Bill C-32 (Historical)

Victims Bill of Rights Act

An Act to enact the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights and to amend certain Acts

This enactment enacts the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights, which specifies that victims of crime have the following rights:
(a) the right to information about the criminal justice system, the programs and services that are available to victims of crime and the complaint procedures that are available to them when their rights have been infringed or denied;
(b) the right to information about the status of the investigation and the criminal proceedings, as well as information about reviews while the offender is subject to the corrections process, or about hearings after the accused is found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder or unfit to stand trial, and information about the decisions made at those reviews and hearings;
(c) the right to have their security and privacy considered by the appropriate authorities in the criminal justice system;
(d) the right to protection from intimidation and retaliation;
(e) the right to request testimonial aids;
(f) the right to convey their views about decisions to be made by authorities in the criminal justice system that affect the victim’s rights under this Act and to have those views considered;
(g) the right to present a victim impact statement and to have it considered;
(h) the right to have the courts consider making, in all cases, a restitution order against the offender; and
(i) the right to have a restitution order entered as a civil court judgment that is enforceable against the offender if the amount owing under the restitution order is not paid.
The Canadian Victims Bill of Rights also specifies
(a) the periods during which the rights apply;
(b) the individuals who may exercise the rights;
(c) the complaint mechanism for victims and the requirements for federal departments to create complaint mechanisms; and
(d) how the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights is to be interpreted.
This enactment amends the Criminal Code to
(a) align the definition of “victim” with the definition of “victim” in the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights;
(b) protect the privacy and security interests of complainants and witnesses in proceedings involving certain sexual offences and ensure that they are informed of their right to be represented by legal counsel;
(c) broaden the conduct to which the offence of intimidation of justice system participants applies;
(d) expand the list of factors that a court may take into consideration when determining whether an exclusion order is in the interest of the proper administration of justice;
(e) make testimonial aids more accessible to vulnerable witnesses;
(f) enable witnesses to testify using a pseudonym in appropriate cases;
(g) make publication bans for victims under the age of 18 mandatory on application;
(h) provide that an order for judicial interim release must indicate that the safety and security of every victim was taken into consideration;
(i) require the court to inquire of the prosecutor if reasonable steps have been taken to inform the victims of any plea agreement entered into by the accused and the prosecutor in certain circumstances;
(j) add victim impact statement forms to assist victims to convey their views at sentencing proceedings and at hearings held by Review Boards;
(k) provide that the acknowledgment of the harm done to the victims and to the community is a sentencing objective;
(l) clarify the provisions relating to victim impact statements;
(m) allow for community impact statements to be considered for all offences;
(n) provide that victims may request a copy of a judicial interim release order, probation order or a conditional sentence order;
(o) specify that the victim surcharge must be paid within the reasonable time established by the lieutenant governor of the province in which it is imposed;
(p) provide a form for requesting a restitution order; and
(q) provide that courts must consider the making of a restitution order in all cases, and that, in multiple victim cases, a restitution order may specify the amounts owed to each victim and designate the priority of payment among the victims.
The enactment amends the Canada Evidence Act to provide that no person is incompetent, or uncompellable, to testify for the prosecution by reason only that they are married to the accused. It also amends that Act to add a new subsection to govern the questioning of witnesses over the age of 14 years in certain circumstances.
This enactment amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to
(a) align the definition of “victim” with the definition of “victim” in the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights;
(b) permit victims to have access to information about the offender’s progress in relation to the offender’s correctional plan;
(c) permit victims to be shown a current photograph of the offender at the time of the offender’s conditional release or the expiration of the offender’s sentence;
(d) permit the disclosure of information to victims concerning an offender’s deportation before the expiration of the offender’s sentence;
(e) permit the disclosure to victims of an offender’s release date, destination and conditions of release, unless the disclosure would have a negative impact on public safety;
(f) allow victims to designate a representative to receive information under the Act and to waive their right to information under the Act;
(g) require that the Correctional Service of Canada inform victims about its victim-offender mediation services;
(h) permit victims who do not attend a parole hearing to listen to an audio recording of the hearing;
(i) provide for the provision to victims of decisions of the Parole Board of Canada regarding the offender; and
(j) require, when victims have provided a statement describing the harm, property damage or loss suffered by them as the result of the commission of an offence, that the Parole Board of Canada impose victim non-contact or geographic restrictions as conditions of release, where reasonable and necessary, to protect the victims in relation to an offender who is the subject of a long-term supervision order.

