal with these issues, and if they do not have to go before a court of law, they will have to at least pay taxes to pay for all the costs that are going to be incurred in trying to monitor these pieces of legislation and put them into force.

We are trying to avoid just passing these pieces of legislation blindly. We are trying to ensure proper vigilance before these pieces of legislation are passed; however, that does not seem to be a valid argument for the government.

We in the Liberal Party are trying to do our job, but the government is making allegations that we are obstructing and we are using unreasonable amendments. I can understand the government's point of view, because sometimes the NDP acts irrationally and tries to filibuster and makes ridiculous amendments. However, I think the Liberal Party has made pretty reasonable amendments up to now. We have been first up to bat on making amendments on proposed bills. I think that we have done our job, but the government refuses to allow us to continue to do our jobs. We want the public, whether it be experts or third parties who are affected by these bills, to come forward to testify and make suggestions so that we can actually make these bills work properly.

Let us look at some of the bills for which time allocation has been introduced. The budget implementation bill was introduced and read for the first time on June 14; there was time allocation at all stages, and it was voted on June 15.

This is nothing new. Budget implementation bills are introduced twice every year, plus the budget. The budget implementation bill is not a partisan issue. It is normally the bill that introduces the legislation to put the budget into application.

Usually it is technical. It requires people affected by the budget to provide us with their input and tell us what changes they would like to see; if there are no changes, they at least come forward to give us their interpretation of that particular bill.

In the past, whether it was a majority government or a minority government, we have always been able to get consensus on how many hours of debate we needed in the House and in committee. However, the government seems to be using its majority at will and is just punching the legislation through. It has done that for the two budget bills, Bill C-9 and Bill C-13.

On Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, the Conservatives invoked time allocation not only in the House but in committee as well. I was there. They suddenly said that they did not want to hear what we had to say. They had made up their minds. It was impossible that they would need opinions from experts. They did not even have to hear from the bar association. They did not even have to hear from the provinces.

Even though members from the province of Quebec had numerous valid amendments to introduce into the bill, the government had already decided it was not going to listen to anyone. I understand that the NDP had numerous amendments that were not relevant to the case and had to be rejected, but my colleague, the member for Mount Royal, introduced some pretty important amendments that were backed up by Minister Fournier from the Quebec government. We are going to have report stage next week, and I am hoping that the government can change its mind and adopt some of the amendments.

With regard to the Canadian Wheat Board, it was not a matter of procedure. Again, that was just rammed through. These farmers are working, and they do not have the time to come here and be notified because everything has to be rammed through.

I see my time is up. I am hoping that I will have some good questions and that I can continue.

Opposition Motion--Closure and Time Allocation

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is easy to manipulate those numbers. Certainly 50% of a small number looks like a huge number. We came back in September to get some things done. Our colleagues know that we have to get Bill C-13 into law. We are so close to the end of 2011, and we have not even passed the 2011 budget yet.

We have had many opportunities. On Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act, we have had four days of debate in the House, 11 committee hearings, 37 hours, and 53 speeches in the House in over 16 hours. That has been on Bill C-10 alone. On Bill C-13, we had seven total days of debate in the House. There were more days of debate at second reading than the average budget bill over the last two decades and more than any Liberal majority bill during that time. There have been more days of debate on Bill C-13--

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am splitting my time with the hon. member for Macleod.

I am pleased to rise today to speak to today's motion from the member for Windsor—Tecumseh. I also want to acknowledge the two previous speakers for their good work in the House and the privilege of working with them on the procedure and House affairs committee.

On May 2, Canadians gave the Conservatives a strong, stable national majority government. Canadians expect us to fulfill our commitments to them and that is exactly what we are doing. We are moving forward on our election commitments to implement the next phase of Canada's economic action plan.

There are EI measures within this bill that encourage job creation. There is the accelerated capital cost allowance for small businesses to invest in efficient equipment. There are measures to protect law-abiding Canadians. These important measures for the safety of our communities and for the safety of our children and of our grandchildren have been stalled by the opposition. The Conservatives would also provide marketing freedom for western Canadian grain farmers, something Ontario farmers have had for decades but the same privilege has not been granted to our western colleagues. There are measures to eliminate once and for all the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry. There are measures to provide fair representation to all provinces in the House of Commons and move every single province closer to representation by population. As my colleagues across the way will know, we have MPs serving fewer than 40,000 constituents while others are serving four times that many. This imbalance needs to be addressed.

We have introduced legislation in this House on all of these important measures. However, despite the talking points being used across the aisle, not one of these measures is law yet. We have seen delay tactic after delay tactic. Each of these bills has been extensively debated in the House of Commons and at committee hearings.

As an example, let us look at Bill C-13, the keeping Canada's economy and jobs growing act. This bill would implement the 2011 budget. We on this side of the House think that the 2011 budget should be passed into law in 2011. Looking at the calendar, there is not a lot of time left before we get to the new year. The new year, 2012, is only weeks away and we still have not implemented budget 2011 because of opposition delay tactics.

This bill includes important measures from this year's budget, including a job-creation tax for small business. All of us in this House agree that small business is the economic engine of Canada. There is the family caregiver tax credit. My colleague knows first-hand how important it is to make it easier for families to care for gravely ill relatives. There is the children's arts tax credit and the volunteer firefighters tax credit. In rural and remote parts of Canada, it is important that we have recruitment and retention tools for our volunteer firefighters. There is tax relief for the manufacturing sector, as I mentioned, the accelerated capital cost allowance. The bill includes making the gas tax refund permanent. Municipalities are constantly asking for predictable funding for their infrastructure needs.

All of these measures would promote job creation and economic growth. They would help add to the nearly 600,000 jobs already created in Canada since the global economic recession. These measures were supported by Canadians from sea to sea. They were exactly what Canadians voted for when they re-elected the Conservative government on May 2, with a majority mandate. However, we know the opposition has voted against these job-creating measures. For some reason, it opposes these positive and important job-creating initiatives.

I know today's motion is about debate in this place so allow me to outline just how much debate has already been given to the next phase of Canada's economic action plan. The budget was introduced on March 22 by the Minister of Finance. Debate on the budget started before the opposition forced an unnecessary election. Following the 37-day election campaign, which was focused on the Canadian economy, we moved quickly to reintroduce the budget on June 6. That was followed by four days of debate on the budget in June before we rose for the usual summer break in our constituencies.

When we came back in the autumn, we introduced the keeping Canada's economy and jobs growing act to implement the budget. That bill was debated for four days at second reading before being referred to the Standing Committee on Finance. That committee found time amid its 2012 pre-budget consultations to study the bill. After it was reported back to the House, it was debated for three further days at third reading and report stage. All told, the job-creating measures of the next phase of Canada's economic action plan as set out in Bill C-13 have been deliberated in this House for 12 days. That does not include the two afternoons used for the spring's two budget speeches. Just to repeat, we have had 12 days of debate on these important and urgent economic measures in this House. It is time for action.

I want to turn briefly to a second major bill in this fall sitting, Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act.

During this spring's election, our Conservative government promised Canadians that we would pass comprehensive law and order legislation within the first 100 sitting days after the election. Looking at today's order paper, I see that today is the 54th sitting day. Just yesterday, the bill was reported from the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. The bill includes important measures, including proposals which would crack down on pedophiles who prey on children, and violent gangs that sell drugs to our children. These are all very important items that need to become law.

Despite some 27 hours or so of committee proceedings dedicated to clause-by-clause study and related business, we already have some 34 amendments to the bill tabled for report stage, which we will have to debate and vote on. I have no doubt whatsoever that we will see that number grow before the bill comes forward for debate on Tuesday morning.

After report stage and third reading, the bill will then go to the other place where the entire legislative process will be repeated.

It is fair to say that we are just about one-third of the way through the passing of Bill C-10 into law. One-third might sound like a breeze to some, but passing the nine predecessor bills to Bill C-10 has been anything but a breeze over the last several years and, in some cases, over three Parliaments. There have already been 95 hours of debate in this chamber alone on these proposals. In both houses there have been 261 speeches. That sounds to me to be pretty thorough debate already.

If I had a lot more time, I would go on about some of the other key priority bills of the government, such as Bill C-20, the fair representation act, and Bill C-18, the marketing freedom for grain farmers act, just to name two. Each has its own important and urgent requirements to become law this fall in order to meet timing demands driven by facts of life outside the House of Commons. Farmers need certainty before they plant their spring crops. Boundary commissions need to know what numbers they are working with, and they need to know that by February.

I cannot help but comment on the proposals set out in the motion put forward today by the member for Windsor—Tecumseh. I have to be honest; I am quite confused by the mixed messages it sends.

The NDP House leader has put forward a motion that would give the Speaker only 19 sitting days to study his proposals. The debate he contemplates following the Speaker's report would appear to last but one single solitary day. If we look at the wording of his motion, the member is basically putting closure on his own motion.

On top of that, it is totally and completely ironic that the Speaker is required by the Standing Orders to put the NDP's motion to a vote after only two hours of debate in this House. This has to be the shortest debate on any item in the House since we came back in September.

In closing, Conservative members will be voting against the motion which tries to sidestep the fact that the opposition parties are trying to stop good things for Canadians, things which Canadians voted for just six months ago. The NDP wants to stop that great progress, to stop these things from becoming law, despite thorough and extensive debate and study.

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

moved:

That, in the opinion of the House, the thorough examination and debate of proposed legislation on behalf of Canadians is an essential duty of Members of Parliament, and that the curtailment of such debate limits the ability of Members to carry out this duty and constitutes an affront to Canadian democracy; and, therefore,

that the Speaker undertake a study and make recommendations to amend the Standing Orders with respect to closure and time allocation, such that: (i) a Minister would be required to provide justification for the request for such a curtailment of debate; (ii) the Speaker would be required to refuse such a request in the interest of protecting the duty of Members to examine legislation thoroughly, unless the government’s justification sufficiently outweighs the said duty; (iii) criteria would be set out for assessing the government’s justification, which would provide the Speaker with the basis for a decision to allow for the curtailment of debate;

that the Speaker report to the House no later than February 6, 2012;

that a motion to concur in the said report may be moved during Routine Proceedings, and that only when no Member rises to debate the motion, the Speaker shall interrupt any proceedings then before the House and put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment, every question necessary to dispose of the motion; and

if no motion to concur in the report has been previously moved and disposed of on the 20th sitting day following the presentation of the report, Standing Orders 57 and 78 shall be deemed to have been deleted.

Mr. Speaker, this motion has been brought before the House at this time because of the government's gross overuse of shutting down debate in the House, whether it is by a formal closure motion, which shuts down debate immediately, or by time allocation motions, which provide extremely limited time for debate on crucial issues facing both the House and the country more generally.

It is important that we recognize the effect of the motion. It is not that you, Mr. Speaker, need a greater workload, but that is the thrust of the motion. The motion would remove a government's unilateral ability to shut down debate in the House and would allow the Speaker, as an independent officer of Parliament, to make the decision as to when it is appropriate to curtail debate and when it is an abuse of the process. Therefore, a request for curtailment of debate could in fact be rejected by the Speaker of the day.

I have done some analysis of other jurisdictions that have similar parliaments to ours, such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. Going back some 20 or 30 years, all of them moved to provide greater authority to the speaker to regulate when debate should be curtailed, limited or ended. In each of those parliaments, it is quite clear that it is the speaker who ultimately makes the decision in that regard.

The authority is different in each of those legislatures, but the general wording and conduct of the speaker has always been: Is the request for curtailment or ending debate an abuse? Oftentimes the term “of a minority segment of that parliament” is used. It may be a large official opposition or it may be a small third, fourth or fifth party, but the speaker has the authority in each one of those parliaments to make the determination as to whether the request by the government to end or limit debate is an abuse of the rights of the members of Parliament.

I will move on to the context in which this motion is being put forward.

In less than two months of sitting days, we have had time allocation applied to Bill C-13, the budget bill, which was 640 pages long. We were given extremely limited time to debate it. It is the only time, that we have been able to determine, in the history of this country that such a limited amount of time has been given to a budget bill. I know the government House leader said that we had some debate on this in the previous Parliament. However, we have 100 new members of Parliament who were not here and had no opportunity to debate this in the last Parliament.

It is fundamental to our process that a budget bill be given a full extensive debate. We can go back to any number of the authorities where that is repeated over and over again, and not just in this legislature, but in every legislature that works off the Westminster model.

We then had Bill C-18 dealing with the Canadian Wheat Board. This is an institution that is well over 70 years of age. It is iconic in this country. However, on two occasions, at second reading and report stage, we were again slapped with time allocation.

The Wheat Board and the farmers in western Canada were entitled to that debate. The opposition should have been given time in both the House and in committee to deal with that issue. We were given extremely limited time given the significance of what was going to happen if the bill passed, especially when the majority of farmers in western Canada, who use the Wheat Board to sell their wheat, oppose the bill. However, again we were slapped with time allocation on two occasions.

Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, is made up of nine former bills brought together. Again the House leader said that we had time to debate this legislation. More than 100 new members did not have time to debate this extremely complex bill because they were not here in the last Parliament.

The Conservatives have accused the opposition of delaying this legislation. On more than one occasion, the NDP has offered to take the part of the bill that deals with crimes against children, sexual predator type crimes, and run it through at all stages. It already passed through the House once before, so we were quite comfortable in having that done. On the more than one occasion that we offered that to the government, it refused and then slapped time allocation on the balance of the bill.

It was the same thing with Bill C-19, the gun control bill. We were given extremely limited time to debate an issue that is topical and very controversial. As the debate has gone on, more and more evidence has come out around reasons to not do away with the long gun registry. There was no opportunity to debate that legislation in the House to any significant degree.

Finally, Bill C-20, the seats bill. The bill proposes to make significant changes to the composition of this Parliament and again we are being limited to a significant degree in our ability to deal with it. I sit on the committee that is looking at the bill and the same thing is happening there. Extreme limitations are being placed at committee with regard to the number of witnesses we are allowed to call.

It just boggles my mind when I try to understand what is going on, and I think I am reasonably intelligent in terms of understanding it. It is a complex process that is being engendered now and it is new. It is not what was here in the last Parliament at all. The bill is a new incarnation of the process. It would make a very significant change, and we are being given nowhere near the amount of time that we will need.

If we continue with the practice as it is right now, Bill C-20 will be out of committee and back before the House either by the end of next week or early the week following, when we have limited time to debate it here in the House and limited time in committee. The same can be said about the other four bills that I just mentioned. They all have had limited time in committee.

That is the context that we have. We have a precedent, if we want to put it that way, in other legislatures.

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.

As I said earlier, we have this other precedent. If the bill passes, it will mean more work for the Speaker of this Parliament and subsequent Speakers. However, we need to find a much more proper balance in terms of our ability as opposition members to do our job. Our responsibility here is to determine whether legislation coming from the government is appropriate, but we are not able to do that in the amount of time that we are being given at this point. We need to take the government's ability to limit time and place it in the hands of an independent member and, in this case, that would be the Speaker and his successors.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this is delivering results on jobs week.

I will begin by noting that the highlight of the week was the passage of the budget implementation act, Bill C-13, keeping Canada's economy and jobs growing act. That legislation has now moved on to the other place where we look forward to its passage.

We have also advanced Bill C-18, the marketing freedom for grain farmers act, past report stage. This bill would give marketing choice to western grain farmers, so it is a priority for us to have market certainty and have it passed by next year. For that reason, it is our intention to complete third reading of the bill on Monday.

Of course, Tuesday afternoon and again this morning, the House has continued debate on the opposition amendment to decline second reading of Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Copyright Act. We will continue that debate this afternoon. If the opposition finishes their effort to block this bill—after 16 hours of speeches—we will proceed to Bill C-14, Improving Trade Within Canada Act.

Tomorrow will be the sixth allotted day.

On Monday, we will start here for law-abiding Canadians week.

On Tuesday, we will start the post-committee stages of Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act. This will continue on Wednesday. I note that it was reported back from the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights this morning. I do want to thank the members of the committee on their 27 hours of meetings in just the past couple of weeks. All told, including the nine predecessor bills within this legislation, we have seen 95 hours of House debate, 261 speeches in both chambers of Parliament, not to mention 70 meetings in committee rooms of this place.

On Thursday, we will continue here for law-abiding Canadians week with the start of debate on second reading of Bill C-26, the citizen's arrest and self-defence act, which the Attorney General introduced recently. Should time permit after that debate next week, we will return to debate the opposition's motion to block Bill C-4, the human smuggling bill, from going to committee. We hope we will be able to complete the debate on the opposition's motion to prevent that bill from going to committee soon so that we may actually have it go to committee.

Finally, as part of this week’s delivering results on jobs week, on behalf of my honourable friend, the Minister of Finance, I am pleased to table a ways and means motion in support of the establishment of a financial literacy leader for Canada. As honourable members would know, November is Financial Literacy Month; an issue championed by the hon. member for Edmonton—Leduc, the chair of the finance committee.

Pursuant to Standing Order 83(2), I ask that an order of the day be designated for the consideration of this motion. For the benefit of the House, I plan to call this motion immediately after question period on Tuesday of next week.

Justice

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice, as all ministers of justice, has a duty to ensure that all government legislation comports with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, yet Bill C-10 raises serious constitutional concerns, including the risk of cruel and unusual punishment due to prison overcrowding, gross and disproportionate sentences, overly broad and vague offences, and disproportionate effects on already vulnerable people, such as aboriginals.

Will the Minister of Justice commit to tabling before the House a review of the constitutionality of Bill C-10 respecting these concerns and ensure that none of--

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Quebec's justice minister, Jean-Marc Fournier, has repeatedly asked the government to table studies to support Bill C-10, saying “Frankly, I cannot accept that we are making laws on criminal justice issues...guided by just personal observations”.

When will the government table these studies and recognize that bills have to be based on hard facts?

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

I recommend the minister read his own law.

This government, in the name of standing up for victims, is forcing a misguided crime bill on us that is based on personal observations instead of scientific studies. So much for being tough on crime.

The only study they have is from Justice Nunn, an expert on youth justice. This study does not have to do with every aspect of Bill C-10. In fact, this judge has been very critical of certain provisions of this bill.

Could the government give us just one scientific study in support of this bill?

Copyright Modernization Act

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish I knew what the Conservatives have against this country's workers. After the tax cuts to large corporations, the subsidies to oil companies and all the inappropriate expenditures for the G8 and the G20—always with Canadian taxpayers' money—the government now wants to target our artists' income.

Many of the artists we love, admire and appreciate are not rich. The majority of them have a very modest income and, because of the nature of their occupation, it is not a stable income. They must accept contracts and work at many jobs to provide for their needs and those of their family.

In Quebec, the average income of artists is estimated at $24,600 per year, based on the 2006 census data. We are talking about $24,600 to pay for rent, food and transportation, to send one's children to school and look after their needs. That amount must also cover heating costs and the material needed to create. What makes things even worse is that, with an annual income of $24,600, Quebec artists are considered to be the richest in Canada. That same year, the average income for artists in Canada was estimated at $22,700 per year.

These numbers reflect the reality of our actors, painters and singers. Our artists are struggling to make ends meet. While all the evidence should convince the government to provide increased support to our creators, it prefers, as in Bills C-10 and C-19, to ignore the facts and please the cultural industry's big businesses. This bill is going to hurt artists and make them poorer. And they certainly cannot afford that.

The Union des artistes is worried about its members' income and so are we on this side of the House. How can artists continue to create if they do not have the means to do so? Copyright royalties are an important source of income for Canada's creators. This government must ensure creators receive their fair share and are paid for their work.

I wish this government would take out its earplugs and start listening to the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, which is asking that the bill be amended so that artists are compensated fairly for the use of their creative work in the new media.

I also wish it would listen to the Society for Reproduction Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers in Canada, which is telling it that this bill is going to have a significant impact on creators' income and that it needs to be amended in order to strike a balance between the interests of creators and those of consumers. Unfortunately, as with Bills C-10, C-13, C-18 and C-20, this government prefers to turn a deaf ear.

Passing this bill would have a very negative impact on our country's cultural industry, and it would have a direct impact on creators' income. Moreover, many people are worried about producers and publishers, who would not enjoy the same protection as holders of scientific patents.

We are not stupid. Canada's copyright laws need to be reviewed. Former Bill C-32 was reviewed in committee, but the Conservatives chose yet again to ignore the recommendations made by the witnesses who appeared before the committee.

This bill could potentially create more problems than it solves. That is why I cannot support it in its current form. Even the Union des artistes finds that some of the wording is ambiguous and that court challenges are inevitable. For example, they cite the concept of fair dealing for the purpose of education and that of reasonable grounds.

Why is this government still refusing to listen to opinions that differ from its own? Why does this government not want to work with all the players involved in copyright in order to reform it properly and adapt it to the reality of the 21st century? Such stubbornness would not be so bad if Canadians did not have to bear the consequences of the government's bad bill. Copyright in the digital age has to build on two fundamental principles: accessibility for consumers and remuneration for the artists.

Unfortunately, the Conservative government has not respected either principle. It is directly compromising the millions of dollars in royalties artists receive under current copyright legislation, and it is encroaching on consumer rights by adopting provisions on digital locks.

The fact is that this bill gives consumers rights they will not be able to exercise. The general provisions on digital locks will allow the companies to decide which legal rights can be exercised and which cannot. This unbalanced perspective will end up harming artists and educators. That is also quite worrisome.

I urge this government, the Minister of Industry and the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, to review this bill in light of what was said in committee during consideration of the now defunct Bill C-32 and to listen to what the artists have been trying to get across, in order to ensure that this copyright reform is balanced and beneficial to everyone.

Justice and Human Rights

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in relation to Bill C-10, 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.

Bill C-18--Time Allocation Motion

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Endless debate accomplishes nothing, Madam Speaker. People watching this are concerned that we are wasting valuable time when there are other pieces of legislation that need to be moved forward. I know in the member's riding of Pontiac people are concerned about Bill C-10. They want to see that moved forward. They want to see an end to the long gun registry. They want to see those bills back before the House.

What we are doing is expeditiously moving forward legislation to give certainty and clarity to western Canadian farmers. I know the member for Pontiac supports farmers in his riding and I hope he will do the same for the farmers in mine.

Bill C-10

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition signed by over 100 constituents of Victoria who are expressing concern over Bill C-10 for two reasons.

They state that the costs have not been properly assessed and that the costs would fall to the provinces and would impact effective prevention programs. They are also concerned about the breadth and scope of the bill and they ask that the bill be divided so that it can be studied more attentively and more closely.

Justice

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

Mr. Speaker, it will absolutely not be necessary for Quebec to create its own criminal code. I would like to invite the hon. member to carefully read Bill C-10, because it is designed to protect both Canadians and Quebeckers. That is what the people asked us to do and that is what we are doing.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, by ramming through Bill C-10 on the Criminal Code, the Government of Canada is going to impose its values on the Government of Quebec and stick it with the bill as well. Quebec's National Assembly is currently debating whether the Government of Quebec should take action to establish its own criminal code.

Will the Prime Minister respond to Quebec's requests related to the Criminal Code, if Quebec asks him to?

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

Mr. Speaker, as I was saying, BIll C-10 was based on an important study prepared by Justice Nunn. That study led to amendments to the legislation that protects the public from young offenders. This legislation targets only violent and repeat offenders. This is a small percentage of the population—between 3% and 4%.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice has obstinately refused to counter the sensible, documented arguments made by Quebec's justice minister with anything but his own prejudices. Those arguments show that Bill C-10 will cause an avalanche of costs without reducing crime. Given the justice minister's position, I am wondering if this government still has a Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.

If so, I would ask that minister to rise in this House and tell us if he at least tried to explain to his colleague, the justice minister, what co-operative federalism means.

Canadian Human Rights Act

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am not really convinced by my colleague's answer to my question, but I am very open to debate in the House, to open and willing debate by those who wish to express their opinion about an issue. A number of important questions were raised in the House and they were all quickly dismissed by the government.

I am willing to believe that this bill is sponsored by a member who is not a minister, parliamentary secretary or other government member, but that does not mean there is not a problem in the House. People are constantly being prevented from debating. I was just informed that we will be voting tomorrow, once again, to limit debate at third reading. We come to the House and are told that we will be debating a certain issue. Bills are introduced. Sometimes the bills are very lengthy and require examination from different perspectives. However, as soon as there is an objection, limits are imposed on the time for debate. At second reading, we are told that we can debate the bill during the clause-by-clause study in committee. I just came from a committee meeting studying Bill C-10. We are practically being subjected to closure again in order to end the clause-by-clause study. We are talking about 208 clauses in a bill that will fundamentally change many things.

