Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-26, an act pertaining to what civilians can or cannot do when it comes to crimes that are perpetrated against them or their property.
It reminds me of my colleague, the member for Trinity—Spadina, and her constituent who was arrested after a perpetrator, who committed crimes against his particular business, was apprehended by him in a citizen's arrest.
When we look at the bill in the sense of what we should do on a go forward basis, it reminds me that we always need to think about many things when we suggest to citizens or when we try to protect them from charges against them when they try to protect themselves or their property.
I am always cautious around that type of action. Citizens need to be careful that they do not push the limits in what they do to protect themselves and their property when perhaps leaving the situation would be more advantageous. They could be either attacked or hurt when a situation could be defused.
Clearly we want to help them protect their property, their families and themselves from unwanted criminal acts that are perpetrated against them, but by the same token, we do not want to mislead them into believing that somehow, all of a sudden, they should become some form of adjunct police force.
As much as we support the bill, I would caution folks that if they are faced with the predicament of being attacked or their property being broken into and they are unable to move away, they should take reasonable precautions to ensure their property or their family is protected in a safe way that will not inflame or injure themselves or put them or their families at an even greater risk. It is not wrong to protect one's property, one's family or one's self from the perpetrator of a crime.
However, we do not want to give that false sense that individuals should be police officers because they live out in the country. I live out in the country, and to be honest, there really are no police officers in the neighbourhood for any of us who live in rural parts of Canada. The officers are quite far away, and that is as it should be. There are not many of us there and we cannot have an officer for half a dozen houses if they are miles and miles apart. It quite often takes a period of time for folks to get there.
Many of us have been victims of folks who have taken our property. I was the unwilling victim. It happens in rural Ontario, and I am sure it happens to rural constituents across this great land of ours, those who have nice sheds. When I say a shed, it is not the ones we get at Canadian Tire, 7x12 with flimsy stuff. These are great big sheds that hold full tractors, lawn tractors, lawn implements or other implements. We get a rash of folks coming across the rural constituencies who simply decide to load up their trucks with our goods.
In my case it was the famous whipper-snipper and chain saws. The only fortunate part was that whoever the perpetrators were, they could not figure out how to get the lawnmower tractor to move. They did not know that if they yanked on the little lever on the back, it would free-wheel and they would be unable to move it because the transmission was locked, fortunately, so I did not lose that. However, I lost a whole pile of other things.
Unfortunately for me, after I decided to bolt things up and chain them all together after I had replaced them, about four months later they decided to pay me another visit and scooped more stuff, but still could not get the tractor. I have to thank my dad for that, albeit he is no longer with us. As a millwright, he left me great big 10 and 20 foot lengths of chain with the great big locks he used to have when he was an industrial millwright, which would take one heck of a heavy bolt cutter to get through if an individual wanted to do that. These folks do not have bolt cutters. They do not really come equipped with that type of tool. Therefore, they could not get the additional stuff from me.
If I had been home at the time and witnessed the fact that those folks were entering my property and stealing valuable tools from me, which I need for the purposes of looking after my property, I certainly would have been at the window, yelling at them. Depending on the circumstances of what was going on, I may have been reluctant to actually go out and physically confront them. If there were more than one of them, and I was by myself, that may not have been what I would have wanted to do. I certainly would have been on the phone to 911. I may have been marking down their licence plate number and then allowing those sorts of things to go on. I certainly would have been protecting my property from that perspective.
In all cases it is not as simple as that, because the person might have been trying to come in through the door of my house. If I happened to be home with my family, that would present a different and unique danger.
If I am protecting myself and my family from a perpetrator who is intruding into my property, with malicious intent, whether that is to physically harm me or my family, or to do damage to my property just by simply being a malicious individual, do I deserve the right to then try to protect my property? The answer to that is yes, in the perspective of understanding what one needs to do.
People need to take caution, as I suggested earlier, and establish what the situation truly is. If it is perhaps younger people, who may be more afraid of the victim than the victim is of them, the victim might be able to get them off the property. Then again, it could be a person who is well-armed. It could be more than one person. People need to look at the situation and decide how to protect themselves and property. There should be no cost to victims who protected their property by charging them rather than the person who tried to invade their property.
It gets to the nub of the situation of the rights of an individual who is about to become a victim. Clearly, that is what happens to those of us who are either on our property or perhaps are even attacked in the street while walking, for instance. We are victims of a crime and we are simply trying to defend ourselves from an attack of some description.
What it amounts to is the law should not be making a person a victim a second time. The individual has already been victimized the first time. The victim has already perhaps lost property or has had property damaged, or has received some sort of physical harm.
At the very least, people having had their property taken away from them is an emotional violation, whether they are harmed or touched in any particular way. Even though people may not be there at the time, there is a certain value to losing property, whatever that happens to be. In my case it amounted to a few thousand dollars. Those are things that a person has had for a period of time. In some cases, a person's house may have unique value or a person may have intrinsic thoughts that hearken back to loved ones. Maybe it was a prized possession that grandma left for the person. If the person loses that, the emotional violation is always there.