Victims Bill of Rights Act

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-32, An Act to enact the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights and to amend certain Acts.

I would like to begin by saying that the NDP is going to support this bill so that it can be examined in committee. We should examine it clause by clause as carefully as possible. We are going to ask the witnesses called by the government, the NDP and the third party good questions, because that is important.

We have been waiting eight years for this bill. Finally, it is here and we have to be able to work with the government to make changes and amendments if necessary.

I am going to provide a bit of background. This is a promise that the Conservatives made eight years ago. When the Conservative government took office, it promised, at several press conferences, that it would introduce a bill to enact a Canadian victims bill of rights. It happened this year. Until September 2013, Justice Canada held in-person and online consultations and finally Bill C-32 was introduced.

The Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime actively participated in these consultations and provided a list of nine recommendations, most of which the government took into account.

My speech will focus on our concerns and what aspects of the bill we should examine together in committee.

The office made the following recommendations for a bill of rights: enforceable and usable; integrated, accessible and simple services and resources with minimum standards across the country; inclusive definition of victim to include anyone in Canada harmed by crime; equitable, respectful and individualized; voice and standing; right to information; financial protection and support; psychological support and resources; and limit opportunities for offenders to profit from crimes or re-offend.

At first glance, the Canadian victims bill of rights takes into account most of these recommendations. However, there are a few that I am concerned about, and that I believe weaken this bill. As I mentioned a number of times, I hope that we will be able to work together as good parliamentarians should. The victims of our country are already fragile enough and we must give them all the help we can. That is how we will make progress.

The problem with this bill is that it does not provide for any financial assistance. We have heard that no one knows just how familiar victims will be with their rights. My colleague also talked about that. We do not know whether victims will be aware of what assistance they can request. We have to wonder whether support will fall to community groups.

I have an interesting statistic that shows that, right now, community groups provide the bulk of assistance to victims. The work is often done by volunteers. Groups that provide services to victims usually have employees, but they also have volunteers who provide assistance to victims. In 2011-12, 72% of victim service providers relied on volunteers.

I love volunteering and I think it is important, but I am not sure whether victims of crime should be dealing with volunteers. Should they not have access to someone with training in that field? It is not always easy to work with crime victims. They are dealing with a lot of feelings, emotions and an incredible amount of stress. It would be good for the bill of rights to provide for some funding to organizations that provide assistance to crime victims.

I have another concern about the money being allocated. A study released in 2011 by the Department of Justice found that the total cost of crime is an estimated $99.6 billion a year, 83% of which is borne by the victims.

A victims bill of rights should, first and foremost, provide financial assistance. Costs borne by victims could be associated with transportation, communication or support, for example, when they need help getting to a particular location. A first step would be to help cover the costs associated with the consequences of being the victim of a crime.

Furthermore, according to the 2009 General Social Survey, 7.4 million Canadians reported being a victim of a criminal incident in the preceding 12 months. Since this bill affects one-quarter of Canadians, we must listen to them. I am sure that that the topic of costs came up during the consultations that were held.

According to that same survey, 47% of women over the age of 15 who said that they had been sexually assaulted by their spouse or a partner in the preceding 12 months said that they did not report the assault to police. It was sometimes out of shame, out of fear of retribution or out of fear that no one would believe them or that they would be blamed for what had happened. If nearly half of women who are victims of assault do not feel they can report it to police, out of shame or for other reasons, perhaps it is because we need to provide services to those women.

If women are ashamed to report that they are victims of a crime, we need to ask ourselves what can be done. The victims bill of rights will help victims who go to the police and take legal action, but we need to make sure that we have something to help the men, women and children who are afraid to go to the police. Unfortunately, this bill does not contain any provisions to address that problem.