We have been told this evening by someone opposite that Bill C-304 is being introduced to protect freedom of speech. I have a great deal of difficulty believing words like that coming from anyone on the government bench and believing in their sincerity.

The people watching us are entitled to know what Bill C-304 is all about. Basically, it repeals section 13 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which prohibits hate speech.

This section was deemed to be consistent with the law by the Supreme Court. A few years ago there was a decision by a commission. It would follow the normal course. Since then, it seems to have put a chill on everyone. However, the Supreme Court had already ruled in Taylor that section 13 was within the law and that it was required in a free and democratic society.

It is important to understand that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms imposes limits on each right and each freedom. For one person, it is a right and for another, their right ends where the other person's begins.

The government has to stop scaring people, which is another one of its specialities. It is scaring people and leading them to believe that good citizens will be cheerfully brought before the courts to have their right to freedom of expression challenged and that it will cost them a fortune. There have not been tons of grievances. It is not as though everyone is running to the Human Rights Commission to file a grievance against someone for hate speech under section 13. I repeat: hate speech. The law also defines hate speech. It is not a small burden of proof. It is not just telling someone that you do not like the way they look. That would certainly not be considered hate speech.

However, I received a tweet asking me what I was going to do as the member for Gatineau about an issue that involved my former leader, who unfortunately passed away this summer, being compared to a member of the Gestapo and to Hitler by an Internet site called Park Avenue Gazette—not to give it publicity. It is so disgusting; it makes me sick to read things like that. People dig things up and use symbols from things that happened during the second world war and attribute it to people who are human beings. Imagine how those people or their families feel when they see such things.

We are always being told by the members opposite that the Criminal Code already provides for certain things. The member for Westlock—St. Paul did not answer my question.

He did not answer it, because the problem is that the burden of proof is significantly different if we rely strictly on the Criminal Code. The fact that there are remedies under a “permissible” provision and under the Criminal Code, which means indictments or summary conviction offences, as well as civil remedies or remedies under the charter is nothing new. That is the case here.

The Criminal Code is based on a different system of evidence. We can require proof beyond a reasonable doubt, while under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the burden of proof is somewhat less. There is a lot of window dressing involved to protect the freedom of expression. However, the freedom of expression does not give me the right to strongly criticize someone for any reason, to make that person feel like he is a nobody who does not really deserve to live.

Would that justify a remedy under the Criminal Code? I have serious doubts about this. Our crown prosecutors already have their hands full and they will have even more work with the government's Bill C-10. Therefore, I have a hard time imagining a crown prosecutor taking an interest in issues whose interpretation can vary depending on a number of things. The Canadian Human Rights Commission was a specialized organization responsible for examining a case and determining, before the matter would end up in court, whether there were grounds for complaint under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

We do not want that because many friends of the government—I am exaggerating here, let us just say some friends—not to mention reporters from western Canada, tried to get some things through and have been complaining for a long time that section 13 prevents them from saying everything they want to say. We live in Canada and I always thought that we should be respectful of one another, that we could disagree, but that we were not allowed to denigrate an individual. That is what this is about. Making someone feel like a nobody, sometimes in a systematic way, has nothing to do with freedom of expression.

I cannot believe that the Conservatives want to have anything to do with these sites that disparage francophones, people who believe in bilingualism and in the French language, and people who believe this country exists thanks to two nations, including the aboriginal nations. I cannot believe they want to wash their hands of this and allow people to say whatever they want. It would be like me saying my colleague here is a so-and-so, but it is no big deal because I have freedom of expression.

I agree that it is important to have this debate and I would never want to stop it from happening. I hope that as many people as possible will stand up and talk about this and reiterate loud and clear what the Supreme Court of Canada said in the Taylor decision.

When Chief Justice Dickson upheld the constitutional validity of section 13 in Taylor, he spoke on behalf of the Supreme Court. I will close on this, but I have so much more to say. Again, my freedom of expression will be kept in check because of the limited amount of time we have to talk about this. The following is an excerpt from that ruling:

Parliament's concern that the dissemination of hate propaganda is antithetical to the general aim of the Canadian Human Rights Act is not misplaced. The serious harm caused by messages of hatred was identified by the Special Committee on Hate Propaganda in Canada, commonly known as the Cohen Committee, in 1966. The Cohen Committee noted that individuals subjected to racial or religious hatred may suffer substantial psychological distress, the damaging consequences including a loss of self-esteem, feelings of anger and outrage and strong pressure to renounce cultural differences that mark them as distinct. This intensely painful reaction undoubtedly detracts from an individual's ability to, in the words of section 2 of the Act, "make for himself or herself the life that he or she is able and wishes to have". As well, the Committee observed that hate propaganda can operate to convince listeners, even if subtlety, that members of certain racial or religious groups are inferior.

I could go on about this at length. It is a great debate to be had and I hope Canada will not repeal section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Copyright Modernization Act

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-11.

Like the member for Trinity—Spadina, we both represent ridings, mine in Vancouver and the hon. member's in Toronto, that do have many artists and people who work in the cultural sector. We very much share that in terms of our ridings. We know how much concern there is about the bill and whether or not it does indeed strike the right balance.

Sometimes legislation can go through Parliament and not be noticed very much. Other times we find there is a huge amount of interest in legislation and there are campaigns to try to stop something, like we have seen with Bill C-10, the omnibus bill on drug crimes and other measures.

The bill before us has been very surprising because it is highly technical in nature. It is a complex issue when it comes to talking about copyright. Yet, in my community of east Vancouver, over the last couple of years, there has been significant debate about this issue because people recognize that copyright modernization is long overdue. They have of course been aware that the Conservative government was bringing forward legislation and in fact we have seen a previous version of the bill. It was identical in the last Parliament.

I have actually been surprised in a good way that there is so much debate out in the community about copyright, about the needs of cultural workers, artists, creators, as well as libraries. I am sure like many MPs, I have had visitations from, in my case, the Vancouver Public Library. I think I have met with them two or three times over the last few years about copyright issues.

A hallmark of public libraries is public accessibility. It is one of the few remaining places in our society where, no matter who individuals are, whether they are very wealthy or they are living on welfare and below the poverty line, they have access to a public library. It is a public institution. It is publicly owned and the services are publicly accessible.

Issues of public access and copyright are critically important when it comes to public libraries. The Canadian Library Association, the B.C. Library Association and the Vancouver Public Library have all brought forward very thoughtful comments, proposals and ideas about copyright, and what needs to be done. It has been a very interesting process to see the level of engagement around the bill.

Our copyright critic, the member for Timmins—James Bay, has done an incredible job of staying on top of this issue. As New Democrats we do believe that copyright modernization is long overdue. There is no question about that. I do not think there is any disagreement from any of us about that reality.

Obviously, the issue before us here today, though, is the bill. Does the bill, as it is currently manifested, contain the right balance in terms of public access for students? We just heard from the member for Trinity—Spadina who read one clause of the bill that seems particularly onerous. Is there an adequate balance of those rights and provisions in terms of protecting creators' artistic copyright as well as ensuring that there is public access?

Our member for Timmins—James Bay has gone through this with a magnifying glass in great detail and has also had numerous public consultations, town hall meetings, and an enormous response from stakeholders. He has come to the conclusion, and we have had discussions about this within our own caucus as well, that the bill unfortunately does not have the right balance and, in fact, there are many glaring problems. In some situations, and this is very unfortunate, the bill itself would even create problems when none existed before.

The principle of modernization is good but, of course, the devil is in the details, as we all know. It is really important that if this particular bill, as it is being debated in the House at second reading, which is in principle, does go committee, and I assume that it will because the government has a majority, there be a very close examination. We want to ensure that copyright laws in Canada can balance the right of creators to be fairly compensated for their work and the right of consumers to have reasonable access to copyrighted content.

I know that the government believes that the bill would do that. Unfortunately, upon close examination, we believe that there are serious problems with the bill, that there are flaws, and that if there is a genuine interest to work on the bill and to improve it, then I think we could end up with a bill that would actually reflect the balance that we all want to see.

I say that with maybe some optimism and hope, but also with the knowledge that this is the government that has rammed through legislation in the last few weeks since we came back and brought in time allocation, I think it is seven times now, and is hell-bent on forcing Bill C-10 through committee and having it come back into the House.

I truly believe that if as legislators we are to do our job, one of the most important processes of the legislative process is what happens in committee and it is not a matter of just playing for time or being frivolous. There is a real process that takes place. I have been part of that on a number of committees over the years and I know other members of this House have as well. When that happens, we actually can end up with something that is a better product, that is truly a reflection of what experts are telling us and what the prospective is of the political elements within this House.

I do hope that on this bill, because it does have such a long history and it is now the third time around that it has come forward, there actually will be a commitment from the Conservative government and the minister to allow the committee to actually do its work, and then it would not just simply be rammed through.

There are people in Canadian society who are incredibly expert on this issue. They do need to be heard. Now, I know the government is going to say it did all these consultations and it has done it all. This is before a legislative committee, though. This is part of a real process where people need to be heard.

The NDP is willing to work on this bill. We think there are serious problems, but we are willing to work on it. However, in its current form, it is not something that we think is supportable.

In terms of some of the specifics which I would just like to go into, one of the problems that we have is that this bill would formally enshrine in legislation commonplace grey area practices that enable users to record TV programs for later viewing as long as they do not compile a library of recorded content, which is often called time shifting, transfer songs from CDs onto their MP3 players, called format shifting, and make backup copies.

We are also very concerned that it would create new limited exceptions to the fair dealing provision of the Copyright Act, including the exceptions for educators, and exceptions for parody and satire that Canadian artists have been asking for. The exceptions to fair dealing contained in Bill C-11 represent some of the most contentious elements of the proposed legislation.

I know that there is also a very serious concern about the digital locks and that this would override many aspects of the balance that is being sought here. Experts like Michael Geist and the cultural industries have all spoken to this issue. For example, Michael Geist, who is a renowned technology commentator, said:

The foundational principle of the new bill remains that anytime a digital lock is used--whether on books, movies, music, or electronic devices--the lock trumps virtually all other rights.

This clearly is a problem and something that needs to be fixed.

The statement of cultural industries, which represents 80 arts and cultural organizations across the country, argues that the bill may be “toxic to Canada's digital economy” and has a lot of concerns about the bill. The bill needs to be changed and fixed. If there is goodwill from the government to do that, and it acts in good faith, then maybe that is possible to do.

Telephone Calls to Mount Royal Constituents

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to make an additional submission relative to the question of privilege I raised in this place last week regarding phone calls to constituents in my riding asking them if they would support the Conservatives in the impending, if not imminent, byelection in my riding.

Clearly, as long as I am standing in this place there is no byelection in my riding. Equally, if not more important, I am as engaged now as I ever have been on the issues of the day, both domestic and international, on this the 12th anniversary of my first election in November 1999.

It is not only that the false and misleading information overshadows and overtakes my involvement, whether it be on the domestic justice issues of the day or whether it be on my urgent legal representation of an Egyptian political prisoner, but rather that my constituents hear only the false rumours that I have stepped down rather than reports of what I am in fact engaged in.

While my office has provided the table clerks with a list of constituents who were contacted as well as some of the correspondence my office has received, I rise because there is some new information that I believe must be made known to the Speaker and all members of the House before the Speaker's ruling is made.

I stressed in my first intervention that my concern about this reprehensible practice was not a personal one, but rather one that affects all members of this place.

Indeed, a story that aired on CBC Montreal about this found that some of the people contacted do not even live in my riding of Mount Royal. One Montrealer said in the CBC story, “Somebody told me that they were representing the Prime Minister and they were asking me for my support in the upcoming byelection. I asked him what byelection he was talking about”.

I believe this case study illustrates my point in the sense that the constituent who reported to me that she resides in the riding of Westmount—Ville-Marie said that she was politically aware enough to know that I was not stepping down. However, I can imagine that someone who follows politics less and lives in the riding ofWestmount—Ville-Marie might have been made to believe that in fact the member for Westmount—Ville-Marie had resigned or was planning to resign, so it goes beyond me in this regard.

While I am aware that it is not up to me to make a privileged submission on behalf of that hon. member, I again draw the attention of the House to the pronouncement from Speaker Bosley, reprinted on page 113 of O'Brien and Bosc, which states:

It should go without saying that a Member of Parliament needs to perform his functions effectively and that anything tending to cause confusion as to a Member's identity creates the possibility of an impediment to the fulfilment of that Member's functions. Any action which impedes or tends to impede a Member in the discharge of his duties is a breach of privilege.

Indeed, while I contend the practice has breached my privilege, I believe it has also, at least in this instance, breached the privilege of the member for Westmount—Ville-Marie, as it would also breach the privilege of any member whose riding is so targeted or whose constituents receive such calls.

I say this, lest there be any confusion, that we all understand that political parties engage in fundraising, outreach and the like when Parliament is sitting. Such actions are perfectly permissible provided the rules are respected, the law is followed, and no privilege is breached. This practice, however, breaches my privilege by implying that I am not in this place and fulfilling my duties, as I could not be if I had indeed stepped down. As I said, it causes confusion in the minds of my constituents as to whether I am currently their MP and what in fact I am doing in this place.

Moreover, in the case of calls outside my riding, it may cause confusion to the electorate in other electoral districts as well.

This is far different from the usual party activity when there is no election. It is one thing to do a general fundraiser, as many members do, or even send literature, although as Speakers have ruled in the past, and in the case of my riding, this too may breach a privilege in certain situations.

The problem is that these misleading calls misrepresent an alleged imminent byelection. While the notion of an impending byelection may drum up support for it, it implies a sense of urgency. Stating that there is a byelection, in effect, implies a great deal about the member presently serving or, indeed, if he or she is even serving at all. Indeed, it implies that he or she is not serving and will not serve much longer.

Thus, while I wholeheartedly welcome disagreement and debate about my politics and positions, and this is a fundamental activity that must be protected in a free and democratic society, I must reject any assertion or implication that I am not here in this place acting as I should and advocating on my constituents' behalf.

Indeed, I have been in committee with hon. members on the other side in all parts of the House from 8:45 a.m. today, exiting only for question period and this statement, and will be there until midnight tonight and tomorrow as well to propose my amendments to the crime bill, Bill C-10.

This is the important point, and I do not wish to sound self-serving in any way, but all this gets overshadowed and forgotten if my constituents do not think I am even here and it overtakes them finding out what in fact I am doing when I am here. In fact, the press tends to only ask me questions about these phone calls without seeking to understand positions I may be taking on other compelling issues of the day in concert with members of the House.

Further, we now have some new information about the source of these calls. Whereas in my initial submission I identified the firm, Campaign Research, ties to the Conservative Party have since become clear. Indeed, the person who was the Conservative candidate in the last election in my riding and who was rumoured to be candidate in the imminent byelection, though I stress again, should any constituents be watching, there is no byelection, imminent, pending or the like, he said, “I have nothing to do with it, it is a party thing”.

That is a quote in a document presented to the table officers, which I will provide to any members who may wish to see it.

Further, news reports cite Conservative Party spokesman, Fred DeLorey, saying that the party “does not comment on operation matters”, when asked, which, to my mind, implies some level of involvement.

While I still believe the matter constitutes a prima facie breach of privilege and, as such, should be referred to the appropriate committee for inquiry and investigation, I believe it is now imperative that the committee be given the matter to investigate given that there are obviously individuals who could be called as witnesses on this matter.

Indeed, Mr. Speaker, as your predecessor once noted in 2007, though I suspect that the comment may have been made partially in jest, and I so characterize it:

...I hate to deprive the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs with an opportunity to examine witnesses on a question that I know would thrill the members of the committee.

Whether it is thrilling or not, I do not know, but I know it is sufficiently serious to warrant referral.

Should the committee find that the practice is indeed a breach of privilege, fines could be imposed for making such calls, individuals who ordered them might arguably be found in contempt of the House or, short of this, and I believe it would be in line with the established way privilege matters work, those responsible might acknowledge that the practice occurred on their watch, apologize for having engaged in it and the damage it has done, and all parties would undertake not to engage in such behaviour.

This would establish a welcome precedent that in the view of the House it is not proper for anyone to tell one's constituents that a member has resigned or is resigning when he or she remains a quite active and involved member of this place.

I have one last point. Unless the government plans to break its own election law and dissolve Parliament, the next election is clearly not impending or imminent as is being implied to my constituents, and, indeed, at such time it would then be a general election and not a byelection.

On the point of byelections, O'Brien and Bosc note on page 189 that byelections only occur when there is a “vacancy in the representation”, and further, precisely on page 241, that:

A person ceases to be a Member of the House of Commons when:

that person dies;

that person resigns his or her seat;

that person has accepted an office of profit or emolument under the Crown;

that person has been elected to sit in a provincial or territorial legislative assembly or on a municipal council;

the Member's election has been overturned in accordance with the Canada Elections Act; or

the House has, by order, declared that the Member's seat is vacant and has ordered the Speaker to address a warrant to the Chief Electoral Officer for the issue of a writ of election for a new Member.

At the risk of reiterating the list, I have mentioned the list only so that it would be clear that none of these items accord with the present circumstances or my circumstances in any way.

Mr. Speaker, I assure you that there is no pending, let alone impending, byelection and all calls to the contrary are false, misleading and prejudicial to the workings of this House, to my constituents and to myself.

Justice

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

Mr. Speaker, we have listened very carefully to our provincial counterparts. I pointed out there is an amendment to Bill C-10 that was proposed by the Province of Quebec. We were very pleased to receive that.

The hon. member is looking for statistics. There is one statistic I was very pleased to see. Leger Marketing recently published a survey which showed that 77% of Quebeckers support tougher sentences for criminals. That is a great statistic, and I agree with that completely.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Minister Fournier came away from this morning's meeting with his federal counterpart empty-handed. The federal minister told him that he did not have confidence in the statistics provided by Quebec, the expertise of Quebec's lawyers or the opinion of the Barreau du Québec.

Furthermore, a survey revealed this morning that only 22% of Quebeckers believe that Bill C-10 will help reduce crime and 65% believe that the federal government should pay the additional costs associated with this bill.

Is this the federal government's idea of open federalism? Is this its new way of co-operating with Quebec, that is, telling it to take a hike?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am always glad to welcome my colleagues from across the country. When the minister of justice from Quebec asked for a meeting on Monday or Tuesday, I was pleased to accommodate him.

I pointed out to the minister, as I have pointed out to the House on a number of occasions, that there is absolutely nothing in Bill C-10 that would in any way compromise or prohibit the province from reaching out and helping to rehabilitate young people. The bill concentrates on a small group of out of control young people who are a danger to themselves and to the public, and this is why it should have the support of all members of Parliament.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Quebec's minister of justice came to Ottawa today, sincerely hoping that the federal Minister of Justice would be willing to listen to what he had to say about Bill C-10, dealing with criminal justice. Instead, he got a slap in the face.

Is the government listening? Does it realize that it is jeopardizing Quebec's approach to rehabilitation for young offenders? This government is disrespectful. Is it prepared to be reasonable?

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

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister continues to thumb his nose at the provinces with his sledgehammer approach to justice. Quebec has had to plead with the justice minister just to get a meeting before the government forces its prisons agenda through committee this week.

Paying lip service is not enough. Will the government actually listen to the provinces that want to bring changes about in Bill C-10? Will it be a partner with the provinces or will it continue to turn its back on them?

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, every man, woman and child has the right to respect, dignity and pride. Every year, innocent people are the victims of heinous crimes. These crimes have a serious impact on their lives, their loved ones and our entire society.

I would like to commend Senator Boisvenu for all the hard work he has done to inform Canadians about the real purpose and scope of Bill C-10. Like dozens of organizations, Senator Boisvenu truly cares about the safety of our young people and vulnerable populations. He wants to protect them from drug problems and prevent repeat sexual offences at all costs. We have the power and the duty to act, and we encourage all organizations to join our fight to prevent what cannot be undone.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Madam Speaker, we are always happy to work with our provincial counterparts. The principles of rehabilitation and reintegration, which have been so successful in Quebec, will continue to serve as the basis for Canada's youth justice system.

We have responded to Quebec's concerns with a series of past amendments, as well as a new amendment that is tabled at the justice committee now.

We are taking a balanced approach. We are listening. It is time for the opposition to end its grandstanding, support victims and support our measures on Bill C-10.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Madam Speaker, in his response to the Quebec justice minister on Bill C-10, the Minister of Justice expressed all his contempt for Quebec's 40 years of rehabilitation expertise, particularly its expertise in the rehabilitation of young offenders. The minister wrote that it is important to work with its provincial partners but this appears to be a one-way partnership—my way or no way.

Will the Minister of Justice put aside his ideological obsession and respect the will of Quebec by incorporating Quebec's required amendments into the bill, namely those pertaining to the long-term protection of the public and the rehabilitation and social reintegration of young offenders?

Democracy

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Madam Speaker, being in power also means working with the provinces. Over the past week we have seen this government's attitude toward Quebec. We have seen how the Conservatives are dealing with Bill C-10 and jeopardizing Quebec's approach to rehabilitation. We saw how this government dealt with Minister Dutil, who was told that the firearms registry database will not be available.

Working in our country, within this confederation, also requires working with the provinces. When are they going to do that?

Justice

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Madam Speaker, Canadians are concerned about crime, which is why they gave our government a strong mandate to keep our streets and communities safe. We need to keep that focus.

The opposition wants to punish law-abiding duck hunters and farmers but oppose tougher sentences for pedophiles and drug dealers.

The fact is that Parliament has already seen and debated the measures contained in Bill C-10. Over the course of the past four years, the justice committee has had 67 days, which was 139 hours of discussions, 95 hours of debate, 261 speeches and 363 witness appearances.

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

Madam Speaker, yesterday, the government finally agreed to delay ramming Bill C-10 through committee to allow at least some debate, which is a good sign, but now the government must take the next step.

Will the government agree not only to stop ramming this behemoth of a crime bill through, but to allow a meaningful debate and agree to reasonable amendments, like the ones suggested by groups such as the Canadian Bar Association, legal experts and the provinces?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Madam Speaker, Canadians, including Quebeckers, want this government to take action to protect the people of Canada from criminals. That is why we introduced Bill C-10.

If the opposition parties have amendments to propose that will provide Canadians with stronger protection against criminals, the government will consider them. However, we are asking the NDP why it has voted against every bill designed to protect Canadians from criminals.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Madam Speaker, yesterday, the Conservatives finally decided to compromise a little and allow members of Parliament to do their work and examine the provisions of Bill C-10. The Minister of Justice even demonstrated flexibility by indicating to the Government of Quebec that it might be possible to reintroduce the amendments proposed by his Quebec counterpart.

Can the government confirm that it is prepared to amend its bill in order to focus on rehabilitation and social reintegration?

Preventing Persons from Concealing Their Identity during Riots and Unlawful Assemblies Act

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak to Bill C-309, but I want to begin by confronting the Conservatives on their obsession with crime. We have before us a bill ostensibly produced by the folks in the Prime Minister's Office or the Conservative House leader's office. I think we need to be clear about this. Their so-called crime agenda is in full swing, predicated on ideology and not evidence. They do not believe in evidence or facts.

The Conservatives want to continue creating fear among Canadians and to perpetuate the idea that there is rampant crime on the streets, that there are riots everywhere, that the government, in response, must be brave and take decisive action to breathe life into that particular bogeyman. On the rare occasion that Conservatives might actually propose something that appears worthy of some consideration, they wonder why Canadians are suspicious.

The Conservatives' record of ignoring evidence and perpetuating fear is well-known. The fear agenda gives me rise to questions about their sincerity. One only has to look at Bill C-10, safe streets and communities act. As far as I am concerned, it should be called “keeping the myth of out of control crime alive so we can fundraise to our right-wing base act”.

