moved for leave to introduce Bill C-478, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (increasing parole ineligibility).
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today and table the Respecting Families of Murdered and Brutalized Persons Act, which would amend section 745 of the Criminal Code.
I want to empower courts with the ability to increase parole ineligibility when sentencing individuals who have abducted, sexually assaulted and killed our innocent and most vulnerable from the current 25 years to a maximum of 40 years.
This bill is not about creating stiffer penalties for sadistic murderers. These depraved convicts do not qualify for parole. My bill is about saving families of the victims from having to go through the agony of attending unnecessary and traumatic parole hearings.
In all the research that our office has done, we have discovered that these murderers, these sadistic individuals, have never been granted parole. Thus, these hearings are unnecessary. What we want to do through the bill is give the judge the discretionary powers to make a recommendation to the jury, and also in the sentencing process, to award a period of parole ineligibility that is increased from 25 years to 40 years.
When Justice Hughes was sentencing David Threinen in 1976, he said that Threinen should never again be on the streets and roadways of our country.
We know from the families who have to go through these parole hearings that convicts use these hearings to terrorize families. Gary Rosenfeldt, the stepfather of one of Clifford Olson's victims, said in 2006, “What's really horrendous about this is this is only the beginning. We're going to have to do this every two years as long as Olson lives. And this is a very, very painful experience for myself, my family”.
When we pass my bill, it will help those families to not have to deal with those experiences over and over again when it is completely unnecessary.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)