We are calling on the government to send this bill to committee. We want victims to have access to the support and services they need. That is of the utmost importance to us. That is how we can best address victims' needs. We acknowledge that, for many victims, being able to participate in sentencing and parole hearings is progress. However, as I said, there are elements in the bill that could be strengthened.

To conclude, I would like to quote Steve Sullivan, the first ombudsman for victims of crime. On April 3, he said:

It’s a good bill, as far as it goes. I think the biggest problem though is that the minister of justice promised this would put victims at the heart of the justice system, and it falls very short of that.

He added:

The concern I have is that a lot of victims who are out there who aren’t going to read the bill, who aren’t going to go through the fine print are going to read the headlines and think that the system has fundamentally changed and it hasn’t.

These days, it is all about keeping people informed. Without financial backing, it will be difficult to make sure that victims are well informed. The bill of rights should include provisions to ensure that victims get the support and help they need. The government says it is tough on crime, but when 50% of female victims of crime do not report the crime to the police, we have to ask ourselves some questions. We have to convince these women that there will be progress and that the police will take them seriously and be with them every step of the way as they deal with their very difficult situations.

I would like to reiterate that I will be proud to support this bill, but I hope that my Conservative colleagues will be able to work with us to improve the final version of it.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her excellent speech. Clearly, she knows what she is talking about. This goes to show how knowledgeable she is about issues that affect her community. She is doing extraordinary work in her riding.

Our party will definitely support this bill at second reading because it deserves to go to committee for further discussion. The bill does have some flaws that we need to talk about.

The Conservatives have been promising us this bill for years, but have not introduced it until now. They keep campaigning on empty promises and never come through with something we can read. They try to convince Canadians to support bills without telling them exactly what is in those bills. We are glad that they have finally put things down in black and white in this case.

Even though we have it in black and white now, it is still a mirage. The government introduced a bill that is supposed to help victims, but it is not giving them the means to use the tools that will be available to them. Moreover, as my colleague pointed out, because none of this will be advertised, victims will not even know what tools are available to them.

The tools will be in place, but unfortunately no one will know it. Furthermore, the victims will have a hard time using those tools.

What does my colleague think of the lack of funding in this bill?

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I know that he was here when we were talking about this bill and that he is also very interested in moving it forward.

I would like to read an excerpt from a press release issued by the Association québécoise Plaidoyer-Victimes on April 3 that supports what my colleague is saying. Although this association supports this bill, it feels that “certain conditions must be met if this bill of rights is going to have real influence and not just make empty promises”.

That is kind of what my colleague was saying. When the government proposes a charter like the Canadian victims bill of rights, it has a responsibility to ensure that victims will be given all the psychological and financial support they need to move forward in the justice system.

It is important to give the justice system leverage, but the victims have to be at the heart of that approach and that is not the case at the moment. By providing victims with financial support, we would be putting them at the heart of these initiatives.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague rightfully noted that there is a general lack of funding. Community groups do very good work and are very generous, but their resources are limited. There is going to be a big problem.

Speaking of resources, this will take police training or legal training. Will the provinces or municipalities have to cover these costs through their police forces? The bill does not seem to provide funding for training, but I would think that funding is required.

I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about that.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

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

Police training is another expense that is passed onto the provinces by the federal government. In the time that I have been here, this seems to have become a vicious circle, or a bad habit. For example, criminal penalties continue to increase, but the provinces are not given the money to provide proper services to prisoners. The government says that this bill will help victims but, once again, it is not giving money to the provinces so that they can provide appropriate assistance.

I am certain that the police system acts in good faith and tries to help victims and to support them as they navigate the judicial system. That said, the government must provide the funding and the means to do just that. It was very important to include some money to that end in the bill.

However, I am sure that my Conservative colleagues who are carefully listening to us will accept some of our amendments in committee. I hope that I can convince them.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak to Bill C-32, a bill on establishing a victims bill of rights for Canadians.