For the Conservatives, repeating a myth often enough convinces them that it must be true. It is a classic right-wing Republican tactic; that is to say, the Conservatives operate not unlike a pack of hyenas. They see an opportunity to feast on the fears of Canadians, fears which are often of their own creation, and then they pounce. As part of the bullying tactics, they are always ready to attack anyone who disagrees with them, then issue a fundraising letter containing more myths. This behaviour, now firmly rooted in their political DNA, is a again not unlike the hyena, opportunistic and completely natural. Then they call it tough on crime. I call it tough on facts and evidence.

When I meet people around the country and in my riding, they are not running up to me and talking about crime or crime rates. They are more concerned about jobs and the economy. They are concerned that my riding of Charlottetown is losing 500 jobs as a result of cuts to Veterans Affairs. They are worried about the cuts to Service Canada and the closure of EI processing centres.

They do not understand why the federal government is the only level of government that will not participate in the funding to clean up a sewage problem in the Charlottetown harbour. They do not understand why the Conservatives have cancelled a cable that would ensure energy security to Prince Edward Island.

Here we are with another crime bill. Why did the member not introduce a bill to reduce poverty in Canada, a bill to help the poor, and to bring them in from the margins of poverty? Why did he not do that?

It is as if the Conservatives lie awake at night dreaming about ways to put more and more people in prison. It is an obsession rooted not in science or evidence, or even reason. It is irrational.

I want to assure the member that none of us on this side will stand by while Conservatives proffer myths or slogans. None of us on this side will tolerate the idea that because we disagree with the Conservatives on matters related to crime, that somehow we do not care or we are soft on crime. It is a falsehood and the members opposite know it. To disagree with the government is not a crime, at least not yet, but who knows?

With respect to the bill, we all witnessed what happened in Vancouver last year during the Stanley Cup. We know that the behaviour of far too many people was deplorable and criminal. None of us who sat around watching the hockey game that night and the news stories thereafter were thinking, gee, we wish there were more destruction and violence. None of us said, “Gee, I hope that guy who just set fire to the car gets away with it”. Listening to the Conservatives though, one would think that members from this side were there and involved.

I wonder what the member thinks about his own government's behaviour with respect to the G20 in Toronto. What does he think about what occurred, when at the G20 peaceful protesters, yes, peaceful protesters, were summarily denied their constitutional and charter rights to freely assemble?

What does he think, when protesters, acting peacefully, not violently, were kettled, rounded up and detained in violation of their charter rights? Why is the member not proposing a bill about protecting the rights of legitimate protesters?

What is his position on those well-documented violations of constitutional rights? Does he believe that citizens have a right to peaceful protest? Why is it that he and his government have refused thus far a public inquiry into the behaviour of the police and his own government with respect to the serious and rampant violation of constitutional rights at the G20?

The right of Canadians to assemble, and to do so peacefully, is a right protected by the charter, a document that many on the other side deep down really do detest. Rioting is already a crime, as the member knows.

The bill before us is deliberately framed in a way that if anyone were to disagree or to suggest amendments, he or she would automatically be designated as a traitor to a Conservative crime cause. Conservatives call that debate?

No one wants to support any Canadian engaging in activity that destroys property, encourages violence and rioting. None of us wish to support the deliberate concealment of someone while engaging in a riot. However, if this government were truly serious about this issue, this proposal would be on the government agenda. If it were brought in by government, it would have been open to have been tested, as required by statute by the Department of Justice, to ensure that it was constitutional.

This is a government bill in disguise. The suggestion that a backbench MP, in this environment, in the controlled and contrived Conservative government, such as the one we have now, would produce a bill without the consent of the PMO and its House leader's office is quite frankly a stretch.

If the government were serious about amending the Criminal Code to deal with aggravating circumstances, such as those contemplated in this private member's bill, it should have introduced a government bill. At least that would have allowed for greater and wider debate. The Conservatives are not interested in debate, nor facts, nor evidence. We see a sad example happening right now in the justice committee.

We will review Bill C-309, insist that it receive a thorough analysis, and if necessary, propose amendments. Until we are convinced that the bill meets the test of the charter, we will not and cannot support it.

Members should listen to this because what I am about to say will probably send shivers up the spines of the Conservatives. If we can be convinced by evidence and facts, and the testimony of experts that this bill is constitutional, then let the debate begin.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, as we have said before, our government's top priority is the economy. Despite global economic challenges, nearly 600,000 new jobs have been created in Canada, 90% of them full-time. Through Canada's economic action plan our government has put forward focused and effective policies that have promoted job creation and economic growth in all sectors of the economy. That has been reflected in this week's successful jobs and economic growth week.

Our government will continue to focus on delivering important measures for Canada's economy. Thus, next week we will be delivering results on jobs week, and anticipate passing the next phase of our low tax plan for jobs and growth next week.

Beginning tomorrow, we will move forward on report stage for Bill C-18, Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act. This important bill provides economic choice to western Canadian farmers. I understand that the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre has a number of amendments on the notice paper, but keep in mind that getting this bill passed would give farmers predictability for next year's growing season, which is an objective. I am looking forward to a productive, efficient and civil debate on the legislation, which will finally deliver freedom to western Canadian grain farmers after seven decades.

We will continue debate on Bill C-18 next Wednesday. I am hoping that we will be debating the bill's third reading on Wednesday, if the debate tomorrow turns out to be productive and efficient. In the last election, we committed to moving forward with Canada's economic action plan, a low tax plan for jobs and growth. Canadians gave our Conservative government a majority mandate to implement our plan.

On Monday, we will have the final day of debate on Bill C-13, the Keeping Canada's Economy and Jobs Growing Act, our primary bill in job creation and economic prosperity week. Bill C-13 implements important measures from our budget such as the small business tax credit and the extension of the accelerated capital cost allowance to make our manufacturers more competitive.

On Tuesday morning, we will continue debate on Bill C-7, the Senate Reform Act. The bill has already been debated on three days, so I hope that following Tuesday's debate the opposition will allow members to vote on this bill that will allow the Senate to reach its full potential as an accountable and democratic institution.

On Tuesday afternoon, we will continue debate on the opposition's motion to block Bill C-11, the copyright modernization act. The bill is another of our priority economic bills that the opposition is trying to prevent coming to a vote through what it calls a reasoned amendment.

Bill C-11 would create modern copyright laws to protect and create jobs, promote innovation, and attract new investment to Canada. This will be the fourth day that the bill has been debated. The time has come for members to have the chance to vote on this important economic bill. However, if the opposition continues in its efforts to delay and block the bill, we will again debate it on Thursday.

As is always the case, we will give priority to other important bills that may be reported back by committees. I refer especially to Bill C-10, as I understand that the justice and human rights committee is working hard, even as we speak, to complete its clause-by-clause consideration of the bill later today, I hope.

Finally, the next allotted day will be on Friday, November 25.

Opposition Motion—Aboriginal Affairs

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to enter the debate on the opposition day motion on water in first nations communities.

We have identified this as an issue whose time has come to be solved. This morning the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada spoke very clearly about the fact that there has been inadequate attention paid to this issue by all parties over the years. We can argue who has done good things and who has not done good things. His plea was that we put partisanship aside and we recognize together that there is no reason for not solving the problem. The problem is the inequity in terms of access to safe, clean drinking water and waste water treatment in first nations communities compared with non-aboriginal communities. I could not agree more.

This is an issue that all members of Parliament care about. It is a humanitarian issue. It is an equity issue. It is about safety. It is about saving lives. It just takes political will. This motion invites members of Parliament to agree that the time to solve this problem is now.

All levels of government share a responsibility for ensuring that all Canadians have reliable access to clean, safe drinking water.

We need to establish a strategy immediately in order to ensure that all aboriginal communities have access to drinking water. We need to take pertinent and decisive action to resolve this completely unacceptable situation.

There are fundamental water problems in Canada. Water is a very complex issue. The delivery of safe and clean drinking water is extremely complex. I learned that in my first year as minister of the environment in British Columbia. There were far too many boil water advisories in British Columbia. As the environment minister, I worked with the health minister to look at our approach to drinking water. A panel of experts headed by up by Mr. David Marshall, who was the chair of the Fraser Basin Council, assessed a proposed new drinking water act. It provided feedback to the government. That act was duly passed. There was also a safe drinking water action plan.

That action plan addressed the cumulative impacts on water. It gave communities the power to bring industry, the municipal government, non-governmental organizations and government departments together to develop a plan for addressing the cumulative impacts on water. The regulations gave the government some teeth for making sure that the challenges to obtaining safe and clean water were addressed. Having gone through that process, I am aware of the great complexities that plague us in having safe drinking water in communities across our geographically vast nation.

The regulatory and legislative gaps are still rife, despite the fact that many provinces and the federal government have made efforts to address that issue. Federal-provincial jurisdiction is always a challenge. The federal government wants to ensure it is not stepping into a provincial jurisdiction and provincial governments may be waiting for the federal government to take leadership.

Provinces and the federal government work together often in a constructive way. The leader of the Liberal Party pointed out that when he was premier, the government of Ontario worked with the Liberal government in Ottawa to address issues of inequitable access to safe water and infrastructure in aboriginal communities. The federal-provincial sharing of jurisdiction, of which water is a classic example, does not need to mean inaction or ineffectiveness. It simply needs to be addressed in the development of the strategy. It means working with the provinces to solve this problem.

By the way, I would not consider that to be a great strength of the current Conservative government. Consultation with the provinces in matters such as its crime bill, Bill C-10, and other matters has been missing completely and consultation certainly is necessary in a water strategy such as the Liberals are proposing in this motion.

There is a deficit across Canada in all categories of infrastructure. Municipalities, small and large alike, have gone to the federal government to reinforce that it is the federal government that has the ability to tax. A large percentage of taxes that are levied are federal government taxes, but the majority of infrastructure is the responsibility of municipalities. There is a mismatch.

There is over $1 billion in new funding needed immediately, and $4.7 billion over the next 10 years to upgrade water and waste water infrastructure to existing standards, according to a national report regarding first nations reserves. It would take $4.7 billion over 10 years to address this problem. Those are significant resources especially at a time when Canada is facing a slowdown in its economy, and we have not yet made up the half a million full-time net jobs that we have lost since before the recession.

Let us put this into perspective. What is the cost to the treasury as a result of the reduction in taxes for large and profitable corporations? Their tax rate will go down from 16.5% to 15.5%.

I was at a breakfast this morning with the eminent economist Jack Mintz from Alberta. When asked about corporate tax rates, he said that his view is that they are appropriate right now. They are far lower than those in the United States. He is not calling for additional tax reductions.

The Conservative government is planning a corporate tax reduction from 16.5% to 15.5%. That will cost the treasury well over the $4.7 billion over 10 years that is needed for first nations waste water and drinking water infrastructure.

Rather than further reduce corporate taxes, the government could decide that it would be more important to ensure that first nations living in communities without running water have safe drinking water and waste disposal. Imagine that. Is the government able to rethink its ideological decisions and do what is right to provide justice and equality for our first nations people? I hope so.

What about the government's new approach to crime? It will mean harsher and longer sentences for young people. Criminologists and people working in our criminal justice system say that will be counterproductive.

Many aspects of Bill C-10 are widely criticized by criminologists and public safety professionals. Many Canadians are concerned about the increased criminalization of Canadians and the effect that would have on first nations. The reality is there is a disproportionate number of first nations people in our jails, and it will be even worse when Bill C-10 passes.

We have been arguing that those funds should be put into supports to prevent young aboriginal people in our cities from ending up in prison, as opposed to bringing in longer prison sentences, more prison sentences, and inflexible sentencing.

There are nine former bills rolled into that one bill. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated that the government's crime agenda will cost $5 billion. Let us take that $5 billion and use it to upgrade the water infrastructure in remote first nations communities, those communities where people are carrying their water in buckets. Let us solve that problem rather than throwing more aboriginal young people in jail. I would ask the Conservative members to think about that.

Does it make more sense to add more prisoners to our already overcrowded prisons? Because of overcrowding, 85% of prisoners cannot access the drug treatment programs or anger management programs they are required to do under the conditions of their corrections plan. The government added $120 million over five years for security, for dog teams, ion scanners and security experts. Why? Because overcrowding leads to more criminal behaviour in prison. The government wants to further overcrowd the prisons and dump more money into prison security, and yet it is cutting the drug treatment program in prisons. This is only going to get worse and become more expensive.

We should use the funds that Canada will have to dedicate because of Bill C-10 and the overcrowded prisons to address the lack of access to running water in our first nations communities.

As of last year, 116 first nations reserve communities across Canada were under a drinking water advisory. On average, these drinking water advisories last a year. They cannot drink water for that period of time. What are they going to do? They are going to spend time boiling that water, using expensive diesel fuel or other fuel that in some cases has been flown into their communities, so they and their children do not get sick.

That is completely unacceptable. Too many of these communities have living conditions that are shocking to Canadians when travelling to other countries and seeing some of the communities without running water and waste disposal. We should be shocked into action, knowing that those communities are rampant in Canada.

There are a number of things that have led to this problem. The government's response so far has been to cut Environment Canada's environmental monitoring program. We need to add resources. The answer is not regulation without resources. These communities do not have resources.

I want to just touch on some of the myths about water in Canada. I recently hosted a policy breakfast in Vancouver Quadra with a very eminent, recognized professor at UBC, Dr. Karen Bakker. She is the author of a book about water called, Eau Canada, which has been very highly regarded and has won awards.

Dr. Bakker came to my policy breakfast to talk about five myths of Canada's water. One of them is that we have the most abundant fresh water anywhere. That is not true. There are countries that have more fresh water, and certainly on a volume of water per square hectare, we are not near the top of the pack.

The myth is that our fresh water is clean. In fact, we lag in terms of the cleanliness of our water. Unfortunately we know that some of our industrial developments are contaminating our water. With some of our farming practices, even in the Fraser Valley, in today's era of understanding the threats to groundwater of overusing fertilizer or mismanaging the disposal of sewage from livestock, we still see the contamination of our streams, creeks and aquifers. Canada's water is not as clean as Canadians would like to think.

We also think our waste water is being treated before it goes back into the environment, as it should be. According to Dr. Bakker, Canada has nothing to be proud of in terms of our waste water treatment standards.

There is a myth that our water is well-regulated and unfortunately that is also untrue. When I was the minister of environment in British Columbia, I discovered that British Columbia was called the wild west for groundwater because there was absolutely zero regulation of that water. Anyone could put a well of any size anywhere and extract water from the ground without any regulatory oversight or rules. One of the things I was able to do as a provincial minister was to introduce the first-ever groundwater regulations in British Columbia.

Last, according to Dr. Bakker, people's conception about threats to our water is the export of bulk water to the United States. That is one of the biggest threat. In fact, Dr. Bakker's view is that this is a low risk because the northern U.S. states would prevent it. Their water regulatory regimes are stronger than in Canada. The risk is that Canadians do not understand the depth and extent of the problems with our water supplies.

I want to get back to the situation of first nations bearing the brunt of the challenges of having clean running water and waste water treatment. There is a lack of drinking water and a lack of adequate sanitation and flush toilets.

First nations communities are 90% more likely to lack running water than other Canadian and non-first nation homes. Just think about that. That is simply unacceptable and we cannot allow it. Canada is a country that has a medium rate of income inequality, but it is growing faster than income inequality in the United States. This kind of neglect of first nations' basic health, safety and access to clean water contributes to income inequality. Families are spending their time, effort and resources to do something that I, in Vancouver Quadra, can do by turning on a tap or flushing the toilet. Those families are not spending that time completing high school, or getting post-secondary education or finding a way to have jobs and economic opportunities in their communities.

We do see dramatic differentials in our human and social conditions in first nations communities. The levels of lower economic opportunities, such as health, education, longevity, infant and child mortality, numbers of community members in jail, et cetera, are unfortunately higher in first nations communities. First nations make up 2.7% of the adult population, yet 18.5% of the prison population and that is unacceptable. However, it does not come out of the blue. It ties into our inability or unwillingness as governments to put our shoulders to the wheel and work together to tackle this very basic determinant of the quality of life, which is to have safe running water and waste water treatment.

We need a real strategy, not just a list of problems and goals. We need to have the actions, the accountability for those actions and we need to take care of this problem and we need to start now.

Justice

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party of Canada supports the amendments to Bill C-10 proposed by the Government of Quebec. The federal government may well have jurisdiction to legislate on criminal matters, but Quebec and the other provinces manage the administration of justice and are stuck dealing with the consequences. The government did not even bother to come up with a proper French version.

My question for the Minister of Justice is simple. Will he agree to allow Quebec, by decree, to opt out of the requirement to publish the identity of a minor? They call this lasting security. Will he agree, yes or no?

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Mr. Speaker, our government is proposing responsible measures to protect families and individuals. The safe streets and communities act would impose tougher sentences on pedophiles, drug dealers and the most violent young offenders. Meanwhile, the opposition wants to treat honest farmers and duck hunters like fugitives, but it opposes tougher sentences for dangerous criminals.

The justice committee has held eight meetings on Bill C-10 and has heard from over 50 witnesses, yet the opposition parties have begun to filibuster to further delay these important measures.

Can the minister please inform the House about our government's efforts to strengthen Canada's justice system?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, within the last month, courts on Vancouver Island had to dismiss two serious drunk driving cases due to court delays. B.C. provincial jails, like Wilkinson Road Jail in my riding, are already at more than 200% over capacity, with the result being five riots in the system in the last two years. Now the government's ineffective, high-cost omnibus crime bill would put even more strain on our justice system.

Can the Minister of Justice explain to Canadians why the government is so determined to put corrections officers at even greater risk, and can he explain why he is pressing ahead with Bill C-10 when he should know it will put courts in the position of having to dismiss hundreds of serious criminal cases due to lack of resources?

Security of Tenure of Military Judges Act

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to participate in the debate on Bill C-16. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence is well aware that the Bloc Québécois supports this bill.

What we take issue with is that the parliamentary secretary has said in the House that we have failed to provide unanimous consent, which is completely false. I will give an example. Today, I gave unanimous consent, on behalf of the Bloc Québécois which I represent, to the agreement between the Cree and the federal government. We had already given our word and consent with respect to this bill.

With regard to Bill C-16, we were asked for our support yesterday at the same time that we were asking for unanimous consent to pay tribute to veterans. Remembrance Day is at hand. We are all wearing poppies—I see, Mr. Speaker, that you are wearing one also—to commemorate the battles fought by our veterans, the people who went overseas to fight in two world wars and other conflicts, which unfortunately should not have occurred but did, and who fought for our freedom.

The dean of the House of Commons, the member for Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, wanted to rise, like members of other parties, and pay tribute for a few minutes to the people who fought to protect our freedom and to prevent dictators from taking control of the world and suppressing freedoms, as was recently the case in Libya. The leader of the Green Party also wanted a few minutes to address the people and pay tribute to our veterans. This was refused by lack of unanimous consent. We were simply told that the Conservative government had the right to do so and that it was within the rules.

I know that the government was probably afraid that the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois would use this precedent to intervene and rise often in the House, saying that they want to be recognized as parties. We have known from the beginning that we do not have 12 members, just 4, and that the leader of the Green Party is the only member of Parliament for her party. For that reason, the interim leader of the Bloc Québécois specifically stated yesterday, when making the request, that he did not want to set a precedent and that he simply wanted to make a statement.

That was one of the lowest moments I have experienced since being elected in 2004. I have rarely seen a government rebuff the opposition parties in a such a way and on such an occasion.

We did not give our unanimous consent to Bill C-16 then and we are opposing it today because the fault lies with the government for not being alert enough to introduce it sooner. The government could have introduced this bill as early as September 19, when Parliament resumed, but it waited until October 7. The government has also introduced a series of bills and has prevented the opposition from debating them and discussing them properly by moving closure and time allocation motions five or six times. I do not even know how many there have been, but closure has been moved on at least five or six bills. We cannot follow the normal legislative process because the government is in a very big hurry. It made legislative choices, but Bill 16, which we are discussing today, was not part of them.

The Conservatives chose to introduce Bill C-10 on justice. They decided to abolish the firearms registry and destroy the data. They also introduced a bill that will diminish Quebec's political weight in the House. There was also the bill on the Canadian Wheat Board. They chose to introduce all those bills instead of Bill C-16. I want to come back to Bill C-16 to which we could have given our unanimous consent. We only did what the government said it would do, in other words, follow the rules. I have been in federal politics long enough to know there are rules to be followed in the House. There is a legislative process to be followed: first reading, second reading, third reading and work in committee.

I understand perfectly well that there was a court order, but if the government was in such a hurry, it could have made sure that this bill went through all the stages as quickly as possible. After all, it is the government that sets the agenda.

Yesterday, by refusing to allow us to pay tribute to veterans, if the government was trying to send a message that we do not exist, that we are not an official party and that we do not deserve to speak in this House, it failed. Today we are sending our own message that we are still here. Just like the Conservative members, and in fact like all members of the House, we were democratically elected. Even the Prime Minister himself must acknowledge that he was democratically elected in his riding and that he is an MP first and foremost, and Prime Minister second. I think it is our duty to do things correctly here.

Thus, there are no second-class MPs in this House. I never thought that when there were 50 Bloc Québécois MPs, nor do I think that today, just because we are fewer in number. My message to the government is that it should think carefully before acting as heinously as it did yesterday. Nevertheless, once again, it is the government's fault that it did not introduce the bill earlier. And we support Bill C-16, especially since a court decision will strengthen the independence of military judges. That is very important. The Minister of National Defence introduced Bill C-16, An Act to amend the National Defence Act (military judges), in the House of Commons at first reading.

The Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada delivered its judgment in the Regina v. Leblanc case. In its decision, the appeal court determined that the provisions in the National Defence Act and the Queen’s Regulations and Orders for the Canadian Forces regarding the appointment and retirement of military judges do not sufficiently respect judicial independence as required by section 11(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In declaring certain National Defence Act provisions constitutionally invalid and inoperative, the Court Martial Appeal Court in Regina v. Leblanc suspended the declaration of invalidity for a period of six months to allow remedial legislation to be enacted. The declaration will be effective December 2, 2011.

Bill C-16 amends the provisions of the National Defence Act that deal with the tenure of military judges, providing that they serve until the retirement age of 60 years, unless removed for cause on the recommendation of an inquiry committee or upon the resignation of the military judge.

To give a bit of background and explain the situation in full, I should mention that judges used to be appointed for a predetermined period of time. I believe it was for five years, but when a judge's term was up for renewal, it seemed that he or she did not have complete independence at that time. Now the process will simply be the same as it is for other judges. The tenure for military judges will allow them to sit as such until the retirement age of 60 years. That creates a balance. It sends a message that we will improve the situation around judicial independence, which is something we in the House could in no way be opposed to.

Justice Lamer made a number of recommendations, and this is one that we have agreed with from the outset. The Bloc Québécois believes in keeping military justice separate from civilian justice. It makes sense for the Canadian armed forces to have its own justice system, in light of the particularities of military life and military requirements. This bill corrects a situation that created a fairly significant difference between the civilian justice system and the military justice system, in order to improve the military system.

It is absolutely necessary to have discipline within an army. Without that discipline, we would lose any sense of structure and effectiveness. Since the primary goal of our armed forces is to protect the safety of Canadians, this issue is vitally important. The Supreme Court of Canada recognized this principle in 1992:

The purpose of a separate system of military tribunals is to allow the Armed Forces to deal with matters that pertain directly to the discipline, efficiency and morale of the military. The safety and well-being of Canadians depends considerably on the willingness and readiness of a force of men and women to defend against threats to the nation's security. To maintain the Armed Forces in a state of readiness, the military must be in a position to enforce internal discipline effectively and efficiently. Breaches of military discipline must be dealt with speedily and, frequently, punished more severely than would be the case if a civilian engaged in such conduct. As a result, the military has its own Code of Service Discipline to allow it to meet its particular disciplinary needs. In addition, special service tribunals, rather than the ordinary courts, have been given jurisdiction to punish breaches of the Code of Service Discipline. Recourse to the ordinary criminal courts would, as a general rule, be inadequate to serve the particular disciplinary needs of the military.

A number of changes were called for. I think that Bill C-16 is a step that, I repeat, addresses only one of Justice Lamer's recommendations. We can go step by step. That is no problem.

There are also offences in the Code of Service Discipline that do not have equivalents in civilian justice. For example, the offences of disobedience of lawful command or disobedience to a superior officer do not exist in civilian justice. Military justice applies to three categories of people: military personnel in the regular forces, reservists and civilians who work with military personnel on missions.

