Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-36, what the government has named the protecting Canada's seniors act. I am pleased to do so not only as a senior myself but also on behalf of a riding that has one of the greatest concentrations of senior citizens anywhere in the country.
For a legislation with such a grand title, this enactment is actually only one clause long. Simply put, it adds a one-line addition to the Criminal Code section on sentencing, that judges are to consider “evidence that the offence had a significant impact on the victim [due to] age and other personal circumstances, including health and financial situation”.
Essentially, the bill seeks to increase sentences for offenders who abuse our seniors in the commission of any offence, which is itself a very worthwhile goal, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice outlined in his remarks.
The seriousness and scope of the problem of elder abuse has been discussed over the course of our analysis of this legislation in committee, but it warrants attention yet again.
A number of studies have suggested that as many as 10% of seniors in Canada may be subjected to some form of elder abuse, yet as witness testimony before our committee put again and again, the true figure is likely much greater than that, as many cases go unreported. Indeed, underreporting, often due, inter alia, to the close or even dependent relationship between victim and victimizer, as well as the isolation of many seniors and their frequent lack of awareness about the resources that may be available to them, makes elder abuse a very complex crime to detect, to prosecute and to prevent in particular.
Accordingly, if the issue of elder abuse is to become a national priority, if it is to be effectively addressed and redressed, a concerted effort extending across party lines will be required. In that connection, I am pleased that our committee meetings on Bill C-36 generally took place in an open spirit of non-partisan co-operation. We saw at committee how efficiently matters can proceed when justice bills do not include unnecessary mandatory minimums, which very often are objectionable in and of themselves and disproportionately affect those who are the most vulnerable. Indeed, we observed that it is in fact possible for MPs to work together in a common effort to tackle crime without eliminating judicial discretion, a trend that I hope will continue.
One thing upon which committee members, witnesses and even the minister himself, as well as the parliamentary secretary in his earlier remarks, agreed is that this one-line amendment to the sentencing guidelines will not protect Canada's seniors on its own, the title of the bill notwithstanding.
Accordingly, I will organize my remarks as follows. First, I will briefly look at what Bill C-36 can be expected to accomplish. Second, I will use the remainder of my time to discuss additional avenues to explore appropriate actions to consider if we are to combat elder abuse, and how it can be done in a more comprehensive and effective manner.
The bill before us is a small step. Admittedly, it is a step in the right direction, but an insufficient step. By directing judges to consider the impact on the victim due to age, health and financial considerations as an aggravating factor at sentencing, it may lead to more serious sentences where warranted. Accordingly, when white collar criminals specifically target seniors to defraud them of their savings or of their hard-earned pension money, or if workers at seniors' homes are neglectful or violent toward residents, or in extreme cases when family members violently mistreat seniors, these offenders undoubtedly deserve to be severely punished by the Canadian justice system.
At the same time, we need to be reminded of the considerable evidence showing that longer sentences do not deter crime and that changes to sentencing guidelines are unlikely to have a preventative effect. This is particularly important in the realm of elder abuse. By the time a judge issues a sentence, the abuse has occurred and charges have been laid. Indeed, the offender must be found guilty for there even to be a sentencing process to begin with.
Nonetheless, as witnesses at committee explained, there are so many obstacles to the requisite steps in the process prior to sentencing that it is unusual for a case of elder abuse to actually arrive at the sentencing phase. The impact of this bill would therefore likely be quite modest. Again, and this bears recall, the criminal justice process is rarely utilized in cases of elder abuse. The primary reasons for this, as outlined in a report by the Library of Parliament, are as follows:
(1) the fact that prosecutions are often difficult, as the victim may be reluctant to cooperate in a prosecution against the loved one; (2) the victim may have poor health and possible present or impending mental incapacity; (3) the prosecution may take so long that the victim dies before the case goes to court; and (4) the perpetrator may be the only significant person in the victim’s life and to report and testify against them would result in loneliness and pain from the perceived consequences of the intervention.
Nevertheless, it is to be hoped that Bill C-36 would focus the attention of judges and other court officers on the particular odiousness of the victimization of the elderly, what has been referred to here as “the denunciation objective”.
Ideally, the focusing of attention within the legal system would combine with a new horizons public awareness initiative such that all Canadians would begin to be aware of the seriousness of the problem and the importance of finding solutions. Indeed, if nothing else, Bill C-36 could serve as what I would expect to be a unified statement by this House that the abuse of Canada's seniors is simply unacceptable and that hon. members condemn it in the strongest possible terms, which again goes to the denunciation objective.