As New Democrats, we are certainly interested in the issues of the bill going forward. We are particularly interested in a number of provisions, including the widening of the definition of “victim” and the creation of a complaints mechanism for victims to file a complaint to a federal or provincial agency if they feel their rights under the charter had been denied.

I was looking at that particular provision this week when the survivors of St. Anne's Residential School were once again in the Ontario provincial court over the Conservative government's obstruction of a provincial court order calling on the federal government to release thousands of pages of police testimony regarding the crimes that were committed against the children at St. Anne's. When we talk about victims, I think it is important we say that, under the current government, there are two kinds of victims in this country, and unfortunately for first nations victims, their rights continue to be undermined.

Under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, a legal agreement was put in place because Canada was found to be the defendant in thousands of cases of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse against first nations residential school children.

Under the residential schools agreement, the independent assessment process was established. It was supposed to be non-adversarial to allow the victims of these horrific crimes to tell their story and be compensated. However, as the people of St. Anne's found out, this process was anything but non-adversarial. I will certainly be looking at Bill C-32 in terms of the complaints mechanism that needs to be in place for victims.

Under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the Government of Canada's representatives from the Department of Justice played two roles. One role was to be the lawyer for the defendant, which was Canada, and so they were there to defend Canada's interests. However, they were also there to create the evidence narrative and provide the court hearings with all the evidence that the claimants needed. They told the claimants that they did not need to bring their lawyers. They just needed come and tell their stories. The evidence would be there, and they would look at it.

However, when the people from St. Anne's went into the hearings, they found that the federal government had prepared a false evidence narrative. The narrative was essentially a lie that was being presented at a legal hearing.

The narrative stated that there was no known documentation of sexual abuse at the Fort Albany Indian Residential School. The victims who came forward to tell their stories were being challenged day after day by Department of Justice lawyers who said that there was no evidence to back up their cases. Now, what the federal government did not tell the survivors, nor the adjudication process, was that it was sitting on thousands of pages of police testimony of the horrific crimes that were committed at St. Anne's.

In fact, in a 2003 affidavit, the federal government obtained this information from the Ontario Provincial Police, which identified 180 perpetrators of physical and sexual abuse, including the actual torture of children at St. Anne's, from 154 different plaintiffs. It also collected over 860 witness statements that verified the crimes.

Many of these criminal acts were not prosecuted in the Ontario court because many of the perpetrators had disappeared, could not be tracked down, or were dead. However, a number of criminal convictions did come forward. One of those criminal convictions is against Anna Wesley. Therefore, the federal government was aware of these horrific crimes and had the evidence.

In the 2003 affidavit by the Department of Justice to obtain this evidence, it told the Ontario provincial court at the time that it would be unfair for the defendant if its representation did not have access to this information. However, what was unfair for the defendant was considered perfectly fair for the survivors, the victims, who went in without this evidence.

Then, in the 2003 court ruling, the evidence was transferred to the federal government. The court said that future plaintiffs should also have access to the evidence. However, that did not happen.

The government lied to the survivors of St. Anne's and it lied to the independent assessment process. In 2012, as the process was going on with claimant after claimant being challenged over the fact that they had been put in homemade electric chairs for the amusement of the staff or forced to eat their vomit when they were sick, the federal government was saying that it had no evidence to back this up. However, the victims' lawyers found out that the government had this evidence and challenged it, but then the federal government said that it did not have to produce it.

The very federal legal institution that was there to protect the victims would define the independent assessment process. In July 2013, I wrote to the Indian Affairs minister and asked how it could be that the government would have produced a false evidence narrative and suppressed evidence in a legal hearing.

He wrote to me:

Canada is, of course, aware of the Ontario Provincial Police investigations regarding the St. Anne's...Residential School and resulting...trials.

But then he said that they had no legal obligation to seek out the documents. He did not say they were sitting on the documents, that they had the documents. He then said the evidence was not admissible.

This is what he said:

The statements made to the Ontario Provincial Police in the course of their investigation...cannot in Canada's view, be used as evidence in the Independent Assessment Process....only oral testimony of a witness is considered evidence.