Any time people are victims of crime, the last thing that should happen is that they are victimized again, or at least feel as if they are victim again. They have already been victimized by someone who has decided, in a malicious way, to do damage to their property, to them and their family.
We would all want and hope that folks would not perpetrate this type of violence or crime against other folks, but it would be naive in the nth degree to think that somehow all crime will just end. That is not the case. As we all know, crime is perpetrated, albeit we know it is on the decline.
Based on that, we have to look at what we can do to ensure that crime continues to decline. Albeit my colleagues across the way and I disagree about how to handle crime and punishment and rehabilitation or how to meet the balance. This is about folks who perpetrate crimes against others and the consequences of doing that, and there should be consequences.
What should the consequences be? What do we do to ameliorate that situation because the vast majority of those who perpetrate crimes eventually come out of incarceration or remand, depending on how it is done, or will be in the general society? How do we deal with that particular situation? How do we keep folks from taking other people's property? Ultimately, it really is an issue of how to move forward on crime.
This is about ensuring that the victim does not become another victim. That is the last thing New Democrats want. It was our colleague, the member for Trinity—Spadina, who in the last Parliament asked how one could protect oneself. Is it fair and just and right to use the powers that are available to citizens to ensure they protect their property, their person or family without crossing the line and committing a criminal act?
What is that line? How do we make that line broad enough so folks do not inadvertently trip over it because they did not understand it? How can we continue to move forward and allow them to act in a responsible way because they are a victim?
The folks this legislation would cover are the unwilling and unintended victims of a crime. They had no knowledge that a crime would be perpetrated against them. This was not a contrived act that the victim knew about. The victim had no sense that a crime would be perpetrated against him or her. This really was about an unintended situation happening to the victims, not unintended by those who attacked them. An intended act is when one decides to kick down someone else's door and ransack the house.
Ultimately, what are the consequences on people who receive that intentional act? They have to understand what the law will allow them to do. They have to understand that they can protect themselves or their property knowing in the full light of day that they will not have to worry about being criminally charged because of some unintended act based on an intended act by someone else who broke into their home and attacked them, their family or their property.
Again, it really has to be a cautious act. I would not want folks to think that this becomes a carte blanche bill that would allow one to set up some form of quasi judicial force or, for those of us who live rurally, would allow one to set up some sort of adjunct police force that is not the auxiliary police force.
We already have auxiliary police officers throughout the country, in Ontario and in my region. We have many of them because we do not have enough police officers. These auxiliary police officers are used at special events and parades. They are used extensively for the Labour Day Parade to help with crowd control and traffic. In my neck of the woods there are some great hills for cyclists. The auxiliary police officers control the intersections so that the regular officers can be out doing the work they are empowered to do under the law. We do not want to see another adjunct to the auxiliary officers such that, for example, the member for Welland will now have a group, and not just a neighbourhood watch.
A neighbourhood watch is a good thing. It is a neighbourly thing when one looks after a neighbour's property by simply paying attention when the neighbour is away. In my case, when I travel here, I know that my neighbour, Dave, who lives down the street—and I will put a plug in for my neighbour—and owns Longlack Poultry comes to plow my driveway, which is greatly appreciated. He has been doing this for a number of years now. My partner appreciates when the driveway is done and she is not waiting for me to get back from Ottawa to do it. I want to thank Dave for that. He helps out with my property and keeps an eye out, as do other neighbours because we do not live next door to one another as people do in the city.
When I say that we live next door to one another we are about a half mile away from each other. The neighbourhood watch is really about noticing a suspicious vehicle. Unfortunately, that is how my material was lost. That is how folks in rural Canada lose material. Trucks pull up and look like moving vans, but they take all of one's stuff. However, we do not want to see people in a neighbourhood watch who think that they somehow have the power of the police to interfere in situations and act as if they are members of a quasi police force. I do not believe the bill intends for that. I would caution folks that is not the way we would like to see this go. The police forces have a legitimate role and they do it in a very effective way. We congratulate and thank them for all of their hard work.
This reminds me of when I was on the community policing association committee for my neighbourhood. I used to ask the sergeant about the number of police cars in the neighbourhood when we had break-ins. He would say that they were re-evaluating and would place a car here and there. I remember a complaint from a constituent that a car was not in our neighbourhood. There were none in the town at all. When I asked the sergeant why there was no car within the area, he told me that there was a stabbing in Niagara Falls. He asked if I would prefer the police car to be in my town or somewhere else. I said that I would prefer it there was not a stabbing at all. There was no car in my area because he had to allow the car to go to a very serious situation. Someone had been violently attacked and stabbed.
I will finish by saying that as New Democrats we certainly appreciate the bill coming forward. We have made an amendment to it and we would like to see that happen. However, I will say to the folks out there, whenever one is in danger, be careful, call the police and try to ameliorate the situation so that more harm is not perpetrated on oneself or one's family.