But although military justice is necessary, people who join the Canadian Forces do not lose their rights, including their charter rights.

For 12 years, a great deal of thought has been given to modernizing military justice to bring it more in line with civilian justice. In its May 2009 report, the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs wrote the following, “...the military, as an organization, benefits when the rules that govern it largely reflect those that apply to Canadian society in general.”

We therefore feel it is important that the government consider not only the issue of the independence of military judges but also the entire military justice reform. In my opinion, even the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence can understand that, when we talk about such a bill, it goes without saying that we should expand our discussion and thought process a bit to include the whole military justice policy, particularly since more than one recommendation was given by Justice Lamer and the Senate committee.

Military justice reform dates back to 1997 and stems from two reviews. First, a special advisory group received a mandate to study the Code of Service Discipline set out in the National Defence Act. Then, the commission of inquiry into the deployment of Canadian forces to Somalia was asked to review how to handle the actions of certain soldiers sent to that country.

The two resulting reports led the government to introduce Bill C-25, which came into effect on September 1, 1999. This bill amended the National Defence Act by abolishing the death penalty in the military justice system, a very important change; incorporating civilian parole ineligibility provisions; creating the Canadian Forces Grievance Board; creating the Military Police Complaints Commission; strengthening the independence of military judges by making changes to the terms of their appointment, their qualifications and their tenure; and creating new positions within the military justice system in order to separate the investigative function from the prosecution and defence functions.

Clause 96 of Bill C-25 provided for an independent review every five years in order to examine the amendments to the National Defence Act. Many of the amendments I just listed are still pending. I am counting on the current government and its Minister of National Defence to take into account the majority of the recommendations that I mentioned just a few moments ago.

With this in mind, the federal government appointed a former Supreme Court justice, Antonio Lamer, to conduct the first review. He presented his report to Parliament in March 2003. Military justice has been on the radar for some time now, and here today we have this bill—barely two pages long—regarding the independence of judges. There will undoubtedly be other, more significant, changes that will improve the National Defence Act and that will also implement Justice Lamer's recommendations, which, as I have said before, are already 10 years old.

In his report, Justice Lamer observed that “Canada's military justice system generally works very well, subject to a few changes.” Consequently, he made 88 recommendations to improve military justice. I will not list the 88 recommendations, although some here might like me to do so.

I will briefly refer to some of Justice Lamer's 2003 recommendations: arrest procedures and pre-trial detention; procedures for proceeding by indictment; the structure of the court; sentencing; aligning the rights of the accused with those in a civil court such that the accused could choose the type of court martial and such that the finding of court martial panels would be arrived at by unanimous vote; strengthening the independence of the principal intervenors in the military justice system; and improving the grievance and military police complaints processes.

In order to implement Justice Lamer's recommendations and amend the National Defence Act, the government introduced Bill C-45 in August 2006. It died on the order paper. In March 2008, the government introduced another bill, Bill C-7, which was identical to Bill C-45 and also died on the order paper when an election was called in the fall of 2008.

In April 2008, the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada handed down a decision in the case of Regina v. Trépanier. At issue was the possibility of choosing the type of court martial. The Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada ruled that a provision of the National Defence Act that gave the court martial administrator exclusive authority to select the type of court martial was unconstitutional. The Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada found that it was unacceptable that the accused could not chose the kind of court martial that would judge him or her.

Following that ruling—which brings us to where we are today—the federal government introduced Bill C-60 to accomplish the following: to more closely align the manner in which the mode of trial by courts martial is determined with the approach in the civilian criminal justice system, while still satisfying the unique needs of the military justice system; to reduce the types of courts martial from four to two; to allow military judges to deal with certain pre-trial matters at any time after a charge has been preferred; and to require court martial panels to make key decisions on the basis of a unanimous vote. Bill C-60 passed in the House on June 18, 2008.

One of Justice Lamer's recommendations has been incorporated into Bill C-16 before us today.

I repeat—and I will conclude on this in just a moment—the Bloc Québécois is not opposed to Bill C-16. The Bloc did not break any agreements to speed things up. The government alone is responsible for its own legislative agenda. It could have introduced the bill to get it through all the various steps in the usual way, knowing very well that a court order meant that a certain timeline had to be respected.

I cannot believe that, with the army of people and public servants available to the Minister of National Defence, it did not occur to him to look at a calendar and ensure that all the steps could be completed regarding Bill C-16. It is because of the government's own negligence that it is so keen to have the bill fast-tracked, because it did not do its homework.

I cannot believe that the government behaved in this manner. However, as I explained at the beginning of my speech, it is simply because the government made other choices. It had other priorities. It wanted to reduce Quebec's political weight with Bill C-20, for instance. It wanted to put the Canadian Wheat Board out of commission. It also decided to rule out all potential debate on Bill C-10 regarding justice. I can assure this House, not everyone is pleased about that. It is no longer only Quebec that opposes that bill. We will soon be up to 10 provinces that oppose the bill. But the government decided to make it a priority anyway.

In closing, it should have found a way to move a little faster on this matter and introduce Bill C-16 earlier. Had it done so, we might not still be talking about it today.

Firearms Registry

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, on this side of the House we are very proud to have 11 active police officers and former police officers in our party. We listen to police officers. That is why we have given provisions, for example in Bill C-10, that would actually help fight violent crime and gun crime. We want to focus on ensuring guns do not get into the wrong hands and that those kinds of tragedies that happened in Montreal will not happen again. The long gun registry does nothing to keep guns out of people's hands.

Security of Tenure of Military Judges Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to this legislation because it provides an opportunity to talk about how important the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is in our country. It is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that gives the reason for this piece of legislation to correct something which, in the current context, is contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

This is something that was introduced into our law in 1983 and the effects of it, as we are seeing today, are still reverberating. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is for all Canadian citizens, regardless of who they are, whether the person is a soldier, as in this case, or a criminal with a record as long as his arm, as they say in the vernacular, or an ordinary Canadian who happens to find himself or herself in front of the courts.

The charter has many provisions. This one is about section 11(d). Section 11(d) of the charter provides that any person who is charged with an offence has the right “to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal”. Each and every word of that provision is important. Each and every word of that provision of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been tested and given judicial interpretation over the last 28 years since the charter came into effect. It is an important fundamental underpinning of our system of justice.

How did this case come about and why are we here? We are talking about whether judges in the military courts should have security of tenure. This is not for the judges. Some people say that judges want to have longer tenure, they want to have longer careers and do not want to be subject to being removed, laid off or not reappointed. It is not about that at all. According to the existing legislation, the military judges are appointed for a term of five years. They hear courts martial. Of course, under military justice life imprisonment could be given as a sentence, so under military tribunals, courts martial, these judges have a tremendous amount of authority and power under the law. The military justice system is a parallel one and in many ways is very different.

We will be getting into an argument about what that means in regard to a lot of other provisions in military justice under Bill C-15 when we get to that. This one has been taken out, and probably for good reason, because it is less controversial. We think this legislation should be passed swiftly.

It was part of Bill C-41 in the last Parliament, which we thought was going to pass. It went through committee and got right to the end. We even reached a compromise on a number of things and made some good amendments, but lo and behold, instead of bringing it into the House for third reading and passage, the government forgot about it, laid it aside, or for some reason did not bring it through. This was after the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada had made this ruling on June 2. Everybody knew this was coming because this was the court of appeal, not the regular court martial where a similar decision had also been made.

The government was well aware of this then, and I think it has been wise to take it out separately and see if it could get co-operation to have it passed. We are prepared to co-operate. We are a very reasonable opposition. When we see something that needs to be done, it can be expedited. We even provided unanimous consent. Our part of unanimous consent was provided this morning to have this bill brought into law at least in the House of Commons today and be sent to the other place for speedy passage. We offered that consent because we are very reasonable and co-operative when it is appropriate to be.

Let me tell members what this case was about.

Mr. LeBlanc and other soldiers were tasked with guarding a CF-18 at a Canadian air force base. The aircraft was on standby for the Francophonie summit being held in Quebec City in October 2008. Corporal LeBlanc and his companion were one of two teams guarding the aircraft. He and his companion were on lookout, sitting in a truck parked by the hangar. His companion went off to use the washroom, and left Corporal LeBlanc sitting in the truck by himself. Lo and behold, when his pal left the truck to go to the washroom, he was inside the hangar and was away for about five minutes, a sergeant drove up next to Corporal LeBlanc's side of the truck. The trial judge found that Corporal LeBlanc had been reclining and had his eyes closed for at least 10 seconds. His eyes were closed for 10 seconds and as a result he was charged with negligence and not being vigilant in his duty under section 124 of the National Defence Act, negligently performing a military duty imposed on him.

That is what gave rise to this. He was brought before a court martial and he was convicted because the trial judge ruled that even though they did not have proper security of tenure, the trial judge thought they did and made his ruling anyway. It went to the court of appeal in the military tribunal. It said the issue was raised as to whether or not military judges were impartial. Military judges are very well trained. They are lawyers. They usually come from the judge advocate general's office. They are steeped in the rules of law and they are appointed as a judge, but they are appointed for five years. That five years may or may not be renewed.

If a judge is trying to decide a case, it is not about the judge, it is about the accused. Does the accused have an understanding that there is a standard of judicial independence so that the judge is not impartial as between him and the military? The judge, in the minds of the accused and everyone else, is dependent upon the military brass for his reappointment. The judges of the court martial appeal court are very well qualified. For example, Justice Létourneau, is one of the authors, along with retired Colonel Michel Drapeau, of perhaps the only significant text on military law in Canada. A new edition came out a week or two ago. He sat on that court. The court said that five-year renewable terms for military judges did not provide the necessary constitutional protection, especially considering the fact that it was considered necessary to give such protection to civilian judges exercising the same functions.

That is a simple explanation of how this case got to where it is. This legislation is designed to fix that. It was in Bill C-41 which passed second reading, went through committee and was reported back to the House but did not get passed. We agreed with that provision. In fact, it was this provision that was used as an excuse to fast-track the legislation. The government said that it was very important and it must get done not a month ago, but a year ago, even before the case on June 2, but it did not get passed.

We are here, reasonable as we are, and we are prepared to do it anyway because we know it needs to be done. It is important that this piece of legislation be passed in the context of understanding the importance of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms for all Canadians, including those in the military.

There will be more debate about that because there are many provisions in the National Defence Act and the military justice system that do not give the same protections to soldiers in the military justice system as civilians would have in civilian court. We will, of course, have further debate about that, but with respect to this provision, we agree.

This is not new. As I said, this has been debated many times. In my province of Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, there was a provision for provincial court judges. They are the ones who hear 95% of 96% of the cases. It turns out that back in the late 1980s, early 1990s, the Newfoundland the minister of justice could transfer a provincial court judge. The minister could simply say that the judge would now be transferred to Maine, for example, or anywhere else. Maybe the judge lives in Maine, is transferred to St. John's, but does not want to live there.

The minister of justice, the attorney general, had the power to transfer judges to Cornerbrook or wherever. The mere fact that could be done was not considered to be impartial as between Her Majesty The Queen and the accused. Her Majesty The Queen's representative, the minister of justice or attorney general, could actually move judges if the minister, for whatever reason, did not like their judgments or was not satisfied they were doing the job the justice minister wanted them to do in that jurisdiction.

That power was deemed unconstitutional and it had to be changed for impartiality. It is a mundane example, but it is a reality of the importance of the Charter of Rights. At the end of the day, that provides for our protection.

This has a long and very interesting history, but it comes up again and again. It has come up here today. It came up yesterday with respect to Mr. Khadr who is in the United States. He is called a self-confessed terrorist. He is a Canadian citizen and his rights and freedoms are important, too. Yet the government took the position before the Supreme Court of Canada that we should not recognize those rights because our neighbour wanted to try him. It was the government's actions that infringed upon his rights and the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear the case.

These are rights for all citizens. They are not designed to protect criminals. They are designed to ensure, as the charter has, that an accused person before a court, whether it be a military court, a civilian court or any other, has the right to be tried in a fair and public way according to law. The individual is presumed innocent and tried in a public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal. Each and every one of these words is extremely important and part of the fundamental underpinnings of our judicial system, the freedoms we enjoy, the freedoms we talk about when we say that we support our veterans because they have fought for our ability to build a society that has these freedoms.

Canada has a society that has developed over the many years, through trial and error in some cases, not always making progress. It seems as if we are going to take some backward steps in the next few months with Bill C-10. We will go backward and there will be another government to go forward again. It is not always the steady march of progress, as I am sure members are aware. It depends in which direction we want to go, but in this case the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has brought a great measure of protection to our citizens and a standard by which the justice system is measured.

As to Corporal Leblanc, he was dealt with because the appeal was allowed in part. However, the part which found him guilty of neglect of duty was upheld, but only on a technicality. In that case the court martial judge thought there was security of tenure until retirement or maybe that he was ready to retire and it did not matter to him. However, the principle was a factor in the case and was enough of a factor to get it to the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada. That is a separate court of appeal. From that court of appeal, a case can go directly to the Supreme Court of Canada, so it is a very high court.

We really did not need this case to prove it because representatives of the legal system, the military justice system and the Department of National Defence and anyone who was interested in the matter, as well as Michel Drapeau who appeared before our committee the last time, talked about this as a fundamental problem.

There are other issues we can talk about in terms of military justice. Is it necessary for those judges be officers? That is an interesting point. It has been argued before the defence committee that we should have a mix of civilian and military judges in the military justice system. It is important to understand how the military works, but it is also important to not get caught up in the culture of the military to the exclusion of the importance of having a standard justice that applies equally to citizens whether they are in the military or not. We can debate that at length.

However, in the context of this situation, we believe it is important that the military justice system not be hamstrung by a system which everyone clearly recognizes fails to meet the standard of appropriate impartiality and does not meet the constitutional test.

I have had some thoughts about the requirement of retirement at age 60. If we consider the notion that it is a military justice system, then from the day one joins the military, he or she knows there is a mandatory retirement at age 60. That is part of the system. It has nothing to do with whether one is a judge or a master corporal working on base or a general. The fact that one is appointed as a military judge, he or she still has to retire at age 60 as opposed to a Supreme Court judge who retires at age 75 or at age 70, depending on which jurisdiction. Those judges have been considered to have judicial independence. In the military, 60 is young for a judge. However, in the military context it is not considered to be a mandatory form of retirement.

There are some issues about supernumeraries, but that is a detail we do not need to get into now. If there is a mandatory retirement age of 60, at least in the context of the report on the court case itself, and I do not have the whole transcript in front of me and I do not know everything that was argued, there does not appear to be a lot of other discussion about other aspects of it. The focus was on the five-year renewable term being the issue, which is what we are dealing with now. Any possible nuances on that could perhaps be argued at another time and in another case. In this case, the provision of the five-year renewable term is clearly the one that needs to be changed.

We support that change. We support fast-tracking it. We support passing it today and sending it to the other place for consideration. However, without unanimous consent, we will have a second reading debate. It will then have to go to committee. The defence committee will have to look at it. Then it would be sent back for report stage in the House. There will be a potential debate at report stage, then at third reading. It would then go to the Senate to have it dealt with and then be passed into law. It may take some time, perhaps beyond December 2. I do not know what pace the other members in the House will take in dealing with this. We are satisfied to have it passed today and to go on to the other place. It is important that we deal with constitutional matters that are clearly agreed upon.

As the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands has said, she has no problem with the legislation, but it is a question of having other issues intertwined, which unfortunately the government has seen fit to do despite the fact that it is normal courtesy in the House to recognize an important national event like Remembrance Day. Courtesy should be extended to members to be allowed to say a few words.

Those are my remarks at second reading and I would be happy to respond to any questions or comments.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues said earlier, it is rather difficult to listen to our hon. Conservative colleague tell us that we are politicizing an issue, when all the Conservatives have been doing from the beginning is ramming their bills down our throats. I would like to read a quote and ask him to comment. Manon Cornellier, who is a very respected columnist in Quebec, had this to say:

The Conservatives have a majority. They know that they will get their bills through and that they have the time to honour the best parliamentary traditions, that is, by acting in a thoughtful and insightful way and giving members, organizations and the public an opportunity to be heard. Ideally, this should be accompanied by a willingness to listen.

The government wants its bills, for example bills C-10 and C-19, to be passed post-haste. It is telling us that we are politicizing the debate, but in fact it is the one doing so. That is rather rich.

Public Safety

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, today we heard from the mayor of Winnipeg who indicated that naysayers of Bill C-10 are sitting idly by while more innocent people are being murdered. He said that the rights of citizens need to trump the rights of criminals in our country.

I want to repeat the challenge of the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism to the member across the way who slighted the reputation of a Supreme Court of Canada judge when he breached a written confidential undertaking that he made to the people of Canada. Will he apologize?

Justice

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

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what we are doing, but then again, if the hon. member is in fact motivated by statistics, he might find it interesting to know that drug crimes are actually going up in this country and that sexual exploitation of children is going up in this country.

If the statistics are what is motivating him, then he should be the first one on his feet to be supporting us on Bill C-10.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to come back to Bill C-10.

Canada's crime rate keeps going down. It is a fact. Why does the government want to impose on Canadians the dumb-on-crime big jail agenda that has failed in the U.S.?

It will have a huge cost and it shows a total disregard for our overtaxed justice system. Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia refuse to pay for this nonsense.

Will the government listen to them and replace Bill C-10 with a policy to really fight crime and bring more justice and safety to Canadians?

Firearms Registry

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to Bill C-10, which my colleague mentioned, I would like to point out that one of the staunchest supporters of Bill C-10, and the effectiveness of that type of legislation, has been the NDP government in Manitoba, which has made it clear that it will stand with us against criminals, despite the position of the federal NDP.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

But, Mr. Speaker, the government is failing all the victims that we are hearing on Bill C-10 and not Bill C-19.

The government's arguments do not hold water. The hon. member for Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River said yesterday that if Quebec wants the registry, then it will have to pay for it. However, the Privacy Commissioner refutes that argument. There need only be an agreement to share the information. There is no breach of privacy and there are no costs to cover. The only obstacle is the Conservatives.

Will the government work in good faith with the provinces—

Justice

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to the member that he perhaps go to downtown Winnipeg and speak to members of his party, the NDP party, that holds government there, that supports Bill C-10 and wants to actually see dangerous offenders in prison.

It is willing to pay the cost and, furthermore, it does not want the long gun registry. It knows it is a waste of resources. It knows it detracts police from actually hunting down real criminals.

[Christian Paradis, Conservative, Minister of Industry and Minister of State (Agriculture)]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians gave our government a strong mandate to keep our streets and communities safe. The opposition parties are demanding tougher laws for law-abiding farmers and duck hunters while opposing tougher penalties for violent criminals and rapists who prey on children.

I hope that in her third question she will quote a third government, the Manitoba NDP government, which supports Bill C-10.

[Christian Paradis, Conservative, Minister of Industry and Minister of State (Agriculture)]

Mr. Speaker, what most of the people in Quebec and the rest of Canada want is a more effective justice system. They want us to crack down on dangerous criminals, ensure that the streets are safe and enhance security. Let us stop always debating and wanting to pit rehabilitation against deterrence. They go hand in hand. They are not mutually exclusive.

Now we have to fulfill our mandate of making our streets safer and we intend to do so through Bill C-10.

[Nycole Turmel, NDP, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, this is what the Quebec justice minister had to say about the Conservatives' approach to justice: “The solutions proposed by Bill C-10 do not meet the stated objective of public safety, nor do they address the actual needs of punishing offenders and preventing crime and recidivism.” The Government of Quebec has said that it will not pay for the Conservatives' regressive strategy.

Are the Conservatives going to make Quebec pay against its will?

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, by passing Bill C-10 to amend the Criminal Code, the Government of Canada will impose on the Quebec nation, on its territory, values that it rejects and will pass on the cost without Quebec having a say in the matter. In addition, today, Quebec's Minister of Justice declared that Quebec will refuse to foot the bill.

Does the Minister of Justice realize that this proves that the Quebec nation has no choice but to assume full control over its criminal laws, as any nation state would, to ensure that its values are reflected and it controls the cost of administering justice in its territory?

Ending the Long-gun Registry Act

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Madam Speaker, last spring, Canadians elected a government that was listening and keeping its promises. They told us they wanted a government that would make keeping their children and communities safe a priority. As promised, within the first 100 days of Parliament, we introduced Bill C-10.

My constituents spoke of wanting a strong and stable economy. Again, we delivered with the budget implementation act, making job growth and strengthening families a priority.

Farmers in my riding told me that they wanted freedom to market their own wheat and barley. Again, we delivered by introducing Bill C-18.

Finally, I regularly hear how wasteful the long gun registry is. I am very pleased that this government has now introduced Bill C-19 to end this discrimination against law-abiding citizens. We have listened and we are acting.

I am also very pleased to have this opportunity to speak in support of Bill C-19. This has been a long time coming. Certainly there are some members on this side of the House who have been dealing with this issue, debating it for approximately 17 years, and I am honoured to be among those who will rise in the House to debate this important legislation.

To be clear, there is no debate about the fact that we need effective ways of dealing with gun crime. That is not the issue. The issue is that the long gun registry does not deal with gun crime. It is wasteful, ineffective and does nothing to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. The simple fact is that long guns are not the weapon of choice for criminals. For the most part, criminals use handguns and the registration requirement for handguns is not going anywhere. What we are doing is ensuring that law-abiding hunters, sports shooters and farmers are no longer being treated like criminals simply because they own a rifle or a shotgun. We are doing this because it is the right thing and because our constituents have told us for years that it is what they want.

Since taking office in 2006, our government has taken decisive action to put the rights of victims and law-abiding Canadians ahead of the rights of criminals. We have taken decisive action to make our streets and communities safer, to crack down on criminals and prevent crimes before they happen. Ending the long gun registry act is about ensuring that we continue to preserve and enhance those measures that do work to reduce crime and protect Canadians. It is also about ensuring that we do not unnecessarily penalize millions of honest and law-abiding citizens with rules that have little effect on crime prevention or on reducing gun crime.

As members have heard in the House, Bill C-19, first and foremost, would remove the need to register non-restricted firearms such as rifles and shotguns. Today, such non-restricted firearms are primarily used by farmers, hunters and residents of rural Canada to protect their livestock, hunt wild game or to otherwise earn a living.

Bill C-19 would not do away with the need to properly license all owners of firearms. In fact, it would retain not only the licensing system but also the strict system of controlling restricted and prohibited firearms. Nor would it do away with the need for the owners of restricted and prohibited firearms to obtain a registration certificate as well as a licence. Registration of restricted and prohibited firearms, including all handguns, would continue to be maintained by the RCMP firearms program. Our government has invested $7 million per year to strengthen the licensing process by enhancing front-end screening of first-time firearms-licence applicants. This funding allows officials to screen an additional 20,000 applicants per year, including all applicants for restricted licences.

Under Bill C-19, farmers, duck hunters, target shooters and other law-abiding Canadians would still need to go through a licensing procedure. The bill would not change those measures. In determining eligibility to hold a licence, a person's criminal record, history of treatment for mental illness associated with violence or history of violent behaviour against another person would still be examined.

Therefore, for those who have the misconception that we are somehow easing all of the checks and balances when it comes to gun ownership, as we can see, that is not the case. Rather, what is proposed are changes that would do away with the need to register long guns. The registry is wasteful, ineffective and unfairly targets law-abiding hunters and farmers.

I know I have said this before, but it is important to repeat because some of my colleagues across the aisle just do not get it. By scrapping this wasteful and ineffective long gun registry, we can, instead, focus our efforts and resources on measures that actually tackle crime and make our communities safer. This is why Bill C-19 has the support of our government, as well as millions of Canadians. It is also why many hon. members on the other side of the House have voted to support similar legislation in previous Parliaments.

Our government's main priority is keeping our streets and communities safe. We will do that through programs and initiatives that work. That is why we moved quickly to reintroduce and pass the Safe Streets and Communities Act, which contains many important measures to protect families, stands up for victims and holds criminals accountable.