That is not true. That is another falsehood. The terms of the IAP state, “Relevant findings in previous criminal or civil trials...may be accepted without further proof”.

He stated then that corroborative evidence does “not need to be submitted to corroborate the oral testimony of claimants”. This is one of the key elements because the independent assessment process actually states:

...the standard of proof is the standard used by the civil courts for matters of like seriousness. Although this means that as the alleged acts become more serious, adjudicators may require more cogent evidence before being satisfied that the Claimant has met their burden of proof....

The survivors who went into that process were lied to. They were told, “you don't need to produce evidence, just come and tell your story”, when it actually said if people are making serious allegations of criminal acts against children, they have to prove it. They sat, with all the access to the evidence, and told the survivors that they were making things up and that they had no evidence to back it up.

On January 14, 2014, this was heard at the Ontario Superior Court. Justice Perell stated that Canada had a legal duty to “search for, collect and provide a report” on the crimes that were committed against these children, and that “Canada's failure to produce OPP documents about St. Anne's compromised the IAP and denied the Claimants access to justice”.

This week, these same survivors were in court again because in spite of a provincial Superior Court ruling, they went back into the hearings and said they are not producing the evidence. The evidence on Anna Wesley and the crimes that she committed against children and the corroborating evidence that was used to convict her, they will not turn that evidence over. They said this to people whose only crimes were that they were first nation children.

The officials told the Ontario Superior Court they could not explain why they had produced a false evidence narrative. They did not know. It was maybe an accident, but that is not true. On July 26, 2013, after I wrote to the Indian Affairs minister, they began an internal rewrite of the narrative and it is called Amendments to St. Anne's Indian Residential School in response to the Member for Timmins—James Bay.

Think of that for a moment. The top legal system in this country, which is there to protect the interests of the law and the citizens of Canada, only started to create a clear evidence narrative after it was outed. Otherwise, it would have continued with the misrepresentation and falsehoods.

Edmund Metatawabin was in court again this week. Edmund is the spokesperson for the survivors. He has to fly down from Fort Albany on his own dime. He has been trying for years and years to get the government to work with him. Instead, all he has found is abuse. He wrote to the justice minister and said, “My god! We were just children, undergoing torture, abuse....the federal government was conspicuously absent and negligent to give us solace and protection” and “nothing has changed” in 2014.

I want to end by saying the government spends about $106 million a year in Indian Affairs fighting the rights of first nations people. That is almost double what it spends going after tax cheats or criminals. I would like to quote Doug Cuthand in the StarPhoenix. He said:

The federal government has adopted an expensive, two-pronged legal strategy....it conducts a scorched earth legal strategy that drags out cases and starves First Nations organizations of funds.... Sitting down for honest negotiations is simply not a part of the government's strategy.

The Conservatives made an apology to Canadians and they undermined that apology. They see only two kinds of victims and first nation victims are never part of their narrative.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for a truly impassioned speech. It revealed a lot that I think Canadians do not want to hear, because I am sure they could not believe our government is capable of this kind of lawyering.

I wonder if my colleague would agree with me that the time might have come for some of kind of task force on the ethics and professional responsibility of the federal government's lawyers.

I am thinking about the residential schools case that we just heard described. I am thinking about the role of government lawyers in the Afghan detainee situation before the Military Police Complaints Commission. I am thinking of the current Privacy Commissioner, who argued before the committee against torture at the UN, under the Liberal government, that people could be deported to a substantial risk of torture if they were serious criminals. I am thinking of the farce of the constitutional compliance review that supposedly goes on in the Department of Justice, which we now know does not. Lawyers should not simply be mouthpieces for unconstitutional and otherwise unethical government policy.

I wonder if my colleague would agree with me that it is high time for a task force to look into this situation.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a deep respect for my hon. colleague and I think his question on a task force is very important.