Or course, condemnation only gets us so far if it is not followed by concrete action likely to facilitate the detection and, in particular, the prevention of elder abuse. Otherwise, we run the risk that Parliament and the country will move on to other pressing matters and that seniors who need help will be left with nothing but a remnant of moral support. As a case in point of how easily good intentions and even very good work can fade into the background, we need only remember the report entitled “Not to be Forgotten: Care of Vulnerable Canadians”, published one year ago by the ad hoc Parliamentary Committee on Palliative and Compassionate Care. That report is a thorough analysis of the challenges faced by elderly Canadians and the challenges faced by government institutions and others who seek to provide them with care. It contains many well-thought-out concrete recommendations on how these challenges might be met. Regrettably, most of the recommendations in the report's 192 pages have not been implemented. Yet we are left debating a bill called the protecting Canada's seniors act, which is, as I said, but one line long. It is a good bill but there is much more that must be done.
I will move to the second part of my remarks and elaborate on what can and indeed needs to be done in this regard.
First, it is crucial, as my colleague from Pierrefonds—Dollard has addressed, to raise awareness among all Canadians that the abuse of seniors is a significant problem, one that is simply unacceptable. Programs such as the federal elder abuse initiative, mentioned by the parliamentary secretary, are a welcome beginning. However, efforts in this regard must be continued and intensified. The government can do this by establishing its own set of programs as well as helping to fund those that are run by the provinces and non-governmental organizations and that warrant further support.
Increased awareness is required on a variety of fronts. Not only must everyone be made generally aware of elder abuse, but professionals who work with the elderly also require training so they will know how to properly care for seniors, how to recognize signs of abuse and how to minimize patient-to-patient abuse in institutional settings. Family members should be made aware of things they might be doing that they perhaps might not have considered to be abusive but that have detrimental effects on the seniors in their lives. Third parties need to understand that silence in the face of abuse is intolerable and that resources exist for dealing with abuse, if indeed it is reported and acted upon. Of course, seniors themselves are too often ashamed of abuse. They will minimize it and may indeed endure what is a completely unacceptable situation.
It is therefore critical that seniors be made aware that abuse is not something to be tolerated and that a range of options exists for addressing and redressing it. Alternatives to the criminal justice system do in fact exist in this regard. Indeed, seniors must be encouraged to confide in a doctor or call an elder abuse hotline. They need to be told that both hope and help are out there.
Second, in addition to raising awareness, the federal government can take the lead in enhancing our understanding of the nature and scope of elder abuse in Canada. Last year's committee report and witness testimony before the justice committee focused a great deal of attention on the fact that data on elder abuse are sorely lacking and that effective action will be difficult to take without a fuller understanding of the problem.
According to the Ontario Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse, most agencies do not keep information on the number of cases reported or responded to. Without national standards for collecting statistics about elder abuse, we are simply left patching together data from different studies with different scopes and methodologies, along with anecdotal evidence from a patchwork of jurisdictions. HRSDC has funded preparatory work for a national prevalence study through the national initiative for the care of the elderly, referred to earlier. A good way for the government to demonstrate its seriousness on this file would be to ensure high level and sustained funding for the study itself and its recommendations.
A third recommendation that was mentioned in the report and that arose frequently at committee meetings on Bill C-36 was the need for increased funding and support for institutions, often non-profit organizations that do much of the on-the-ground work in the fight against elder abuse. We met some remarkable people at committee who work daily to protect seniors, and I commend their efforts and those of other professionals who are instrumental in preventing, detecting and addressing elder abuse. They described to us some truly appalling cases of mistreatment and yet remain undeterred in their tireless and noble service to seniors and therefore, in effect, to all of us. We should be very grateful to them and very proud of their good work, which we commend them for and trust will continue.
One can hope that such dedicated people will continue their good work regardless of government funding, but we need not equivocate with respect to such a commitment. Groups need financial and other resources to hire and train responders to intervene in cases of elder abuse, and to set up elder shelters and affordable housing, as my colleague for Pierrefonds—Dollard said, and elder abuse hotlines and victim support services, and to develop pioneering initiatives such as financial literacy programs for seniors to help them protect themselves from fraud. The federal government must be at the forefront of funding and nurturing such activities, as my colleague from Pierrefonds—Dollard said, to help them escape poverty.
Inadequate funding of such organizations can have an impact in ways that we do not always consider. That was explained at committee by a member of the elder abuse intervention team from Edmonton's Catholic Social Services, who talked about how important it was that instances of elder abuse be handled by experienced staff. Unfortunately, cases of elder abuse are too often dealt with by people who may lack the necessary experience, as the organization's inability to offer high-paying jobs leads to employee turnover and employees leaving after short periods of time.