We have also introduced and passed mandatory prison sentences for serious gun crimes and we have passed legislation to initiate reforms to the pardons system. A lot of changes have taken place over the last five years that go a long way to keeping Canadians safe, changes that work, changes that make sense and changes that Canadians want. Personally, this is an issue I hear about from my constituents all the time. It is something they speak to me about at town halls, on the street and at meetings. They call, write letters and send emails, and I know my colleagues have experienced the same thing.

During the last election, we heard over and over again on doorsteps that it was time to scrap the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry. I am very proud that we can move forward in doing away with the Liberal legacy of waste and ineffectiveness. It is time for a new chapter. It is time to stop treating law-abiding Canadians like criminals. It is time to focus on measures that actually prevent crime. It is time for the opposition to support the bill.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to take the opportunity to thank the members for Portage—Lisgar and Yorkton—Melville for their work on this important issue. Their efforts have helped ensure that the government could bring forward Bill C-19 and finally rid Canadians of the failed and ineffective long gun registry.

As a retired member of the RCMP, I would like to relate what I saw as someone who was on the street for 20 years. Before I do that, I would like to speak to the amount of money that has been wasted on this registry and provide a different view on what that money could have been spent on. We know that when the long gun registry was introduced, the previous Liberal government indicated that it would only cost about $2 million. Yet, we hear that number is as high as $2 billion to date. If that money had been invested in crime prevention programs, such as youth or women at risk programs, they would not only have assisted police in their day-to-day investigations but provided opportunities for those in high risk environments.

This is also money that could have been spent on better investigational tools for the RCMP to investigate complex cases. It could have gone toward surveillance equipment, more police vehicles, a number of things to deal with day-to-day operations or more front line police officers. One thing that I have heard from the opposition is that there is not enough money for new police officers on the ground. In fact, the cost for a member in the RCMP is approximately $130,000 a year. That includes wages and equipment.

That would have equated to a total of 1,538 new members on the road since this gun registry was enacted if we base it on $2 billion. That in itself would have benefited all Canadians. Instead, the previous Liberal government persisted in building and maintaining a gun registry which did nothing to prevent crime and was not a viable tool for law enforcement.

I would now like to speak to my experience as a police officer. We have heard a great deal from the opposition about what a useful tool the long gun registry is for law enforcement. My own experiences do not support that. The point I want to emphasize the most is that whenever I investigated murders, domestic disputes, robberies, break and enters or any other crime, I always assumed there was a firearm involved. It is simply better to be safe than sorry. Gun instincts will serve police officers much better than relying on computer entry data. I want to provide a couple of examples of that.

When police officers approach vehicles during routine stops, they will have done the computer checks to determine who the vehicle belongs to, et cetera, but what they do not know is if there are firearms in the vehicles. Therefore, when officers approach vehicles, they will approach close to and behind the driver's side door, making sure the driver of the vehicle has to look back at them. If police officers walk straight to the door, they leave themselves very vulnerable. That is why police officers will always make the driver look back at them.

Another example is when police officers approach residences. They will always stand to the side of the door before knocking. Why? Because if a bullet is coming through the door, it will not hit them. That is just common sense.

Drug investigations are a different breed altogether. Having been involved in drug investigations for three years, more often than not when we found firearms, they were stolen and not registered. For the most part, criminals do not register their guns and I will explain why. It is due to the fact that when and if criminals apply for firearms licences, they are refused. That is because gun owners must undergo a rigorous police background check as part of the licensing system. Criminals work outside the system, just as they work outside the law.

I would also like to talk about a major flaw in the long gun registry that no one talks about. In fact, I have not heard it once in the debate from either side. In my experience, the system itself is completely unorganized.

Say, for example, that someone owns a long gun which is produced without a serial number, such as a Cooey .22 and there are many others. The process would be to register the firearm and then the sticker would be mailed, which would be attached to the long gun as the serial number. Sometimes, the owner would receive two stickers with two different serial numbers. This happens a lot. Members can imagine the confusion that this creates and also the lack of confidence it brings in the efficiency of the long gun registry. That is why, in my experience, it is simply not a viable tool to prevent crime or help law enforcement.

One of the most compelling things that this government is doing to fight crime in this country is the introduction of Bill C-10, safe streets and communities act. That is what I am hearing from police officers in my riding and across the country. The safe streets and communities act would deliver greater accountability for offenders, better justice for victims of terrorism, and would eliminate house arrest for serious crimes. It would eliminate pardons for serious criminals and sex offenders. It would strengthen penalties for drug crimes, especially for those that target kids, and it would produce better protection for children against sexual predators.

This is real tangible action that would give those on the front line the confidence that we as politicians are doing our job. It demonstrates that we as a government are working to give police the tools they need to get their jobs done. That was a commitment we made during the last election and it is a commitment we are delivering on.

Another commitment our government very clearly made was to scrap the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry. It is something that Canadians across the country have spoken out against. It is something we received a clear mandate to do on May 2 and it is something we fully intend to deliver on.

Firearms Registry

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Police Association has said that it is quite satisfied with the efforts this government has made to work on behalf of front-line police officers, especially with respect to the comprehensive justice legislation, Bill C-10, which the member opposes. If she wants anything else, perhaps she could speak to her colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore who said that the registry itself gives people a false sense of security over gun control and gun safety. He is in favour of getting rid of it. Why is she not?

Ending the Long-gun Registry Act

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy a good debate with the member for Halifax. She is always prepared and brings her A game.

With respect to the question, I will keep my promise, and I promise to abolish the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry.

With respect to our other promise regarding whether we are going to do something to fight crime, perhaps the hon. member is familiar with Bill C-10 which is before the justice committee. It is a comprehensive bill that includes nine pieces of legislation from the former Parliament which we were not able to get through that minority Parliament. It deals with a variety of mandatory minimum sentences for individuals who grow drugs and sell them to children and sell them near schoolyards. It deals with some sexual offences against children. It is a great bill, and I encourage her to support it.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the previous question by the hon. member opposite. He was wondering why we should have a firearms registry if it does not prevent certain crimes. However, during the debate on Bill C-10, the government used the opposite argument, saying that minimum sentences would help victims by preventing and deterring criminals from committing crimes.

I would like to know how the hon. member for Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine sees this contradiction between the arguments the Conservatives seem determined to make about Bill C-10 and those it is currently making about the firearms registry.

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Minister of State (Small Business and Tourism)]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Yukon.

I, like many of my colleagues before me, am very pleased to rise in this House this afternoon to support Bill C-19, a bill to abolish, to completely do away with the long gun registry, just as we promised in the election campaign. This is very important to me because I am a politician who keeps his word, and I am glad that my government is also keeping its word.

As you are aware, this registry is useless and costly. The reason so many Conservative members are so adamant about dismantling the registry is because they have listened to years of consultations with our constituents about the registry. A number of my colleagues, including the member for Yorkton—Melville, have held countless meetings throughout the country. They have listened to Canadians tell them what they think about the registry. We have heard from honest firearm owners, including hunters, farmers and sport shooters, and we have also heard from people who believe that the way to fight crime is to have tougher laws.

We have also listened to the victims of tragedies such as the ones at the École Polytechnique and Dawson College. I would like the victims and their families to know that we share the same goal, the same objective in the fight against crime, and that is to ensure that these heinous crimes do not reoccur.

It is a shame that these crimes were committed with registered firearms. Registering a weapon—and by that I mean hunting weapons, rifles and shotguns—does not help to combat crime. I have a strong conviction that together we can convince our opposition colleagues to support this bill.

I have heard many of my colleagues talk about the cost. Yes, it was disastrous. The cost of setting up this registry in the late 1980s and early 1990s was astronomical. Why was it astronomical? You will recall that it was the first Liberal scandal. Some say that the registry cost over $1 billion, others that it cost up to $2 billion. Those are the figures the CBC came up with following a number of investigations that were conducted at the time under the Access to Information Act. So we all agree that it was a waste of taxpayers' money. We are still trying to determine where this money went.

Then there was a second Liberal scandal, the sponsorship scandal, mainly in my own province. More billions of dollars were spent, and they were spent to keep a party in power that was corrupt at that time. This was an intolerable waste. I agree with the opposition. At the time, they should have invested that money in crime prevention. How many crimes could have been prevented with rehabilitation programs for criminals, with tougher laws to make sure that criminals are not tempted to commit these crimes?

The truth is simple and clear, and people do not want to hear that truth. There is no proof that the long gun registry helps to prevent crime. It must be pointed out that the bill covers only the long gun registry. This is one section of the registry, which has four sections. One section relates to handguns, and that will be retained in full; another section relates to prohibited weapons, and that will be retained in full; and a third section relates to licences for individuals. That registry has the name, address and contact information for individuals who want to obtain a firearms possession and acquisition licence.

In this registry we have the names of honest citizens: farmers, hunters, people who use their rifles for sporting purposes. These data are going to stay in the registry. It is important to point that out. What is going to be done is very precise: the registry that relates to long guns is going to be destroyed. The registry is made up of data. The registry is composed of information about those weapons. The data are part of the registry and the data will be destroyed. That is very clear in the bill.

Some people say that statistics show there has been a decline in homicides and suicides in Canada. I agree with the people who talk about those statistics. That is the statistical reality. However, what they are not telling us is that this is nothing new. The decline in homicides and suicides in Canada does not date from the creation of this registry in the mid-1990s. It is a trend that goes back a long time, to 1979 to be precise. There is a perfect declining curve for suicides and homicides. It has been declining since 1979. That is what has to be pointed out. The statistics cannot be interpreted to our own advantage. We have to look at the statistics overall and see what they tell us.

What strikes me most about this registry is how it treats honest citizens as potential criminals, forcing them to register their guns. These people abide by Canadian laws, and this registry was introduced under the Criminal Code. That needs to be said. Firearms need to be registered every year; it is a tax grab. Each year, you have to pay to register your firearm. Yet if ever an honest citizen, an honest farmer or hunter, forgot to register his gun, it would be a criminal offence. He would become a criminal. We do not want to treat these honest people like criminals.

This registry has affected rural areas in Canada and aboriginals as well. Their culture and way of life have been changed by the requirement to register their guns. They are simply asked to take a firearms safety course. And they are asked to take a test. Then, the RCMP does a criminal background check and, if necessary, a background check for violent offences. The RCMP does detailed checks on people who apply for a gun permit. That will stay; it will always be there. The RCMP will continue to investigate these people. And people will agree to those investigations because they know that they are honest and have done nothing wrong. They are prepared to do that. The RCMP does it because they want to protect the public and ensure that a person who has the right to a permit has been investigated.

It should also be said that this permit is good for five years. If something happens during that time, the permit can be taken away. That needs to be said. These measures are in place to protect society and prevent crime. We are taking other measures in this Parliament, such as Bill C-10 to implement tougher sentences. And I think that is the direction we need to be moving in. We drafted a bill that ensures that a Canadian who commits a gun-related crime will be given a minimum sentence. It is important for Canadians to know that.

I am extremely disappointed to hear that kind of demagogy concerning the registry. Some people are suggesting that we want to destroy all of the information in the registry, which is completely false, because the registry has four sections, as I said earlier. We want to destroy only the section that has to do with the registration of long guns, because that information is not in line with this government's priorities.

Any government policy must always be examined based on its effects, not its intentions, and in this case, the registry has had no effect on crime prevention.

Firearms Registry

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, in fact, the front-line officers have spoken very clearly on this matter. They recognize the mandate our government has received from the Canadian people and they are quite satisfied with the efforts this government has made on behalf of front-line police officers.

What they are asking that member and his party to do is to support Bill C-10, which contains measures that in fact are targeted against criminals and those who would abuse Canadian victims.

It is time the member stopped picking on farmers and sport shooters and hunters and started standing up for victims.

Justice

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the opposition members say they listen to Quebeckers' opinions, but that is not true. A recent poll by Léger Marketing shows that the majority of Quebeckers feel that our justice system focuses too much on rehabilitation and 77% believe that crimes are not being adequately punished. More than 75% of Quebeckers would like our justice system to be harsher with adult criminals and nearly half of all Quebeckers want harsher sentences for young offenders.

Unlike the opposition, our government is listening to Quebeckers and has once again kept its promise by introducing the bill entitled Safe Streets and Communities Act. In the meantime, the opposition continues to claim the contrary. Clearly the NDP is not fit to govern this country. Our Conservative government, as always, is listening and keeping its promises.

Second Reading

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this extremely important debate. For us in particular—not just for us, but for many of my colleagues from Quebec—this is a rather sensitive issue. Why? Because a big part of this debate centres on events that occurred in Quebec.

Everyone remembers this, or perhaps not. Sometimes I say that we must never forget the past, so that we do not repeat it. As you know—we commemorate this event every year—on December 6, 1989, a young man named Marc Lépine entered the École Polytechnique and, for personal and anti-feminist reasons, decided to shoot a group of women. Fourteen women died: 13 students and one secretary.

This is the first opportunity I have had to talk about this and I want to take advantage of the time I have to say that, indeed, we all have our own experiences, but sometimes we have to remember that the firearms registry was created because of the events at the École Polytechnique in Montreal.

I would like to read out the names of these women, because we do not talk about them enough and we must not forget them: Geneviève Bergeron, Nathalie Croteau, Anne-Marie Edward, Maryse Laganière, Anne-Marie Lemay, Michèle Richard, Annie Turcotte, Hélène Colgan, Barbara Daigneault, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Leclair, Sonia Pelletier, Annie St-Arneault, and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz. They lost their lives that day. It is important to remember that.

I understand what the hon. member who spoke before me is saying. He is speaking in this House on behalf of a group of individuals who are targeted by the bill in question and by the firearms registry as a whole. However, there are also people who are targeted by the implementation of this registry. We all agree that the registry was not set up very well and that it cost a fortune. Nevertheless, despite what I hear about Bill C-10 every time I am at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, I realize that when it comes to the victims, no price is too high. Sometimes in life things are expensive and we deal with it, but that is not how we should look at things.

On this side of the House, we are trying to piece together all these versions and views. What I find unfortunate in the debate on the gun registry—as with many debates here in this House—is that the government is trying to polarize the debate. It claims that its position, the position of the hunters, is the right one and that others are completely wrong. Some people claim that the victims' position is in the right and that the hunters are completely wrong. But sometimes, reality and truth are found in the middle, somewhere in between, and on this side of the House, that is what we have tried to bring to the debate and will continue to do. Yes, I can understand the frustration of the hunters or of some aboriginal peoples who feel that this registry forces them to do things, but we must look at what the original objective was.

I will admit that there are some good arguments on the other side of the House. Sometimes there may have been some information that was taken wrong. Perhaps the registry is not completely wonderful. That is partly their fault as well, because in light of the amnesties granted, the registry has stalled a bit in recent years. It is perhaps not as up to date as I would like it to be, but the information in it is very important.

We know that, for very ideological reasons, the Conservatives have turned the firearms registry into a big issue, an issue of money or all kinds of things. Once again, the victims have been forgotten in all the noise. The government has forgotten that while it is talking to us and we are discussing this, we receive emails and messages from all sides. I am sure that all members in the House receive them, including the Conservatives. They will probably rise at some point and say they do not get them, but maybe that is because they do not look at them.

I receive messages from hunters, victims' parents and victims advocacy groups. They are asking that we not eliminate the registry. For a number of people, it has become symbolic. Some might say it is an expensive symbol, but we are being told by groups like police associations that, on the contrary, this registry is being used. Whether the hon. member who spoke before me likes it or not, and even if the Conservatives say it is not true, I tend to believe our police officers. If our police chiefs are saying they use the registry, I do not see why we would suddenly say they are lying. I do not think that is the case.

I was looking at the background of this registry and I discovered something odd. It has been used quite a bit to divide the two sides of the House, with one side being right and the other side being completely wrong. It is a major source of political division in Canada. Some have tried to pit rural Canada against urban Canada. At first I was interested in this issue as a person who spends a lot of time with groups that protect women who are victims of violence. These groups have taught me a lot about the firearms registry. Perhaps they saw this registry as symbolic, but they also saw it as a possible solution to many domestic tragedies. At the very least, it provides a sense of security because of the additional tools it provides to our police forces to help women in specific circumstances.

In trying to do my job properly, without being too entrenched in my own view, I have learned, since the registry was created, to listen to others' views, including that of the hon. member who just spoke. It is true that there has been endless talk over the years and that the same ideas keep resurfacing. But I am not convinced that the members on the other side of the House have listened closely to the arguments coming from this side or from victims' and police groups. And that upsets me.

Now that it is in a majority situation, the government is saying that it can abolish this registry. But before, the government knew that this move was not possible and did not represent the views of the majority. I have no choice but to point out, once again, that this government only represents 39% of the population. This is an important statistic. Approximately 60% of Canadians decided that they did not share the Conservative vision.

I find it unfortunate that the Conservatives are trying to say that people voted for them and that since they are the majority, they are authorized to destroy the registry. This time, they have decided not just to cancel the registry, but also to destroy it. That is a major problem. The government does not seem to be aware of it this morning, but I get the feeling that the next few hours will be difficult for it. I can feel a storm brewing. I do not want to be alarmist, but since seeing the reactions—and particularly that of the Government of Quebec, the province where I was elected to represent the people of Gatineau—I have various concerns because I get the impression that a major problem is arising. Why? Because the federal government wants to destroy everything. It wants to do more than just block access to the information; it wants to destroy it. It will be shredded or thrown away—like pressing “Delete” on the computer—to ensure that the data will no longer be available anywhere.

The Minister of Public Safety was extremely clear and unequivocal: that is exactly what the government plans to do. It wants to make sure no one ever has access to that information. Yet the Conservatives have been reminding us since the registry was created that gathering that information was very costly for Canadians.

Everyone here in the House can agree on that. Everyone knows that creating the registry was very costly. The Conservatives keep reminding us that it cost $2 billion, but they forget to mention that most of that was spent at the beginning, when it was first created. When the registry was working well and running smoothly, it was costing between $2 million and $4 million, depending who one asks. Even taking the higher amount, $4 million, no one would say that that is a waste of money, except our Conservative friends across the floor. Furthermore, our police forces and victims associations are telling us that the registry is useful. I will never convince the members opposite, because they begin with the premise that police chiefs are lying when they say they use the registry, that victims associations do not know what they are talking about, because the registry does not prevent any crimes. The problem is that we may never know if the registry did in fact prevent crime. We could go round in circles on this for quite some time.

When a crime is committed with a registered firearm, the Conservatives immediately say to us that the fact that the firearm was registered did not prevent the crime. It may not have prevented one crime, but perhaps other crimes were prevented at some point. A police officer told me that he felt safe when he knew beforehand that there were two rifles in a home. When the guy comes out and throws a rifle on the ground, the police officer knows that there is another one in the house. The registry helps police officers to be better prepared. Police officers truly believe that the registry protects their lives, whereas the member who spoke before me firmly believes the opposite.

Finding ways to reconcile all these positions is possible and we can do it. If we used our talents and our energy, not as my colleague who spoke before me did in an attempt to destroy the registry, but rather to find solutions that reconcile everyone's positions, we would all benefit from this experience. But that is not happening. On the contrary, the Conservatives like to divide and conquer. They will tell hunters that the Conservatives are their saviours; that hunters are no longer criminals.

I direct my remarks to all hunters watching us. I have never believed that a hunter is a criminal. I do not think that anyone in this House has ever believed that a hunter, an aboriginal person or anyone who has inherited a rifle is a criminal. If mistakes in the legislation have given this impression, it is up to us, the legislators, to correct them.

As the hon. member for Chambly—Borduas said earlier, we fill out forms and provide information on our cars and boats. This comment may seem simplistic, but it is true. We must eliminate the irritants. This has always been the position of the NDP, both the people who want to keep the registry and its opponents. I want to emphasize that I believe in this registry and that, if there are irritants, then we must work to eliminate them.

The destruction of data presents extremely serious legal problems. The hon. members may find me tiresome but my time at law school has proven useful. I am thinking, for example, about access to information. There are things that are unclear in the current legislation. The Government of Quebec has already announced its stand on the matter and other provinces may do the same. I do not want to focus exclusively on Quebec, but it is my province. It is the province that immediately stood up to protect its people and said that it was prepared to continue the registry. This information belongs to the people of Quebec. The registry contains information that is relevant to them. The federal government does not have the right to destroy data that belongs to all Canadians and that cost a lot of money.

I have said this outside the House and I am not afraid to repeat it in the House. I am not afraid to say things outside the House. I find the Conservatives' position to be extremely mean-spirited. It seems there must be a way to find time.

The Conservatives will succeed in abolishing the registry since they have a majority, but if the provinces and territories want to continue to use it, I think that our Conservative colleagues could consider that and allow these governments and territories to offer the service to law enforcement agencies and organizations in their jurisdiction who need it and believe that they need it.

There is no problem with removing the irritants and I do not think that the province of Quebec will want to get into long debates about hunters or aboriginal nations. But there is a way to keep this data without simply destroying it, throwing it in the trash or taking a match to it.

I think that this is a good time to think about it. This would be the time to have a mature discussion about the gun registry. We must stop focusing solely on the absolutes on each side. Maybe we should think about the victims of the events that led to the creation of the gun registry.

It is not a matter of casting judgment on hunters, aboriginals or people who inherit rifles and other guns, but as legislators, this is our way of respecting people who are going through very difficult situations, like the events at Dawson College. People will tell me once again that the guns involved in this tragedy were not registered, but that does not matter when we know that one of the victims of the Dawson tragedy is still walking around with a bullet in his head. This victim told us, as legislators, that the gun registry is important. If we listen to these victims when studying Bill C-10, maybe it would also be a good idea to listen to them when studying Bill C-19.

We must stop focusing solely on our ideological speeches and on absolutes and try listening to what the others are saying. Women's groups feel safer with a gun registry. It does not solve the problem. I will not claim here in this House that it is a solution to domestic violence or violence against women, but it is a symbol of safety.

Once again, if we eliminate the irritants that are causing the Conservative government to be so insistent on destroying the long gun registry, I do not see why we cannot reach a consensus.

In conclusion, at times, we remember people and we express our respect for them. I am thinking of our leader, Jack Layton, who passed away this summer. In a moment, I will tell the hon. members what he was always telling us about this issue. I know that I will likely have to answer a question from the other side of the House about whether the official opposition intends to force a vote. The hon. members will see that the NDP's position is extremely logical and consistent with what they have heard in the this chamber.

The NDP's position is unanimous: we believe that there are ways of reconciling all the positions in a respectful manner in order to take into account the rights of victims and the rights of those who seriously object to the registry because of certain irritants.

I would like to end by quoting my leader, because I think it is important to remember him. He said:

Stopping gun violence has been a priority [for me and] for rural and urban Canadians.

There’s no good reason why we shouldn’t be able to sit down with good will and open minds. There’s no good reason why we shouldn’t be able to build solutions that bring us together. But that sense of shared purpose has been the silent victim of the gun registry debate.

[The Prime Minister] has been no help at all. Instead of driving for solutions, he has used this issue to drive wedges between Canadians.... [The Conservatives are] stoking resentments as a fundraising tool to fill their election war chest.

[The Prime Minister] is pitting Canadian region against Canadian region with his “all or nothing show-down”. This is un-Canadian.

This kind of politics, which seeks to divide and pit people against one another, resembles the poisonous political games in the United Sates. This is not part of our country's political tradition, and I think that all Canadians demonstrated this when Jack Layton died. This is not the kind of political game we want to play.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated my colleague's speech, although its content did not surprise me.

I have many questions about our Conservative friends' position, particularly in certain contexts, for instance regarding Bill C-10. I am a member of the committee examining this bill, and we are currently hearing from witnesses called by the Conservatives, including some representing victims groups, to support the government's position on Bill C-10 on law and order, public safety and so on.

However, when the time comes to hear from victims associations that are calling for the firearms and long gun registry to be maintained, considering how vital and important it is, the government refuses to listen to them. Are their fine words only good for one side and not the other? Some people have explained how it feels to be a hunter, for example, and I understand that the legislation can cause some inconvenience. I understand why some people might feel as though they are being treated like criminals because they have a long gun. But does public safety not make up for these inconveniences?

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot square the minister's statement with, as I said, the evidence that has been adduced by the police associations themselves, who the government otherwise invoke in support of Bill C-10, and yet disregard their statements when it comes to the abolition of the gun registry.