The lawyers for the Department of Justice went into those hearings and lied and produced evidence that was a lie and suppressed evidence. If that was in a normal criminal proceeding, people's licences would be taken away and the cases would be thrown out, but in the case of the independent assessment process, the position of the courts and apparently of the independent assessment process is “Oh, well; we got caught. Life carries on”.

As Edmund Metatawabin said, they were poisonous in their treatment of people whose only crime was that they were children, first nations children, who were taken away from their families.

Then they went back into the hearings and acted in defiance of an Ontario Superior Court ruling. They acted in defiance of the basic laws of this land, in terms of the obligation for disclosure and the obligation for the federal government to uphold the so-called honour of the crown by producing evidence that is not fraudulent, and they think that this can carry on.

I agree with my hon. colleague. Something must be done.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is not a question, it is a comment.

I am completely disgusted by what I have just heard and by the hypocrisy of a government that, on the one hand, says it wants to protect victims with a bill and, on the other hand, does these types of things. The big brother of the MP next to me, the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, died in one of those schools. His mother found out by chance several years later. The family had no idea of what had happened.

Therefore, it is appalling that one part of the population is being protected but that another large part is not. I am thinking of all the aboriginal people and the missing and murdered women for whom they do not even want to set up an inquiry. That is hypocritical.

I would like to hear my colleague's comments on that, please.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians saw that historic moment of the apology and thought that things would change. We took our government at its word.

Then we think of the disappeared women. Shannon Alexander and Maisy Odjick, two young students with top marks, walked out of their home one day in Kitigan Zibi and were never seen again, and nobody ever seemed to go looking.

I saw the family, a year later, putting up posters. Is there supposed to be an inquiry? Hell, yes, there needs to be an inquiry, yet we saw the justice minister take all the supposed documents about these women, their lives and what happened, and throw them on the floor of the House of Commons. Then the Conservatives stand up and talk about victims. They stand and want their pictures taken with the so-called victims, but they would not stand outside on the House of Commons grounds when the mothers, the daughters, and the sisters stood out there.

It is a crime. It is a crime against the larger humanness of the government and the country when the Conservatives relegate a section of our population to worthlessness and say they do not count and that they can abuse them and take away their rights. They can go into a legal process in 2014, lie in court, and say, “We're the Government of Canada. We will lie if we want to”.

That is not acceptable.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak about the Canadian victims bill of rights.

I will begin by providing a brief summary of the bill. It codifies the federal rights of victims of crime to information, protection, participation and restitution in the justice system. It also amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to incorporate some of those rights.

Everyone here will agree that we need to protect victims of crime and that victims have rights. However, the government's attitude is rather hypocritical. A bill of rights is a good idea. However, we know what the Conservatives think about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, for example. Day after day, they continue to introduce bills that turn out to be unconstitutional. It is therefore all well and good to introduce a Canadian victims bill of rights, but no funding is being allocated for this bill of rights, no programs are being developed and no plan is being made to enforce these rights.

Yes, the government is recognizing that victims have rights. That is a good start. However, the government is going to once again ask the provinces to spend money and implement the appropriate mechanism to support federal policies. Once again, the government is going to take credit for a bill, but it is not going to allocate the necessary resources or implement the necessary measures; it is going to put that burden on the provinces.

I would like to know whether the Conservatives consulted with their provincial counterparts to ask them whether their justice systems could accommodate this type of measure. Obviously we know that there are problems with delays in the justice system. These delays are the most difficult thing for victims. For years and years, they are re-victimized whenever they have to appear in court and then are told that they will have to come back again later.

Reducing delays is a priority for victims. I can testify to that because I met with people who, unfortunately, had to wait for years to obtain justice. What is more, they did not even get the help they needed because the waiting lists are too long. There are not enough resources, and victims are left to fend for themselves.

Of course, victims have rights. I have met many victims, and that is obvious. I am sure that everyone agrees; however, there are some concerns. For example, as I said, the federal government held consultations and many recommendations were made. I will share some. For one, there was a recommendation for integrated, accessible, simple resources and services with minimum standards across the country. Unfortunately, the government did not follow that recommendation. Victims are also asking for equitable, respectful and individualized rights, a voice and standing in the justice system. There is a major problem here, because none of the provisions in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms create a legal obligation for those who work in the justice system to uphold and apply those rights. Rights are being granted, but there is no funding, no program, no plan and no obligation. Nothing is being provided.