A lack of resources may also mean that when people do as they are told by public awareness campaigns and report abuse, organizations may then become overloaded and unable to respond precisely because they do not have the resources to begin with. As a result, people who report abuse understandably become frustrated and less likely to report it in the future. Ultimately, these organizations are doing impressive things with very limited resources, but they need more government support.
Fourth, the federal government can also do more to help address the systemic inadequacies that are at the root of many cases of elder abuse. Witness testimony before committee highlighted a number of these systemic inadequacies. Employees in health care facilities are often faced with an excessive workload and long hours, factors that can create an environment in which elder abuse is more likely to occur, especially when combined with inadequate training.
Better training is required particularly to help workers detect and deal with patient-to-patient mistreatment, a form of elder abuse that often goes unnoticed. As well, overcrowding can lead to an elderly patient being repeatedly transferred from one institution to another, a state of affairs that one witness at committee said should qualify as institutionalized abuse.
Fifth, and as a corollary to this point, increased funding for home care might help with overcrowding by keeping many seniors out of institutions in the first place, thereby distributing the responsibility. Even though most of these institutions operate under provincial jurisdictions—although veteran hospitals, for example, are federally run—the federal government has a clear role to play in helping to ensure adequate health care funding. When health transfers are clawed back, it becomes that much more difficult for the provinces to address these issues.
Sixth, at the same time as we tackle these systemic problems to which I have referred, we must also deal with those specific individuals who abuse the elderly, which is what Bill C-36 attempts to do. However, there are a number of other ways in which elder abuse can be addressed from a criminal justice perspective.
The minister said at committee that he recognizes the important role that law enforcement officers and other legal professionals can play in preventing, detecting and intervening in cases of elder abuse. I was glad to hear that perspective taken, and I hope to see that recognition translate itself into action.
However, better training required for police officers and officers of the court in how to deal with seniors is something that needs to be put into place. Young police officers may not always know, for example, how best to gain the trust of an elderly victim, and lawyers who prosecute elder abuse cases may need to adjust their interrogation techniques to make them more effective with certain seniors.
Another way of increasing the effectiveness of legal professionals is to include them as part of multidisciplinary teams—a recommendation that was made by almost each one of the witnesses who appeared before us—such as exist already in certain parts of the country and in those of the witness testimonies who made reference to them. When elder abuse is detected, police officers, social workers and health care professionals can coordinate from the start to ensure that the situation is dealt with appropriately from a social and medical perspective as well as from a legal one.
For our part as legislators, we should consider certain changes to the Criminal Code that can have a greater impact than Bill C-36. Witnesses at committee raised the possibility of enacting specific elder abuse laws that would complement those already in place in provinces and territories.
In addition, the committee discussed whether a mandatory reporting law for elder abuse might be appropriate. One witness, a social worker from Alberta, told us he has a legal duty to report the abuse of a child but no such duty to report the abuse of a senior citizen, by contrast.
In general, there seemed to be support, among the professionals we heard from, for a law that would require at least those who encounter abuse in the course of their professional duties to report it to the authorities. Such a law could supercede certain confidentiality barriers so that those who encounter abuse are not professionally bound to keep it secret.
For example, bank employees sometimes suspect that a senior is being taken advantage of financially, but they are unsure whether they are permitted to do anything about it. Clarifying the legal obligations of such an individual could help stem the tide of financial abuse of the elderly.
These are just some of the many ways in which the government could truly be “protecting” Canada's seniors.
I appreciate that the minister and the Conservative members of the committee agreed that Bill C-36 alone is not enough. However, they have yet to put forward sufficient concrete supplementary measures in the realm of health care, research and justice, and they have yet to provide adequate support for community initiatives. Instead, regrettably, health care transfers have been reduced; old age security has been cutback; and attempts to deal with the problems with the Criminal Code, while acceptable as far as they go, focus only on punishment—again, after the fact—and not on the necessary prevention itself. Seniors could be forgiven for looking at this one line “protecting Canada's seniors act” and wondering where the rest of it is.
As a side note, this House, last Wednesday, began third reading of Bill C-28, financial literacy leader act. This is important legislation regarding the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, which itself has a role to play in the combatting of financial abuse of seniors.
At the risk of going beyond the scope of this debate, I do hope that the post of financial literacy leader, once this legislation has passed, would recognize his or her role in combatting elder abuse by improving not only the financial literacy of seniors but their understanding of the rights they possess when confronted with things like inappropriate investments, affinity fraud and aggressive sales tactics, all of which the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada identifies as methods used to target seniors.
Returning and concluding—