All the police associations, which I have cited, state and concur that the long gun registry is an essential tool used by police when taking preventive action, enforcing prohibition orders or used to ensure the firearms are removed from an individual's possession when the situation warrants it, particularly in matters relating to domestic abuse, suicide related issues and the like.

The registry assists police investigations. When police recover a gun at the scene of a crime, they can trace it back to its rightful owner. All members of the House will recall, for example, that two men were identified and convicted as accessories to the murder of RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, in part because a registered gun was left at the scene of the crime.

That is why I talked about the use of information for purposes of evidence that then can be used with regard to apprehending the criminal and the prosecution of that criminal. It allows police to differentiate between legal and illegal firearms. Without information about who owns firearms legally and what firearms they own, police cannot charge individuals with illegal possession. This is to protect law-abiding people and distinguish them from non-law-abiding people and hold the non-law-abiding people to account.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, as the member for Mount Royal, I am pleased to take part today in the debate on Bill C-19, the government's bill to abolish the long gun registry. Like many Quebeckers, Montreal residents have indicated their support for the registry and their opposition to its abolition at meetings and political forums.

The government's justification for abolishing the long gun registry is not unlike its support of Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act. It has a mandate to enact this legislation. The disposition speaks for itself and all contrary evidence is therefore but an inconvenient truth to be ignored. Yet, ironically enough, the government's legislation to abolish the long gun registry betrays the very principles invoked by the government in support of Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill.

Indeed, the two bills provide an interesting study and contrast that illustrate the incoherence and inconsistency in the government's approach to crime and justice, save for one common feature, the ignoring, marginalizing and mischaracterizing of the evidence.

Accordingly whereas the organizing motif of Bill C-10 is the protection of public safety, which we all support in the House regardless of party, the legislation to abolish the long gun registry would endanger that very purpose of public safety.

Whereas Bill C-10 purports to speak in the name of the victims, this legislation ignores the very voices of the victims themselves who oppose the legislation.

Whereas Bill C-10 purports to rely on the support of police associations, which the Minister of Public Safety yesterday in the House invoked in support of the safe streets and communities act, this legislation is opposed by those very same police organizations.

Whereas Bill C-10 was intended to combat violent crime, this bill ignores the evidence that the long gun registry protects precisely against such violent crime. In particular, it protects against domestic violence, community violence, workplace violence and violence against women.

Whereas 272 members of the House, including many government members, recently rose in support of a motion to adopt a national suicide prevention strategy, this legislation ignores yet again the evidence respecting gun-related suicide.

Whereas Bill C-10 would offload costs of the safe streets legislation on the provinces that must enforce it, this legislation seeks to eliminate all the data, to erase all the evidence that would enable the provinces, such as my province of Quebec, to initiate its own registry, an enormous waste of public investment by a government that professes concern about the registry's waste.

Whereas Bill C-10 purported to consult and consider the concerns of the provincial and territorial attorneys general prior to its introduction, when one reads the letter from Quebec justice minister Jean-Marc Fournier to the current Minister of Justice, it is clear that Quebec's views were not incorporated.

This legislation has been tabled without appropriate consultation with provincial and territorial attorneys general. So much for the open, vaunted, covenantal federalism which the government has professed.

I organized my remarks seriatim around each of these points and principles, the whole anchored in and inspired by the very facts that run counter to the government's proposed legislation.

First, in a manner protecting public safety, despite the government's claim that the long gun registry is a waste and does nothing, as it has been quoted as saying, it is checked by police officers across Canada an average of some 16,000 times a day. Therefore, the question is whether these police officers, the very people the government asks us to heed, are simply wasting their time when they tell us that it is a valuable asset again and again.

The fact remains that having such a database has been a valuable asset, to quote police again, for protecting and promoting public safety. Indeed, in Canada deaths by gunshot are at their lowest level in over 40 years. There were 400 fewer Canadians who died of gunshots in 2007 compared to 1995, the year the Firearms Act was introduced, and estimates directly credit the registry with a reduction of 50 homicides and 250 suicides annually.

Since the first introduction of stricter gun laws in 1991, there has been a 65% reduction in homicides by long guns, as Statistics Canada data shows. Most important, behind every statistic is a human life saved. How can the government look at this evidence and still maintain that abolishing the registry is beneficial to public safety?

Second, in the matter of protecting victims, we need only listen to Sue O'Sullivan, the federal ombudswoman for victims of crime, who said on the occasion of the introduction of this legislation:

Our position on this matter is clear—Canada must do all it can to prevent further tragedies from happening, including using the tools we have to help keep communities safe, like the long-gun registry.

She added that “the majority of victims' groups we have spoken with continue to support keeping long-gun registry.”

In my own province of Quebec, a similar indictment of this legislation has come from family and friends of the victims of the École Polytechnique massacre, as well as from the Dawson College student association, both of whom I have met.

It is clear that victims groups are against this legislation, particularly in my province of Quebec. If we scrap the long gun registry what lessons, if any, can the government expect to have learned from the Polytechnique massacre, the Dawson College killing, and other similar tragic events.

Indeed, one of the most compelling statements in regard to victims and reflecting the voices of victims and the lessons learned comes from Janet Hazelton, the president of the Nova Scotia Nurses' Union, who said:

Nurses and doctors, particularly those who work in emergency rooms, witness first-hand the horrific injuries and tragic deaths that result from firearms. We meet the victims who fall prey to long-guns and attempt to save them. For those whom we are unable to save in spite of our utmost efforts, we meet their families whose lives are shattered by long-guns. We also treat patients on a regular basis who are suicidal or victims of domestic abuse. A rifle or a shotgun in their homes increases their chances of being victimized. We often work with the police, who accompany these patients to hospital, as they can access the registry to determine if a gun is registered to the home, allowing us to devise a safety plan for our patients. The RCMP has stated that dismantling the registry will save less than $4 million a year, a trivial figure when compared to the costs of gun injury and death.

What does the government say in response to Ms. Hazelton, or is her voice and that of the victims for whom she speaks, to be ignored or mocked yet again as an inconvenient truth?

Third, in the matter of support from police, for the year period ending September 30, 2011, the registry had been accessed more than six million times. Again, this speaks for itself. If it were useless and wasteful, as the government contends it to be, and all these wrongful things that the government purports the registry to be, then why would our first responders rely on it day in and day out? Why would they continue to characterize it as a valuable asset? Simply put, as the police associations themselves have affirmed, the registry is an essential tool for taking preventive action; for enforcing prohibition orders; for assisting police investigations, as when the police recover a gun from a crime they can trace it to the rightful owner; for allowing police to differentiate between legal and illegal firearms; and for allowing police to trace firearms easily.

As Windsor Police Services chief, Gary Smith, put it:

...but it can save lives. Often we would search a registry before we dispatched an officer on a call and if you tell them there’s a firearm registered, they’re a little cautious, depending on the type of call. My detectives would use it quite often, anytime they applied for a search warrant or an arrest warrant.

As for the specific issue of the destruction of data, Denis Côté, president of the Fédération des policiers municipaux du Québec, said, “I am shocked that they are destroying the data.”

Fourth, there is the matter of protection against violent crime, in particular, domestic violence and violence against women.

For example, the RCMP estimated in 2002 that 71% of spousal homicides committed in the preceding 10 years involved long guns.

According to Statistics Canada, in 2009 there was a 74% reduction for spousal homicides involving firearms, from nearly three homicides per million spouses in 1980 to less than one homicide per million spouses in 2009.

Indeed, Pamela Harrison of the Canadian Association of Women's Shelters says:

The rate of spousal homicide by gun has gone down 69 per cent and we attribute most of that to the impact of the gun registry. Without question we need it in Canada.

Accordingly, while women are a small percentage of gun owners, they account for a high percentage of victims of gun crime. The long gun registry is the only way to know how many of such weapons need to be removed from a dangerous spouse.

Since 1995, the rate of women murdered with firearms by the intimate partner has decreased, as I noted, by 69%.

In addition, Paulette Senior, chief executive officer of the YWCA, added that “the threat of a rifle is often a significant reason that women don’t risk leaving to seek help.” The government has to do something about this.

Simply put, the number of homicides involving long guns since the introduction of the Firearms Act in 1995 has decreased by 41%, a figure that can be traced in part to the long gun registry.

Fifth, I will turn my attention to suicide.

Recently, the government stood with opposition parties to denounce the incidents of suicide in this country and vowed to take action. This statement of solidarity and support from the government is directly at odds with the bill.

Since the Firearms Act was introduced in 1995, firearm related suicides are down 23% as of 2009, and we know that firearms are a weapon of choice for those attempting suicide. Indeed, the number of firearm related suicides in 2004 stood at 475, which is 5.4 times the number of suicides with handguns. Again, if the government were serious in its commitment on suicide and the importance of having a national suicide prevention strategy, which I think it is, then it would not scrap the long gun registry.

Sixth, with regards to destroying records, this is particularly troubling for me as a Quebecker.

It should be noted that the National Assembly is debating the creation of a registry for Quebec as we speak.

The government's move to destroy records prejudices the work of the provinces that realize the registry is a valuable tool that saves lives. Indeed, that is at the core of what we are talking about, a valuable tool to protect public safety and human security.

In summary, what we have here, regrettably, is yet another Conservative policy that is ideologically inspired with a wilful and reckless disregard for the evidence. All the facts, the quotes and the statistics that are provided appear almost as a kind of inconvenient truth for the government, but they remain a compelling truth nonetheless.

As I said before in this House, whenever the government talks about having a mandate for the safe streets and communities act and a mandate for the abolition of the gun registry, the point is that it needs to be reaffirmed that all governments and all parties have a mandate for safe streets and safe communities. However, the question is on the merits of the means chosen, whether it be with respect to Bill C-10 or to the abolition of the gun registry.

The abolition of the gun registry, with respect, is without merit and an affront to the very victims whose voices the abolition of this gun registry purports to represent. These voices, however, are speaking for the retention of that gun registry to support the purpose of public safety, to give expression to their concerns and to save lives.

Ending the Long-gun Registry Act

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Madam Speaker, I do not know how I can make this any clearer. Our government indicated that we would get rid of the long gun registry. The registry is nothing more than a database of information containing the personal and private facts of law-abiding Canadian citizens. We said we would get rid of it. That is our commitment to the Canadian people. That is exactly what we are doing.

I do not understand what the member meant when he said that we promise the Canadian people one thing and then allow it to happen through the back door. Quite frankly, we are not prepared to break faith with the Canadian people with respect to that issue.

The Canadian Police Association recognizes that our government received a mandate from the Canadian people on this particular issue. It wants us to get Bill C-10 and the lawful access legislation passed, which will make a difference in fighting crime.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

moved that Bill C-19, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to begin debate on Bill C-19, Ending the Long-gun Registry Act.

This is a great day for Conservatives across Canada. It marks the beginning of the end for a nearly 17-year-old legacy of waste thrust upon Canadians by the previous Liberal government. I know I speak for many of my colleagues when I say that this has been a very long time in coming. For years, many of us have stood in this place even when we were on the other side and took a stand for law-abiding hunters, farmers and sports shooters.

We repeated time and again that the long gun registry was wasteful. It was ineffective. It did nothing to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Yet still the parties that now form the opposition stood against us and against the law-abiding Canadians for whom we were standing.

It is true that occasionally we found allies across the aisle as long as they could be assured that their vote against the registry would not actually result in the registry being dismantled. Those individuals ended up listening to their Ottawa bosses rather than standing up for the voices of their constituents. However, we are here today to look forward, not back.

On May 2, Canadians gave our Conservative government a strong mandate to end the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry once and for all, and this is exactly what we are doing.

I would like to take a moment to discuss that mandate. From personal experience, I have received literally thousands of phone calls and letters advocating a quick end to the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry. I know from talking to my colleagues that they have had similar experiences.

Conservative candidates from across Canada stood at doorsteps and spoke to their constituents. Time after time they heard people say “When are you going to end the long gun registry?” Specifically, the members for Yukon, Nipissing—Timiskaming, Sault Ste. Marie and Ajax—Pickering heard from their constituents how important it was to elect a member of Parliament who stood against the wasteful long gun registry.

There have been many discussions over what the bill would do and what it would not do. What it would do is ensure that law-abiding hunters, farmers and sports shooters would no longer be treated like criminals simply because they owned a rifle or a shotgun. What the bill would not do is eliminate effective gun control.

The fact is, and this is no secret, the Conservative government is committed to keeping our streets and communities safe. We have brought in measures to do just that. Specifically, we have brought in mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes and targeted those who engage in dangerous criminal activity such as drive-by shootings. We have also funded numerous programs through the national crime prevention strategy that helps stop gun crime before it happens. That is how we keep Canadians safe, through tough and effective laws and smart prevention programs, not through needlessly increasing red tape and targeting law-abiding Canadians.

The bill would also provide for the destruction of records held by the Government of Canada relating to the registration of long guns and it would only make since. If we are getting rid of the registry, we get rid of the registry. The registry is comprised of information. We are getting rid of that registry.

The reason for this is the simple fact that we do not want to assist anyone to set up a back door registry. As we heard from the NDP members during question period, they have clearly indicated that they will reimpose a long gun registry should they ever have the opportunity to enter into a coalition with the Liberals on that fact.

The reason for this being unacceptable is that it focuses on law-abiding Canadians who should not have been targeted. This information should never have been collected in the first place. To maintain the registry and the information is a complete violation of law and the principles of privacy that all of us in the House respect.

I would like to bring this back down to a fundamental truth. In rural Canada oftentimes long guns are simply a part of everyday life. Whether it is owning hunting rifles for sport or using a shotgun as an everyday tool on the farm to protect their crops or livestock, there are a plethora of reasons that law-abiding Canadians would own long guns.

As we have said consistently, long guns are not the weapon of choice for criminals. Primarily criminals use hand guns or other restricted or prohibited firearms, the registration requirement of which is not affected by the bill here today. I would like to emphasize that.

The current system imposed by the previous Liberal government and supported by the NDP opposition is blissfully ignorant of this fundamental fact. The justice minister who ushered in this proposal, Allan Rock even went so far as to state that it was his firm belief that the only people in Canada who should have firearms are police officers and the military. That is a frightening statement and our government completely disagrees with this premise.

Frankly, the fact is there is no evidence that the long gun registry has prevented a single crime in Canada. Let us think logically about this for a moment. Is it reasonable to assume that thugs and criminals who have no problem committing armed robbery or other serious offences with firearms will sit down and fill out the paperwork? The response is obvious and it is a resounding no.

Rather than preventing criminals, the long gun registry has actually created criminals. The opposition has frequently used the analogy of registering cars and boats or other everyday items. This is simply not an accurate analogy. If people let their car registration lapse, they do not contravene the Criminal Code. They do not receive a criminal record. More important, they do not face the prospect of serious jail time. This is the case with the long gun registry. Again, reasonable people find this unacceptable.

As I stated earlier, one of our government's main priorities is keeping our streets and communities safe. I note the Canadian Police Association just came out with a statement saying that our government has received a mandate from the people on May 2 and that it is moving past the issue of the long gun registry. It wants to work with us on issues like the ingredients of Bill C-10 and the lawful access legislation. We, in fact, are committed to working with the police in that respect.

Some proponents of the long gun registry maintain that eliminating it will cause anarchy. This, again, is simply hyperbole and is not the case.

First and foremost, all individuals will still be required to be licensed to possess a firearm. We are committed to ensuring that only responsible and qualified individuals own firearms. Even after the passage of Bill C-19, to obtain a licence, individuals must still be able to pass the required Canadian firearms safety course and comply with safe storage and transportation requirements. They will also need to pass a background check, including a review of the individual's criminal record, any history of treatment for mental illness associated with violence, or history of violent behaviour against other people.

There will still be proper controls over restricted and prohibited firearms. We will continue to ensure that they are registered, as we have for many years.

In essence, Bill C-19 retains licensing requirements for all gun owners, while doing away with the need for honest, law-abiding citizens to register their non-restricted rifles or shotguns, a requirement that is unfair and ineffective. Let us be clear. Canadian firearms owners are law-abiding members of our society and deserve to be treated as such. Burdening these citizens with unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy at the risk of a criminal record is not only unreasonable, it is unfair and it is wrong.

The NDP members said they had a solution. They said they would not make it a criminal record but rather an offence. If it is no longer a criminal record it is then outside the area of criminal law which makes it unconstitutional. Although they realized that the bill would be unconstitutional, they were trying to foist it on Canadians in order to save this unfair and unreasonable legislation.

We have heard loud and clear from Canadians who own long guns that they want the long gun registry eliminated. They want to ensure that their private information is not distributed to others. That is what is proposed under Bill C-19.

We are not proposing a fundamental overhaul or scrapping of the entire licensing or registration system. Rather, we are proposing changes that do away with the need to register legally acquired or used rifles and shotguns, many of which are owned by Canadians living in rural or remote areas. Put simply, we are scrapping the long gun registry just as we said we would do.

We need a system with effective measures in place to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, not law-abiding hunters, farmers or sport shooters. That means we need to put more police on our streets. The government has acted on that. That also means our laws must be tough and effective. Again, the government has acted on that. The government is determined to ensure that law-abiding citizens are treated fairly while it is combatting the criminal use of firearms and getting tough on crime.

The bill before us today is about making sure that we invest in initiatives that work. It is about making sure we continue to protect the safety and security of Canadians without punishing people unnecessarily because of where they live or how they make a living.

We must ask ourselves how laws that penalize law-abiding citizens on farms or in the north can help reduce gun crimes in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg or Vancouver. The answer is clear: they do not.

When we hear statements made by members of the NDP, such as “Guns gotta go, folks. I'm for a full-out ban on these things” from the member for Davenport or “To destroy the gun registry is to destroy lives” from the NDP leadership contestant from Outremont, it is clear that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues at play in a country like Canada.

I will also touch on the issue of cost. When the idea of registering long guns was first discussed, the Liberals said it would be a simple process and would cost no more than $2 million. I remember Allan Rock coming into my office when I was the attorney general of Manitoba telling me that Manitoba must enforce the long gun registry. I told him that Manitoba would not enforce the long gun registry because it was a bottomless pit and that it was a law the federal government would have to enforce. He threatened to sue me.

Allan Rock is long gone and the lawsuit never materialized. Unfortunately, the effects of what Allan Rock and the Liberals did, which is now supported fully by the NDP, continues on. That is no understatement. The CBC, the state broadcaster, reported that the costs have ballooned to over $2 billion. That is unacceptable.

From 1995 to 2011, the money was spent on a program that did not save one life. Imagine how many police officers that money could have paid for or how many crime prevention programs it could have funded. The legacy of waste is shameful. I am proud to be part of the Conservative government that is putting an end to this wasteful and ineffective boondoggle.

As my time for debate is coming to an end I will sum up my arguments as to why all members should support this important legislation.

First, the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry does not do a single thing to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Front-line police officers, notably with the Canadian Police Association, agree with the government that the best approach to combatting gun crime is to ensure tough and effective sentences.

Second, the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry targets law-abiding hunters, farmers and sport shooters. Those people who own guns as a part of their rural way of life or simply as firearms enthusiasts are treated like criminals because of this unbalanced policy. As a government and as a country we must ensure that the measures we take on important public safety issues are effective.

Third, the costs associated with this program are inexcusable. Two billion dollars to implement a policy that does not do a whit to protect Canadians is unacceptable and must not continue.

Most important, Canadians gave our government a strong mandate to end the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry. Canadians expect no less of us than to implement this key plank of our platform without delay.

As I stated earlier, several former Liberal and NDP members are no longer in this place because they listened to their Ottawa bosses instead of their constituents.

I call on all members opposite to listen to Canadians and pass this important legislation quickly.

I will specifically mention the members for Timmins—James Bay, Welland, Sackville—Eastern Shore, Sudbury, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, Nickel Belt, Malpeque, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor and Avalon. They promised their constituents that they would oppose the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry. I hope they will live up to their word.

I will reiterate the fact that Canadians gave our government a strong mandate to end this wasteful and ineffective long gun registry. That is exactly what the bill will do.

Proposal to Divide Bill C-10

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to all the questions and the speech made by my colleague from St. John's East. I am a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, which is currently studying Bill C-10 for the first time. It is a very large bill. We hear from a ton of witnesses every time we study it. I think that the hon. member for Mount Royal mentioned that earlier. I am one of the members who is hearing these things for the first time. We must make it easier to hear from the various witnesses.

Just to give you an idea: when I look at our schedule for tomorrow, I see that over the course of one hour we will have the Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers, the Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and also Joanne Jong, as an individual. All of that will take place over the course of one hour. Each person or group is given five minutes. Every issue related to Bill C-10 is very important.

There is near-unanimity in the House on one of these issues. Perhaps the member for St. John's East could repeat what he said, but I find it difficult to understand why the government is being stubborn about splitting a matter that has unanimous support, where progress could be made.

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

Madam Speaker, I was at church on Sunday. My congregation had a petition out front on this topic, so I will be presenting that at some point in the future, calling on this Parliament to do more to protect our children. I hear that complaint a lot.

This part of Bill C-10 is one of the few times I have seen the government, since it has been in power, actually take an approach that is preventative, in particular, with regard to the new crimes that we are creating of luring and grooming.

I have to say with some pride that those sections, those proposed amendments to the Criminal Code, first surfaced in this Parliament in the form of private members' bills from the NDP, back as early as 1995, 1998, somewhere in that time period. Liberals never did anything about it and until we finally saw this bill about a year and a half ago, the government did.

I would ask my colleague from St. John's East this question. What does he see as being the greatest advantage, in terms of protecting our children, with regard to those two sections, in particular?

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

moved:

That it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights that it have the power to divide Bill C-10, 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, into two bills; the first containing the provisions of the Bill with respect to sexual offences against children, and consisting of clauses 10 to 31 and 35 to 38, and the second containing all other provisions of Bill C-10.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to present this motion, which I think is extremely important to all Canadians.

Right now we have before the House what is known as an omnibus bill on criminal justice. It is a complex bill consisting of nine separate pieces of legislation. Bill C-10 is rather lengthy and complex with over 100 pages dealing with various matters. In fact, the long title of the bill refers to enacting a justice for victims of terrorism act and amending 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. It is complicated because the legislation deals with a number of individual topics.

Our proposal is that the provisions relating to sexual assault and sexual matters relating to children be dealt with separately. The rationale for this is very simple.

The complexity and controversial nature of the entire bill is such that it would take a considerable amount of time for it to get the proper consideration by this House in accordance with the proper form, through committee, third reading, and through the other place, before it became law. There is some urgency with respect to the provisions of this bill in relation to sexual offences against children. That is essentially part 2 of the bill, although we have not included all of this in the instruction.

There is an original act which has to do with terrorism and lawsuits against foreign states. There are particular provisions that deal with sexual offences against children. There are amendments to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, amendments to the Criminal Code in relation to conditional sentences, amendments to the Criminal Records Act, amendments in relation to the international transfer of offenders, amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which are very particular and complex, and amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. It is a very complex bill, some of which has been debated before and some of which has not.

There is a particular reason that sexual offences against children ought to be considered and debated separately. We believe this can be dealt with fairly quickly in the House and also in the other place. The other place has indicated there would be fairly quick passage. I believe these provisions have passed through the other place before. We could anticipate fairly quick passage to make this law within a very short period of time so that prosecutors and police would have the opportunity to make use of it.

There are some provisions of this legislation that we agree are necessary because they add some new offences to the Criminal Code, particularly in the case of sexual offences against children.

There are new provisions which would prohibit, as a new and specific crime, making pornography available to children. Giving pornography and pornographic images to children would be a separate offence which could be prosecuted separately and would not have to involve other activity.

The second new provision that we think is extremely important would make Internet luring an offence. Internet luring as a separate offence is necessary because under the current provisions of the Criminal Code, it is required that there actually be something more than that.

In the case of dealing with someone on the Internet, I think we have all heard of cases where a police officer pretends to be a child in order to be lured into a meeting with a perpetrator. The police officer nabs the perpetrator and is able to charge that person because the person went to a hotel room or place where the person thought a child would be waiting.

These are complicated offences that require a great deal of police resources. They require some sort of a sting, as I discussed, in order to protect children, because children cannot actually be used as the bait for an offence like this. It would be unethical to do so. Therefore, it is difficult to prosecute these types of offences.