This is basically all smoke and mirrors. With all due respect for the Conservatives, they may have had good intentions in proposing that we adopt this bill; however, they are just using victims as political leverage. That much is clear. It is a political calculation. They used victims, as they always do.

Whether it is children or victims of cyberbullying, they are using victims to try and get their legislation passed and benefit politically. Anthony Moustacalis, president of the Criminal Lawyers' Association, said that the majority of the measures in the bill are already being practised in courts of law. I will quote him:

Were it serious about aiding victims, the government could ensure that Criminal Injury Compensation Boards have sufficient funding to act as a genuine source of relief. It would also ensure that those victims who require counseling are able to obtain it.

That is the crux of the issue right there. It is all well and good to recognize rights, but ensuring they are respected is a whole other story.

Bill C-32 was introduced few months ago and is still at second reading. The government did not send it to committee to be studied. It consulted people, but we do not even know whether it consulted its provincial counterparts. It still has not sent the bill to committee, and we still have not heard from experts. Nothing has been done. This is the first time I have spoken to the bill we are discussing. If the government truly cared about the interests of victims, why did it not include legal obligations for people who work in the justice system in the bill?

What is the point of creating rights if they unfortunately become obsolete when they do not apply in certain cases? I have read this bill. The Conservatives will try to say that I have not read it, but I have read it many times. The rights are conditional. I do not have the bill here in front of me, but I could point out the clauses. The rights are conditional in some circumstances.

I understand that the government is trying to score as many political points as it can. This bill is nothing but a charade that recognizes victims' rights but does nothing to ensure that these rights—which are conditional, I must point out—are enforced.

I want to mention that even the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime said that the bill of rights does not cover everything that victims think it should. The bill of rights is certainly an important and historic change for victims, and I will give the government that. The bill of rights acknowledges the role that victims must play, and it attempts to address their needs for information, consideration and protection. However, the ombudsman said that she had examined the bill of rights carefully and noted that many of the recommendations had been incorporated, but not all of them.

If victims are so important to the Conservatives, then why not invest the necessary resources in the program? Why not try to improve access to justice? Why not try to give the justice system the resources it needs to eliminate waiting times? I will say it again: the key elements are resources and waiting times. The longer victims wait, the more likely they are to be revictimized. The Conservatives recognized their rights, and that is great, but will the government ensure that victims can exercise those rights within the justice system? It has to make it possible for them to do that, cut waiting times and give everyone in the justice system the resources to ensure that victims' rights are honoured and that justice is done.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague how she feels about the fact that the Conservatives are standing up to say they are protecting victims, but when it comes to protecting aboriginal women, they are failing. When it comes to protecting military women, who are subject to five assaults a day in the armed forces, and when it comes to protecting women in the RCMP, they are failing dismally.

I would like her to comment on the fact that they failed dismally on the very issues where they could have taken action.

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

Mr. Speaker, to ask the question is to answer it.

My colleague was clear. As I said, the Conservatives are all about the smoke and mirrors. However, when the time comes to do the work and walk the talk, the Conservatives are not in the game. They are nowhere to be found.

I just want to point out that, since the start of this debate, not a single Conservative has participated by asking us questions or talking about victims' rights. That is proof of their double standard. They do photo ops and they pretend to care about victims, but since debate on this bill began, I have not seen a single Conservative stand up to speak for the rights of victims, aboriginal women and victims of bullying. They are not the ones standing up in the House.

I see my colleague rising to ask me a question. I am looking forward to this.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if you look at the record, you will see that you already gave the floor to the hon. member for Vaudreuil-Soulanges.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

All hon. members know that there is a standard rotation in the chamber. I did not see the hon. parliamentary secretary on his feet for a question. There is no rule that once something has been said the Speaker does not have the right to retract it.