In effect, the new offences would be preventive in nature. Police would be able to intercept the types of Internet predators we see all too frequently these days. They would be intercepted before they actually had a chance to make arrangements to meet with a child for sexual purposes. Sometimes it is called “grooming”, where the offender builds a relationship with a child and uses that relationship to take the next step. Criminologists and police officers refer to it as grooming a child for eventual predation. That itself would be an offence.

We believe that is something that ought to be put into law as quickly as possible. There is no requirement for any actual abuse. In fact, this step is normally a preliminary step to sexual offences against children that we see all too often. We want to protect children. The NDP is steadfast in wanting to see the law improved to ensure that children who are potential victims of sexual predators are protected.

People on the other side do not like to hear that because they want to be able to say that the NDP does not support any measures designed to protect children. It is the exact opposite. That is why this motion is being presented. We want this to be part of the bill. It is accepted and sought by many people across the country. There is virtual unanimity throughout the academic and legal communities regarding the necessity for this provision. As well, police officers and prosecutors want the tools to prevent these crimes. As a parent, I am most anxious to see this brought forward as well.

That is in contrast to a lot of the measures in the rest of the bill. This omnibus bill has been called many names and has been roundly criticized as being full of ideologically based measures by experts who have been to the committee already. The committee is studying this. We have already had three meetings. We have heard a number of witnesses. We have heard experts in children's law, the law on young offenders, criminologists and representatives of the Canadian Bar Association who have examined this bill and have said there are serious problems with it.

The short title of this bill is the “safe streets and communities act”, but experts have said that this bill will not make our streets safer, that the measures will increase crime, will lead to greater violent crime and a more unsafe society. That is directly contradictory to the bill's short title and supposed aims of the government. We hear from people that the measures in this bill will lead to longer sentences, more hardened criminals, and less rehabilitation. People will be more likely to reoffend. All those things are going to increase the likelihood of crime, which is the exact opposite of what is intended.

They have been tried in other countries. They have been tried in the United States. We have seen examples of states in the United States that have gone down this road of treating people, who are convicted of offences, with a great deal of severity. They have now come to realize that they have driven up their costs of incarceration enormously, to no greater safety of their communities.

In fact, they are leading to greater crime. Many of these states in the United States are finding ways to change their policies to focus on prevention and rehabilitation and, in some cases, do a massive diversion such as in Texas where its drug courts have the universal appeal of all sides in its legislature there.

I spoke to the reporter who did the story on the prisons in Texas and the plan to divert people from courts to drug rehabilitation programs. He said they were there for several days and were looking around, and fully expected to have a program in which there would be defenders of the current system and opponents. They wanted to present both sides of the story.

It was surprising, to the producers and journalists undertaking the program that was on CBC a couple of weeks ago, that there was only one side of the debate. Everybody, including Republicans, Democrats, judges and police officers, agreed that this approach was costing a fortune. This was in Texas. We are talking about one of the hard line states of the southern U.S. when it comes to criminal justice. There was unanimity there among the political leadership that this was a good idea, that it was saving money, reducing crime with results.

These kinds of debates and questions are being raised in committee. I can assure members that these debates need to take place. There are debates about that aspect of the law. There are debates about the youth criminal justice provisions.

We had a renowned law professor from Queen's University, Nicholas Bala, who has been testifying before parliamentary committees for 20 years. His opinions, expertise, and articles are quoted by courts throughout the land, including the Supreme Court of Canada. He has told us that he supports some of the provisions and the changes to the Youth Criminal Justice Act because they are good measures.

However, he has made it very clear that some of these provisions would lead to a greater criminalization of individuals who come before the law under the Youth Criminal Justice Act and, in fact, would lead to greater criminality, more criminals, and less safe communities as a result of the changes that are being proposed in this legislation.

Members can be sure that this very complex so-called omnibus bill deserves to receive great scrutiny through the committees of this House and through the debates in this House for a fair bit of time, for as long as it needs, in order to do a proper job. It is a very complex bill.

On the issues of the relation to civil remedies for terrorism, we had a debate in committee on Tuesday this week. We had an individual who is part of a committee that is opposed to terrorism and an individual whose husband, sadly, was a victim of the 9/11 attack on the twin towers in New York, who testified, talking about the need for this legislation and the need to improve it.

These aspects have to be looked at in terms of what changes need to be made to make these bills effective and work. There needs to be the kind of debate that should take place.

We had the Canadian Bar Association come before us and say that there were serious problems with this bill. Some people like to dismiss the Canadian Bar Association and say, “Oh, they're just defence lawyers”. However, that is not the case. When the Canadian Bar Association came to testify before Parliament, it had a very lengthy presentation of over 100 pages and also an oral presentation. Its response was primarily the work of the Canadian Bar Association national criminal justice section which represents prosecutors and defence lawyers as well as legal academics from every part of Canada.

The Canadian Bar Association is not on one side or the other of a particular paradigm. Its body represents an analysis of this legislation based on the views of Crown prosecutors who prosecute offences throughout the country. It has brought together the views of prosecutors, defence counsel and legal academics throughout the country. Similarly, we had representations from the Barreau du Québec, as well. There were advocates on both sides of the justice divide, both prosecutors and defence counsel, very experienced and learned people who we should hear from.

I am also certain, based on the experience in the past of some of these constituent bills that are part of this, there will be significant debate within the Senate that will see this legislation not back to this House very soon. The plan of the government to have this passed in 100 days from when Parliament began to sit is very unlikely to be met.

What we want to do is put, in the hands of prosecutors and police officers, as soon as possible, the provisions that provide for protection of our children from sexual assaults, from Internet luring, from the use of pornography to groom or to involve children in sexual offences, which are most abhorrent to all citizens of this country. They ought to be given a priority and a special consideration by this House for speedy passage.

I will acknowledge that there are some aspects of the legislation which give me a little trouble. As a lawyer I have strong feelings about mandatory minimum sentences because it fetters the discretion of judges. In some cases the minimum sentences also become maximum sentences, and judges who might be inclined to give a strong sentence because of particular circumstances may be inclined to stick to the minimum mandatory sentence because it is prescribed by law. That is a point that we can debate fully. I have serious reservations about that.

However, for the sake of getting this matter into the hands of prosecutors and police officers for the protection of our children, we want to see this legislation separated out from the existing bill, and then brought before this House so that it can receive speedy passage and be out of here within a matter of days. It could then be sent to the other place and become law very shortly.

It is now near the end of October. I am certain this could be dealt with before the middle of November, and then be law before the end of November, before we break for Christmas. I think that is very likely and very possible.

With the will of the government to co-operate on this particular motion, that could be done for the benefit of all Canadians, particularly for the benefit of the young people who will be protected and hopefully, potentially, saved from sexual assault and sexual abuse. How many? We do not know. It could be 5, 10, 100 or 200. There is an opportunity here to ensure that this bill is put into law as soon as possible.

The rest of the legislation is flawed. It has been called tough on crime, harsh, excessive, and unfair in some cases. Rather than replicating the errors of other places, we could learn from them. However, we cannot have that debate with this flawed bill.

This is an opportunity for this legislation because there is consensus in this House. It has passed before. It has gone through the Senate before. We think that it can pass very quickly. I do not imagine there would be a terrible amount of debate.

I would ask hon. members opposite to support this motion because it is timely, urgent, and can save children from sexual assault.

Public Safety

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, a new study from SFU confirms the evidence coming out of Texas that the Conservative government's misguided punishment policies just will not work. They discriminate heavily against first nations, who already account for a disproportionate percentage of prisoners. The evidence predicts increased prison overcrowding, reduced access to treatment and a higher likelihood of prisoners reoffending.

Expensive, ineffective and discriminatory: that is Bill C-10.

Is the government against evidence, or is it against real solutions for Canada's aboriginal peoples?

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it seems that we rise in this House on a regular basis to discuss bills and, more often than not, we do so following gag orders imposed by the government. This time, at issue is Bill C-18, which proposes that the Canadian Wheat Board be dismantled and that the single desk marketing of barley and wheat in Canada be eliminated. It was not that long ago that the government was trying to force Canada Post employees back to work. One might say that there is a fear of debate in this House. This is particularly unfortunate because we learn a lot by listening to what others have to say and we also learn a lot when we are able to thoroughly examine the provisions of bills, whether they are proposed by the government or by our colleagues here in the House.

However, people are being silenced rather quickly, not only in the House, but also in committee. Take, for example, Bill C-10, the government's omnibus bill on law and order. Witnesses might have plenty to say about this extremely long bill, but they are given only five minutes in which to do so and then they are cut off, once again, in mid-sentence. It does not seem as though democracy is being taken very seriously.

Nor does it seem as though the legislative provision calling for a plebiscite is being taken very seriously either. In other words, only the producers, the farmers, have the right to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board and it cannot be dismantled by us, here in the House, the very people who are supposed to uphold the law and ensure that things are done correctly. A vote was held. When I listen to the speeches given by members of all the parties, whether on the government side or this side of the House—with a few exceptions to my right—there are clearly huge differences in opinion.

From what I understand about this issue so far, we know very well that we have a Prime Minister who, since 2002, has been promising to dismantle the Wheat Board and, now that his party is in power, he has been quick to do so. I have often heard it said and I will say it again, since the Conservatives do not have very strong math skills: 39% of the population is not a strong mandate. In the current electoral system, it constitutes a majority, but it certainly does not constitute a strong mandate.

The government has to be careful about using such support to boast and say that the farmers it talks to or the farmers who talk to it all say it is doing the right thing. In actual fact, the Canadian Wheat Board held a plebiscite for which a total of 38,261 farmers mailed in their ballots. That is a participation rate of 56%, which is on par with federal elections, unfortunately, in my opinion. As I was saying at the beginning of my speech, 62% of the farmers voted for keeping a single desk marketing system for wheat and 51% for barley. I think 62% is a very good percentage. That is the rate with which I won my own election, so you can see why I like that very solid percentage so much.

That being said, it is not up to us in this House to decide on this. The act was drafted in such a way that it is the primary stakeholders who have a say. It is their Canadian Wheat Board. It is up to them to decide what to do with it.

Every speech I keep hearing about how the Wheat Board is not being eliminated, that it will be voluntary for a number of years, and that if people want to continue with it they will—it is all hogwash. It is a slow death, so as not to cause too much unrest. However, somehow, on the government side, no one is able to convince us in this House why this is necessary, other than for ideological reasons.

I have read up on the Canadian Wheat Board and I see how it succeeded—in regulating, perhaps. As a businessperson, I do find that regulations can be quite restrictive at times. In Quebec, we are used to having quite a lot of regulations and red tape. However, sometimes, to make systems work and ensure that everything is on the up and up, without losing control of an industry, that is what it takes and this is an industry that has been tried and tested.

This method has been proven over many years. The board should not be dismantled strictly on the basis of a poorly explained, unjustified ideology, without any figures to support the decision other than a few figures from emails here and there. I respect the fact that in a democracy, there will always be people who agree and people who do not agree. The members opposite may very well wonder who we are to talk, when agriculture is not the lifeblood of the riding of Gatineau, but the fact remains that this market affects every one of us.

The decisions we make here about how the market runs will affect everyone. If for no other reason, I think that that certainly gives us the right to speak to this issue.

I heard questions from some Conservative colleagues. They said to some colleagues from Ontario that their province had dismantled its board. Why should western farmers be treated differently than Ontario farmers? That could be a good question, but the fact is that Ontario farmers decided themselves, after a vote, to dismantle their board. I respect that. If western farmers tell us that they no longer want things to run like this, that is a different story. This board was created during wartime to provide wheat to Europe, among other places. Perhaps the board has no reason to exist in 2011. I do not know. The arguments that have been made by the minister and the Conservatives who have spoken on this issue have not convinced me, as the member for Gatineau, that there is a logical reason behind this that has nothing to do with ideology. Ideology is sometimes a bad adviser in a context like this.

I believe that the government would have our approval and the support of the entire House if it acted appropriately, that is, according to the terms of the act, which provides for a vote. Following a vote, we could decide whether or not the board would remain. No one would object. It would be the voice of democracy.

In this context, as the member for Gatineau, I personally find this problematic and it is for that reason that I will be voting against the bill. The Conservative government's actions are anti-democratic. It is no longer surprising. It is unfortunate. The government was only formed on May 2, 2011, and I am already forced to conclude that any type of organization, whether it is a union or the Canadian Wheat Board, is automatically on the Conservatives' chopping block. My concern is that we are selling our assets piecemeal to the Americans.

Matters such as those dealt with by Bill C-18 are very important because of the number of people affected directly or indirectly: consumers, producers, farmers, those involved in transportation, and all those who have anything to do with the wheat and barley industry. I believe we are entitled to expect a more responsible approach from parliamentarians.

Justice

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

Mr. Speaker, in committee yesterday the crown prosecutor certainly expressed some concern about overload, but the prosecutors were in essence pleading for more resources to ensure that the mandate they carefully carry out to protect Canadian citizens is carried out, as is the intent of Bill C-10.

Certainly we will dedicate all the resources necessary to ensure that cities and communities are safe, because we will stand up for citizens and we will protect victims.

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

Mr. Speaker, on the omnibus crime bill, Bill C-10, yesterday at committee a representative from the Canadian Association of Crown Counsel was highly critical of the problem overload that prosecutors have in this country. They have it already.

Instead of putting more police officers in our communities, with Bill C-10 the government's plan is to jam up our courts and prisons. The prosecutors have been very clear, both provincially and federally, that they cannot carry the load anymore.

When is the government going to come clear on what Bill C-10 would cost, and what is the government going to do about relieving the pressure on our prosecutors?

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, blinded by ideology, the Conservatives refuse to believe the statistics, refuse to listen to the Quebec bar and refuse to heed the warnings from places like Texas that have tried this approach and rejected it. Today, Quebec's National Assembly passed a unanimous motion demanding “the withdrawal of the provisions of federal Bill C-10 that go against the interests of Québec and Québec values as regards justice, including those concerning the treatment of young offenders.”

Will the minister continue to impose his approach, a major failure, or will he listen to Quebec and its National Assembly?

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, members will be shocked to know that the CBC has not corrected the record on its misleading report from Monday night. It failed to inform Canadians about the drug treatment court exemption in our government's safe streets and communities act.

Today the Quebec Bar Association confirmed that it supports the important drug treatment court exemption in Bill C-10 for those who are seeking treatment for their addictions.

Police chiefs have confirmed that drugs are the primary currency of violent criminal organizations. Fire chiefs have confirmed that grow ops and meth labs constitute a significant threat to the health of Canadian communities.

Bill C-10 is clear. If individuals do this criminal activity, they will pay with jail time. It is time the opposition parties across listened to the front-line experts and supported our efforts.

Canadians are concerned about crime and the experts agree. Bill C-10 targets organized crime while providing treatment options for those addicted to drugs. I call on the CBC today to apologize, to correct the record, and to stop misleading Canadians.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are concerned about crime. This is one reason our government received a strong mandate to keep our streets and communities safe.

Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act, contains targeted measures designed to disrupt criminal enterprise, while ensuring that those who sell drugs to children serve sentences that reflect the severity of their crime.

Contrary to a recent report by CBC, Bill C-10 contains specific measures to help those who are unfortunately addicted to drugs.

Could the minister inform the House on how Bill C-10 takes a balanced approach to tackling crime?

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is that the cost of crime on Canadian society far exceeds the cost of fighting crime. The fact is that last spring we provided the committee with hundreds of pages of documents that go into precise detail on costing.

For the hon. member's benefit, the Minister of Justice recently tabled a summary of these documents at the justice committee. They show very clearly that the federal cost of Bill C-10 is $78.6 million over five years.

We are working with our provincial and territorial partners on these costs. We believe that working in collaboration with them is important to ensure a strong justice system.

Bill C-13—Time Allocation Motion

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I find it most interesting that the government House leader introduces a motion in the House and then kind of turns his back to the whole debate on the issue and will not even stand up to answer specific questions.

It is very noteworthy that we recognize why it is we are here. We are here to hold government to account. We have has major bills introduced in the last few weeks. In this case, just yesterday the government introduced a bill and yesterday the minister said that he would be bringing in time allocation. Bill C-10, a crime bill, would do nothing in terms of preventing crimes from taking place and yet we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars. Bill C-4 would victimize refugees. The government put time allocation on these major bills.

Just so members across the way can say that they have actually seen the bill, this is the bill that we are supposed to be talking about. The government House leader and the Prime Minister see it fit to limit the debate on substantial pieces of legislation.

I would look to the government House leader to stand in his place and tell Canadians how he justifies bringing in this type of legislation and then saying, on the day it is introduced, that there will be only three days to debate it, not to mention the other bills that he—

Public Safety

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, our Conservative government is committed to keeping our streets and our communities safe. Part of that obviously means that we have a correctional system that actually corrects offenders. Our government has taken strong actions by improving offender accountability methods through the Safe Streets and Communities Act.

However, some so-called criminal rights advocates oppose this approach. Yesterday at the public safety committee, they spoke strongly against our Conservative plan to establish drug-free prisons.

Could the minister give this House his view?

Opposition Motion--National Suicide Prevention Strategy

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, during his speech, my hon. colleague spent a great deal of time focusing on the particular challenges of mental health in first nations communities.

I am struck by the fact that the government proposed Bill C-10 in the House, a bill that consists of 152 pages and puts nine previous bills into one bill. We know the federal prison system is grossly and disproportionately represented by first nations, many of whom suffer from mental health issues and 80% of whom have addictions issues, which in itself is a mental health issue.

I am wondering how my hon. colleague from Winnipeg South squares his government's focus on legislation that does nothing to address mental health or addictions in our federal prison system when it is so clearly and profoundly a source of problems for our first nations.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, initiatives such as the Mental Health Commission are welcome initiatives, but the whole burden of what we have been speaking to today is the need for a national vision and a national strategy to implement it, of which the Mental Health Commission initiative can play an important part.

That is why I sought to identify and, in an abbreviated way, recommend a series of such initiatives that have been recommended by the Canadian Association of Suicide Preventions, which referenced also the issue of mental health, as I did in my remarks.

However, that is but one component, and indeed, in respect of Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, that too needs to factor in those issues that may have fallout for suicide prevention in the context of its crime and punishment approach.

Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am trying to figure out the question. I only heard a very long statement. I am surprised that the hon. member elaborated on the same issue as the first member from the governing party. I will give the same answer.

I would be prepared to discuss and support a bill that contained every possible means to attack someone who has defrauded people and put them in a container. However, I cannot support a bill that unfairly treats people who tried to flee an extremely difficult situation and suffered abuse. I invite the government to do the same thing it should have done with Bill C-10, in other words, something concrete to address this serious problem—

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if the government were to introduce a bill that gives the RCMP and other law enforcement agencies greater power to catch people who engage in the trafficking of immigrants, in human trafficking, I would be the first to support it. I can see they are not really interested in my answer. Like Bill C-10, the vast majority of these documents have to do with denying status, with creating a designated foreign national status. If the government really wanted to solve this problem, it would introduce a bill to do so.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the American economy is stagnant. A large proportion of the small business owners I have met in the last month are facing the same problem: they have orders, but only for a month or two, when generally, at this time of year, they have orders for the next five, six, seven or eight months. Where I live, there are lumber yards with very productive sawmills that are not doing any stock rotation. This is very serious. We are on the eve of a possible recession. Local indicators like the analyses by the big banks remind us of this.

But what have we been doing in this House for two weeks? We have been piling up public safety bills. While people are about to be looking at a rising unemployment rate, we are talking to them about public safety. I do not see the logic in this, unless our Conservative friends have decided that having more inmates might make up for natural resources or opening plants. I cannot see what has prompted us to spend two weeks piling up public safety bills when we are in this kind of economic situation. None of my constituents are talking to me about public safety problems today. No one is telling me there have been more break-ins or whatever that would justify our Parliament spending weeks on public safety issues when there is a recession around the corner.

The bad news, as a result of this kind of behaviour, is that terrorism and crime may increase. If no clear action is taken to slow down or stop a potential recession, at a time when people, particularly young people, are unemployed, crime will increase. When developing countries hit an economic downturn and thousands of people earning low wages lose their jobs, more people may get involved with brutal ideologies and become potential terrorists. When the real solution, to avoid all these problems, is to find a way to stimulate the economy in the short term again, instead we are piling up public safety bills. This is absurd.

Something else is absurd. One of the reasons given by our friends in the government is that refugees arriving in groups by boat might cause a rise in terrorism in Canada. Let us think about that for a minute. Terrorist groups are well financed and unfortunately, in their own way, intelligent. Unfortunately, because they set about causing harm and destroying the democratic structures of developed countries or others that are less developed. Unfortunately, these are people who are well financed, organized and intelligent. They are going to spend months or years radicalizing young people, training them, and then they are going to put them in a boat for three months where they have a three in 10 chance of starving to death. They are going to bring them to a developing country as boat people in a container where their entire investment could literally die of starvation during transport. I would like to see a hint of a shadow of a study showing that refugees who arrive in groups by boat are more likely to be terrorists. I am convinced that a study that looked into this would show us the exact opposite. It is absurd and illogical.

Once again we are presented with a public safety bill, even though this is not what my constituents are talking to me about every day. They are talking to me about the declining numbers of jobs and orders to fill. And on top of that, we are still facing the same problem. The Canadian Bar Association, not the NDP, has reminded us that it did not support the earlier version of the bill.

According to representatives from the bar, this bill violates the provisions of the charter against arbitrary detention, it violates the guarantees in the charter for the prompt review of detentions and violates Canada's international obligations regarding the treatment of persons seeking protection.

This is not someone from the NDP saying so; it is the Canadian Bar Association. Once again, as with Bill C-10, it is clear that the government has no regard for the expertise of professionals in the field. Lawyers and judges have said that the current system is reliable and that we do not need even more public safety, as though there were cause for concern and as though we had been seeing widespread crime in Canada for years. That is untrue.

For my remaining time, I have a little exercise. Often enough, our colleagues from the party in power ask us whether we have read the bill. I have news for them: I do read the bills. Oh yes, I will sit down with the text of the bill and will ask questions that occur to me, even in the summary.

At the very beginning, it reads:

(a) authorize the Minister, in certain circumstances, to designate as an irregular arrival the arrival in Canada of a group of persons [all of a sudden they are no longer refugees, but a group of persons], the result of which is that some of the foreign nationals [a new label appears here: “foreign nationals”. Their status is no longer refugee, but “foreign national” as soon as they set foot here] in the group [specifically] become designated foreign nationals;

Basically, the government is doing away with the idea of refugees. Thirty years ago, when Southeast Asia was having problems, Laotians and others were arriving in Canada and were welcomed openly, particularly by Quebec families. These were people who needed help and now, all of a sudden, they are designated foreign nationals. Who decides whether a group is designated or not? The minister. Could it be any more arbitrary?

I noted some questions. For example, who decides who makes up a group? A little further on, we can see that a group can be more than 10 people but it can also be fewer than 10 people. If a mother who is already a Canadian citizen accompanies her son who is not and who, for humanitarian reasons, decides to stay in Canada after a trip, do they constitute a group?

I also noted this paragraph:

The officer may refuse to consider an application for permanent residence made under subsection (1) if

(a) the designated foreign national fails, without reasonable excuse, to comply...

I read the bill to see what constituted a reasonable excuse. Is there a definition? What constitutes a reasonable excuse? What does not? I looked. I turned the pages—all of the pages. I read the bill and I still did not find a definition for reasonable excuse. We are talking about human life and dignity. We are talking about people who, for the most part, are not primarily economic refugees. They are afraid that they will starve to death if they return to their country, or face an even worse situation in terms of human rights that involves a direct threat to their safety. Yet, we do not know what constitutes a reasonable excuse. An officer or minister can say whether the excuse is reasonable or whether it is not a good excuse and therefore unreasonable.

The Minister may, by order, having regard to the public interest [it is the minister who determines what the public interest is], designate as an irregular arrival the arrival in Canada of a group of persons if he or she...

A little further down it says:

...any investigations concerning persons in the group — cannot be conducted in a timely manner...

We are talking about an investigation being conducted in a timely manner for people who arrive by boat, starving to death, with only a few items of clothing. We are going to ask them to provide documentation in a timely manner? These people are starving to death and we are going to ask them to provide their documentation in, for example, two days or tell them that they did not provide it in a timely manner?

I would like to know how the government can violate human dignity in this manner.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have the opportunity to enter into the debate on Bill C-4, Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act.

Let me begin by saying that immigration and refugee issues are top of mind for the people and the community I represent in the inner city of Winnipeg. We are happy to welcome many newcomers. Some came here voluntarily to better themselves, while some were forced to come here to flee persecution in other countries.

My area is a low-income part of Winnipeg and has the most affordable housing, so most new arrivals to the province of Manitoba actually land in my jurisdiction of Winnipeg Centre. It is both a pleasure and a challenge in that, as is the case with many members here, our MP offices become de facto immigration offices. New arrivals do not seem to be able to find the settlement services they need to integrate seamlessly through the immigration system. More often than not, it seems, they wind up in our offices in some level of crisis. Many need our services, and we are happy to be able to provide them when we can.

By way of prefacing my remarks, I should also recognize and pay tribute to the International Centre in Winnipeg, which offers settlement services to new arrivals, both immigrants and refugees.

On my own staff, Vân Nguyen is a woman of Vietnamese descent who was herself a refugee who arrived in Canada as one of the waves of what we called “boat people” at the time. Vân Nguyen worked for Immigration Canada for many years. I am proud to say she is now on my staff and provides necessary services to a great many new arrivals.

Speaking of boat people, I think this debate has become too narrow. As I have watched the debate develop and evolve in the House over the last number of days, we seem to be focusing on boat people as if there is some fear that we are going to be overrun by people landing on our shores in rusty boats and setting foot on our soil and therefore, by the same decision, cluttering up our immigration and refugee system with massive numbers of arrivals coming in this fashion.

That is not really true. I think the minister would be able to verify that a lot more arrivals land at Toronto Pearson International Airport and claim refugee status than arrive by washing up on our shores in boats.

I remember when I was the immigration critic for the NDP in a previous Parliament. It was around the time Chinese boat people were arriving on the west coast of British Columbia after being smuggled by snakeheads. It was a problem, granted, as there were hundreds of people at a time, and it cluttered and clogged our system.

The minister at the time, Elinor Caplan, actually took an all-party delegation of us to China, to the very place that these particular groups of economic migrants came from. They were not refugees seeking a better life in Canada, which we cannot fault them for, but by no means did they really meet the definition of refugees.

However, we went on a fact-finding mission to the very ports where these people were coming from. We even met some people who planned on joining the next wave that was on its way to Canada. We did not meet them in a rice paddy or some kind of peasant's hut; we met them in the revolving discotheque on the top of a high-rise in the village of Fuzhou, which turned out to be a city of five million people.

There are many types of people who seek to arrive here by non-conventional means. It is very hard to adjudicate and triage these people to determine who are legitimate refugees and who are economic migrants who were smuggled here by paying $50,000 to some snakehead, so I am sympathetic to the problem.

What I am critical of is the politics of fear that I believe are being employed as a modus operandi and as a theme, not just to deal with this particular issue but as a motif. It is almost a pattern or a hallmark of this government.

Bill C-10 is probably a good example, or analogous at least, in that in spite of overwhelming evidence that crime is actually being reduced in almost every category and is at its lowest level since 1973, the government of the day would have us believe that we are in such danger of being murdered in the night by some junkie that we have to vote for the Conservatives to protect us from the straw man that they have built up and that they are the only ones who can knock this straw man down.

That seems to be the tone of the debate that is developing here as we deal with refugees: that we are under such danger of being overwhelmed by these hordes of people trying to break through our system and jump the queue and by phony refugees claiming to be legitimate refugees that there is some emergency here and that draconian, drastic action is necessary.

Elinor Caplan took us to China to find out the root of the problem there. I use this as an example of a mature way of investigating and dealing with a problem, and that is what it was: it was not an emergency then, it was a problem, and it is not an emergency now. It is a problem that might be straining our immigration system.

On the same trip, we stopped in Sydney, Australia, and met with the minister of immigration of Australia, who had a much different way of dealing with it. The Australians had no 1985 Singh decision to guide them or inform their policies. They would just simply lock people up.

Everybody who arrived on their shores without any documentation would be held in a pen, essentially, until such time as they could determine what to do with them. More often than not, they put them on the first boat back where they came from, without a whole lot of consideration, I might add, as to what might befall those people at the other end.

That was under Johnny Howard in Australia. Immigration was a tough-love policy, and refugees were not treated with anywhere near the sensitivity we have toward our obligations under UN conventions regarding refugees.

I know the Singh decision has posed challenges for Canada. This notion, and the Supreme Court ruling, is that once people set foot on Canadian soil, they are essentially entitled to the due process of the immigration system in its entirety. They are not detained unless there is some justification to do so and are free to move freely through Canadian society until such time as their status can be determined.

I put it to the minister that there is a much bigger problem with undocumented refugees arriving at Pearson airport. They obviously had papers when they got on a plane. How is it that they do not have any papers when they get off the plane? People are not allowed to get on an airplane without documents. Did they tear them up in the washroom and flush them down the toilet, over the ocean on their way here? Because when they land, they do not seem to have any papers. They are undocumented. Then they are in the system, and then we know this takes years.

That is a problem. That is a legitimate problem.

However, that is not an emergency or a crisis either. It would be disingenuous to try to convince the Canadian people that there is some immigration crisis going on here where, as I say, massive waves of refugees are trying to break through and cut their way through the line.

We only have about, and the minister can correct me, 11,000 or so refugees a year. Or was it 25,000? I cannot remember. I would be happy to have this clarified.

Not enough of them come from refugee camps is what I am getting at. A majority of the refugees who come to Canada do not come to us through conventional channels of waiting in a UN-sponsored refugee camp until their turn comes up and then coming here as per the process. Most refugees do arrive in some unconventional means; they find their own way here. They flee the situation they are in and they arrive in Canada, and we have to deal with them.

However, it is disingenuous and it is, again, that politics of fear that would have us believe we are in some crisis situation that calls for and justifies legislation that has been called draconian.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to congratulate and thank the hon. Liberal member who just spoke about Bill C-4. A large part of what she said is similar to what I wish to say.

To continue along that route, I would like to say that since May 2—the day I was elected to Parliament—and since we started sitting, I have been saddened by the fact that the legislation tabled by those on the other side sometimes contains good things, but more often than not, unfortunately, it simply divides those here. We can all support a bill that protects refugees against human trafficking; we can all work together to ensure that a pedophile never touches another child; we can all agree that someone who has committed a very serious crime should spend a long time in jail and should not easily receive a pardon, and so on.

However, all of these bills before us simply divide us: we are either for or against human trafficking, for or against the government. And we must not try to make any changes. I call this government the “photo-op government”—splashy headlines in the paper, big in-your-face news to show that the government is working for us. But, really, none of this is going to have the desired effect.

We must not forget that a similar bill, Bill C-49, was introduced during the last parliament. And that is one issue I have with us as politicians—it seems that things only get moving once an event is picked up by the media. If it is not in the news, we do not talk about it or deal with it. This bill was drafted following a media event.

I just got out of a meeting that I had to cut short with women who are part of the Sisters In Spirit, which has lost its funding. These are mothers who have lost a child, whose children have disappeared, and we are not taking care of them. They are not asking for the moon. They are asking for peanuts so that they can continue their searches. But unfortunately, that does not make the headlines in the Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star. However, big ships like the MV Ocean Lady and the MV Sun Sea that arrived on the shores of British Columbia in 2009 and 2010 made the news. It was in our face. Everyone said that something had to be done and that a bill needed to be introduced, but they did not take the consequences into consideration, nor did they ensure that the bill would achieve the desired effect.

That is the problem in general with this government. Of course it was shocking to watch the news and see 500 Tamils arriving, as well as the MV Ocean Lady, which had 76 on board. I had a television show and I remember people talking to us about it. It was terrible. Rumours were swirling all around. It is incredible, but I am still responding to people who ask me how it is possible that, in Canada, a refugee makes more money than a retired Canadian. I wonder how they come up with that. Then I realize that people have been misled for years and years. In fact, some people in Canada honestly believe that every refugee arriving here in Canada receives around $1,900 a month. Come on. A person would receive $1,900 just for arriving in Canada as a refugee? We would give refugees that much while our seniors and many other people are having a hard time making ends meet? It almost makes you want to go to another country just to come back as a refugee.

That is not the reality for refugees. Refugees are people who leave their countries because their lives are in danger. These are not people who decide to come to Canada on vacation. They come here for their safety and because we have a reputation—poor us—as a supposedly welcoming, fair and open country that encourages differences and wants people to have more. Canada is a country that ensures that the people who come here are not starving, although I sometimes have doubts about this when I see the number of children living below the poverty line and the number of seniors who are abused or who cannot make ends meet.

As a legislator and with my background as a lawyer, I wonder about the purpose of this bill. The government wants to wipe out human trafficking and we all agree with that. Let them stop claiming otherwise. No one is in favour of human trafficking. I do not think any of my colleagues would support human trafficking. Would anyone in the House support it? If so, I would ask them to please raise their hands. Why? Because we definitely disagree. Do we want someone who is not a real refugee, someone whose life is not in danger, who does not meet the criteria of the existing legislation, to come to Canada to take advantage of our extremely generous system? We do not want that either. I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to ask those in favour of that to raise their hands. No one wants that.

The government said that it was concerned that many of these people had ties to the Tamil Tigers, a group on the list of terrorist organizations. I said to myself that our friends opposite were introducing their next buzzword: terrorist. This word scares everyone. Anyone who reads the bill will think that the government is protecting their safety, ensuring that people with ties to terrorists do not sneak into our country under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Why is nothing done when people arrive in great numbers at airports? Is there anything more dramatic than watching refugees arriving by boat on television? But that is not the case for refugees who arrive at an airport chock full of passengers from all over. Someone told me that thousands of refugees arrive at Canadian airports. The number of refugees who arrive by boat is smaller. This bill, once again, attempts to mask the reality and give a false impression. It gives even great powers to the Minister of Immigration under the guise of public safety.

What struck me when they introduced Bill C-4, the former Bill C-49—this is not the first time that our Conservative friends have tried to introduce such a bill—is that it was introduced by the Minister of Public Safety. Why? Because they are trying to send a message that our security is at stake, that terrorists are streaming into Canada. I do not say this flippantly, as though I could not care less about terrorism.That is not at all the case. But let us call a spade a spade, and identify the true terrorists. The trouble is that, in real life, when you cry wolf too often, people stop believing and will not pay attention when there is a real terrorist threat. That worries me. They are trying to portray all refugees as potential terrorists. Unfortunately, that is more or less the general impression.

I hosted a public affairs show on television and radio before I came here. In my practice as a lawyer, I still have frequent contact with the general public, at least in my region, the national capital region. I can say that people were automatically making the equation that a refugee is a terrorist. If someone is hiding, it is because they are running from something. People forget to consider that there is more to it.

The bill may contain some clauses that are worthy of being examined, but, as always, the government is using a sledgehammer to kill a fly. As a lawyer, my primary concern is that this will end up before the courts some day. I had the same concern about Bill C-10. If the government wanted to use its bills to make improvements, protect Canadians better, eliminate human trafficking and ensure that criminals receive punishments that suit their crimes, that would be good. The danger is that with bills like this, it is the opposite, and there will be never-ending cases before the courts. In the end, the answer will be that this violates existing treaties and the charter. The government had better not respond that it intends to abolish the charter one day. I do not think so. I think that Canadians are extremely happy with the charter. If a government adopts unconstitutional legislation, it will be contested.

At some point, the House will end up debating this issue again, since we will be back at square one and the problem of human trafficking will not have been resolved.

Senate Reform Act

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned about the bill.

First, it presents flimsy and minor changes designed to pander to a Conservative base. I am concerned that it will not have any real impact, and that if it does have any impact, as my colleague has pointed out, it is bound to be negative. Tie-ups between the House of Commons and the Senate are something we can ill afford at this time.

Second, it continues the trend of offloading to the provinces. There does not seem to be any provision in the bill to help provinces pay for elections. Just as in Bill C-10, there are basically no provisions to help provinces to absorb these additional costs that are being lowered onto them by the federal government.

Could the member opposite tell me how much it will cost British Columbians to hold these kinds of mostly meaningless elections?

Justice

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, on Monday morning, Corporal Kim MacKellar of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, serving in Yukon's small community of Haines Junction, was shot at while responding to a robbery at the town's grocery store. Store employee Frank Parent was pepper-sprayed and beaten by the assailants prior to the ensuing pursuit that resulted in the shooting.

The two accused are now charged with multiple offences, including attempted murder. One of the suspects was walking the streets while on a court-ordered condition and had a lengthy criminal history.

The NDP would have Canadians believe that the accused is the real victim. The NDP and the Liberals complain that the accused will be double-bunked and have no access to support in prison and would be further victimized.

Frank Parent and Corporal MacKellar are the victims, as is the community of Haines Junction.

This government makes no mistake about who the real victims are in cases like this. Our government has the resolve and commitment to see that necessary action to support victims of crime is protected in Bill C-10.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Frank Parent and Corporal MacKellar for a speedy recovery.

Public Safety

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, our government received a strong mandate from the Canadian people and is now delivering on its promise to introduce the important Safe Streets and Communities Act.

People in my community of Brampton are worried about the deadly effects of drugs and gang violence. Cultural communities worry about their children being targeted by drug pushers and thugs. This is a growing concern.

That is why the cultural communities voted for their values in the last election. They voted for getting tough on crime and for safer streets.

I urge the Liberal and NDP parties to listen to the concerns of Canadians from communities most affected by crime, such as the South Asian community. Let us pass this bill. Let us get tough on crime. Let us get on with the work Canadians expect of us.

Lobbying Act

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I ask for unanimous consent to propose the following motion: That the provisions of Bill C-10, 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 respecting the transfer of prisoners and consisting of clause 135 do compose Bill C-10B; that the remaining provisions in Bill C-10 do compose Bill C-10A; that the law clerk and parliamentary counsel be authorized to make any technical changes or corrections as may be necessary; that Bill C-10A and Bill C-10B be reprinted; and that Bill C-10B be deemed to have been read the first time and printed, deemed read the second time and referred to a committee of the whole, deemed reported without amendment and deemed read the third time and passed.

We are moving this motion because we can take practical measures for the aspects of the bill that are supported by Canadians.

Justice

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

Mr. Speaker, we protect all victims in this country. We consult with victims across this country. We sit down with them. We hear what they have to say. The bill that is before Parliament right now, Bill C-10, reflects those concerns.

What I will do for the hon. member, because she should hear from those victims' groups as well, is ask those groups that when they come to Ottawa again to please spend a bit of time with the NDP and the Liberals so they will know the things that we know that we are legislating on.

Bill C-10--Time Allocation Motion

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Madam Speaker, it is interesting to listen to the minister talk about all the debate and discussion that has taken place on this bill. Obviously, what has not taken place is the Conservatives have not listened to Canadians when they have talked about the impact Bill C-10 would have on Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

The Canadian Bar Association has said there is a real problem with Bill C-10. It has concerns about the mandatory minimum sentences and overreliance on incarceration, constraints on judges’ discretion to ensure a fair result in each case, and the bill’s impact on specific, already disadvantaged groups.

Yet the minister stands and says that we have had enough debate and enough discussion.

The government is closing debate on the bill at a time when Canadians know full well what is needed. They know what the risks to their safety are. They know that more is needed in terms of prevention.

The minister should start listening to the experts, like those at the Canadian Bar Association.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

moved:

That, in relation to Bill C-10, 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, not more than two further sitting days shall be allotted to the consideration of the second reading stage of the bill; and

That, 15 minutes before the expiry of the time provided for government orders on the second day allotted to the consideration of the second reading stage of the said bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this order, and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.

Bill C-10--Notice of time allocation motion

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I have a point of order relating to Bill C-10.

Bill C-10, Safe Streets and Communities Act contains nine bills that have been before the House for much of the last five years. In fact, it has been 7,242 days since those bills were first introduced, if we combine them all. That is almost 20 years. There have been 187 speeches in this place and debate on 31 different sitting days.

I would have hoped that by now the opposition would allow members of the House to actually vote on that. It appears the opposition is looking to further delay and obstruct this bill.

Our government did get a strong mandate from Canadians to implement these policies from the last election. We committed to passing that bill within 100 sitting days. It is with this in mind.

Therefore, I would like to advise that an agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Order 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the second reading stage of Bill C-10, 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.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the Crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage.

Safe Streets and Communities Act

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Liberals were up to their old tricks by once again obstructing our measures to get tough on crime.

Our government's Safe Streets and Communities Act would increase sentences for child sex offenders, end the use of house arrest for serious and violent crimes and increase penalties for drug dealers who specifically target our children.

Victims, police and Canadians are clear. It is time we put the rights of victims ahead of the rights of criminals and ensure that all criminals are held accountable.

Would the Minister of Justice please tell the House why all members should support Bill C-10?

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, as the opposition House leader quite astutely noted, our priority is the economy. We saw that already with successes this spring when we introduced a budget that was adopted by the House. We introduced a budget implementation bill with measures like an increase to the old age security payments, which was also adopted by the House. We continue to pursue that economic agenda.

Our other priority is also related to having a sound economy, and that is having safe communities and safe streets by combatting crime. As members know, there is a strong linkage between severe crime and harm to the economy. We obviously want to change that, and this is why we have moved in that direction. That is what we have been debating this week, primarily.

In the next week, our government will continue to move forward with important bills that Canadians elected us to implement. Today we will continue debate on Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act. We will continue to debate that next week until it is dealt with.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind the House just how long the measures in the safe streets and communities bill have been before this House and the other place. When we tally up all the days since those bills have been introduced, it has been a combined total of 2,700 days since their first introductions. That is almost 20 years of elapsed time that those bills have been before the House in one form or another.

We have already had over 180 speeches given in the House on those bills, important law and order proposals as they are. Unfortunately, right now we are no longer actually debating the safe streets and communities bill; we are technically debating an opposition motion to delay and obstruct our efforts to tackle crime and get that bill passed.

I urge all members to put aside their parliamentary maneuvers designed to delay and obstruct and give all members the opportunity to vote, once and for all, on the important measures included in the bill.

Tomorrow, we will be debating Bill C-4, the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act.

As the Prime Minister stated earlier in the week, the government will be introducing a motion to extend our involvement in the UN-sanctioned NATO-led mission in Libya. I will be scheduling that debate for Monday.

Next Thursday, September 29, will be the first allotted day.

Justice

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the NDP, led by the member for Surrey North, criticized the Safe Streets and Communities Act. He even stated that it was unfair that we are seeking to limit the ability of criminals to get pardons. Sadly, out-of-touch statements like that are not surprising from the official opposition.

The Safe Streets and Communities Act is reasonable and tough, and it is what Canadian gave us a mandate to do. For example, it stops those who have committed sexual offences against children from getting pardons.

On this side of the House, we believe that often, while a criminal's jail term may end, the suffering caused to his or her victims lasts a lifetime. Canadians have been clear: it is unacceptable to ever forget the harm that child molesters have caused to their victims.

I call on the NDP members to finally put the rights of law-abiding Canadians ahead of the rights of convicted criminals and support the Safe Streets and Communities Act. It is not too late for them to come to their senses.

Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first, it seems like the Conservative members are extremely confused about the difference between immigrants and refugees. This morning, we heard the hon. member for Burlington refer to his Italian in-laws. By no means do I wish to say anything negative about in-laws—I have wonderful in-laws, one of whom is from the Philippines and also immigrated here—but I am convinced that, in their home country, the member for Burlington's in-laws were not subject to persecution, violation of their human rights, danger of torture or risk to their lives. There is a big difference.

We are talking here about refugees who face grave danger and flee their country to escape these threats to their safety and their integrity. I also heard the government side say that we are facing an invasion of refugees and that we must put a stop to it immediately. The Conservatives are referring to a particular case that occurred in 2010, where Sri Lankan refugees, who had indeed done business with traffickers and smugglers, were arriving by boat and requesting asylum. However, it is important to realize that there were approximately 500 people on that boat requesting asylum. Were these requests to be processed, they would represent 2% of all cases processed by the Immigration and Refugee Board.

In response to another Conservative member who stated that we do not want them to conduct any investigations at all, I would like to say that we simply want all refugee claimants, whoever they may be, to have access to the same system, which would not be the case if Bill C-10 were to be passed.

Bill C-10 also shows the government's contempt for the international conventions and treaties that Canada has signed, for example, the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the 1989 International Convention on the Rights of the Child, not to mention the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which I will come back to later.

Bill C-4 has four problems and should therefore be defeated or at least heavily revised. The first problem has been mentioned several times. The bill separates refugees into two separate categories: refugees whose claims are processed in the regular manner and refugee claimants who could be deemed to be designated foreign nationals. If one person arrives by plane or by boat, he or she is considered a refugee claimant who can request the regular process. If a group of people arrives by boat, under the bill, they must be deemed to be designated foreign nationals.

There are two separate processes for two separate classes, which was a completely arbitrary decision on the immigration minister's part. This particular provision contravenes article 31 of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which specifically says that the Contracting States shall not impose penalties on account of their illegal entry or presence in Canada. But that is exactly what the government wants to do. It wants to be able to detain them for a year. That is a violation of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. And it is definitely a violation of section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which deals with the rights of every individual, whether Canadian or a refugee, to equality before and under the law. But we are going to have two separate classes that will be subject to two separate processes.

The second problem is the mandatory detention of designated foreign nationals for 12 months. For one thing, that is a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, under which every individual has a right to legal counsel and the guarantee of habeas corpus. So it is also a violation of article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which requires the same thing.

The third problem is that refugee claimants cannot apply for permanent residence for at least five years. That is specifically a violation of article 9 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child because the best interests of the child are not looked after in that decision. It seems the government is looking more after the best interests, the political ones in particular, of the Minister of Immigration. This also poses a problem when it comes to a very current issue, family reunification. After all the nice things the Conservatives had to say about it, now that the time has come to put something on paper to make the reunification process easier, they are putting up barriers blocking it.

That is the case with Bill C-4.

The fourth problem, and I mentioned it a number of times this morning, is the fact that the government is preventing refugees from appealing to the Refugee Appeal Division. For refugees who arrive via airplane, their case will be examined by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. These people have the right to appeal a decision that they deem to be unfair. For refugees who arrive via boat and who are declared “designated foreign nationals,” they do not have that opportunity. That clearly violates article 16 of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Article 16 specifically states that a refugee shall have free access to the courts of law on the territory of all contracting states. In addition, it states that a refugee shall enjoy in the contracting state in which he has his habitual residence the same treatment as a national in matters pertaining to access to the courts, including legal assistance and exemption from cautio judicatum solvi.

It is clear that this bill creates two classes of asylum seekers, which completely goes against the principle of equality that should guide the legislators in this House.

I would like to raise one last point regarding the issue of appeals. Yesterday, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism held Australia as an example to follow.

The immigration minister failed to mention that in November 2010, the Australian supreme court issued a ruling in the case of a Sri Lankan refugee, in which it was deemed unconstitutional, under the Australian Constitution, that he did not have access to the appeal courts. Thus, the Australian supreme court invalidated these provisions. The same thing will happen in Canada, for the same reasons.

I think it is clear that the government has no respect for its international obligations—obligations that Canada agreed to and signed off on. It is clear that the government is trying to politicize the issue of refugees for its own purposes by using sheer populism to attack victims of persecution who are trying to seek asylum in Canada. By refusing equal treatment to all asylum seekers, it is clear that the government has no respect for the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

For all of these reasons, I am unable to support Bill C-4, a bill that I believe is unfair, that punishes people who are already victims and that will certainly have very few consequences for human traffickers.

I would remind the House that under current Canadian legislation, human traffickers, or smugglers, already face the maximum sentence they can be subjected to, that is, life imprisonment. This bill includes a few additional factors that would have absolutely no deterrent effect.

This bill's intention is clear. Taking a closer look, we can see that nearly half of the bill simply discriminates more and creates different classes of asylum seekers. Thus, the bill is misnamed. This bill does not address human trafficking. This bill does not tackle the main problem, that is, smugglers who abuse the situation and take advantage of the desperation of people facing persecution, human rights violations, or even torture or death. The bill simply aims to discriminate against various groups of asylum seekers and allow the Canadian government to treat people differently in a very serious situation. This will reflect poorly on us internationally.