Bill C-48

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (bail reform)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) create a reverse onus provision for any person charged with a serious offence involving violence and the use of a weapon who has been convicted, within the last five years, of a serious offence involving violence and the use of a weapon;
(b) add certain firearms offences to the existing reverse onus provisions;
(c) expand the reverse onus provision for offences involving intimate partner violence to ensure that it applies to an accused person who has been previously discharged for such an offence;
(d) require the court to consider if an accused person has any previous convictions involving violence and to include in the record a statement that the safety and security of the community was considered; and
(e) require the court to include in the record a statement setting out how the court determined whether the accused is Aboriginal or belongs to a vulnerable population and, if so, how the particular circumstances of the accused were considered.
This enactment also makes further clarifications and provides for a parliamentary review of the provisions it enacts or amends to commence on the fifth anniversary of the day on which it receives royal assent, or as soon as feasible after that anniversary.

Criminal Code

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I started by saying that I wanted to congratulate the new Minister of Justice and his parliamentary secretary on their appointments. I will have the pleasure of working with them over the coming months and the coming years. I hope we can improve the lot of our people, in Quebec and in Canada, particularly in the area of criminal law.

It is no secret, as people have been saying for a while, that the Liberal government's lax attitude has allowed senseless situations to drag on. I find that unfortunate. I will come back to that.

I look this morning at what is happening with our colleagues in the official opposition and I find that just as unfortunate. What I see is that the official opposition is against everything, except the leader. They falsely claim that the Bloc Québécois supports the creation of a carbon tax when, contrary to the leader of the official opposition's claims, there is a carbon exchange in Quebec. We are not subject to the carbon tax.

For all kinds of good or bad reasons that are their own and that I do not wish to discuss, provinces have decided not to take part in a carbon exchange and prefer to see the carbon tax applied. That is a debate between the Prime Minister of western Canada, who invested in oil in order to be understood, and the leader of the official opposition. They can debate between themselves the rate at which they wish to impose the carbon tax but, in Quebec, we have a carbon exchange. However, the leader of the official opposition does not take that into account.

The leader of the official opposition says that it is thanks to him that hunting rifles were removed from Bill C‑21. We will have to reread the transcripts of the House and committees. The official opposition opposed Bill C‑21, just like it opposes anything that comes from anyone other than the leader of the Conservative Party.

Who worked on getting Bill C‑21 passed and getting rid of the lists that prohibited hunting rifles? It was us, the Bloc Québécois. It was my colleague from Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia who stepped up to ensure that the original version of Bill C‑21 was not adopted. She did this extensive and exhausting work day and night for weeks and months. I commend her on that. I am truly grateful for her. The Conservatives kept filibustering to stop our work. It bothers them to see us work.

In the House, the Conservatives are prepared to say just about anything against the party in power, and against the Bloc Québécois and the NDP as opposition parties. I have not heard their thoughts on the Green Party, but I would not be surprised to hear the Conservative leader speak out against the Green Party. The Conservatives are against everything.

That is unfortunate, because there are some Conservatives I really respect. Some of them are excellent members, smart people who would be able to get things done and help us pass bills that would be good everyone and move Quebec and Canadian society forward. They are hamstrung, though. They have to support an ideological leader, a leader who is not interested in concessions and who is against any ideas but his own. What a shame. That is the Canada we are stuck with, and we, the people of Quebec, hope to get out of it ASAP.

Let us get back to Bill C‑48. It is not perfect by any means, but we have to take action. For years now, the Bloc Québécois has been asking the Liberals to make our streets safe and make things better for people in Quebec and the rest of Canada. Yes, the Conservatives supported us on that, but they were so incompetent and ideological about it, not to mention completely uninterested in compromise or discussion. It was unproductive and actually did more harm than good.

Yes, we have been fighting for that. We have been demanding it. We in the Bloc Québécois believe that having firearms in our streets is plain wrong, except in certain circumstances. I have no problem with armed police officers, but we do not want people walking around with illegal, restricted or prohibited firearms.

We have been asking the government to do something about this for a long time. Finally, today we have this bill. It was tabled last spring, just before the House rose for the summer, in late May or early June. I do not remember the exact date. Here we are, at any rate, with this bill before us today. It will not fix everything, but it somewhat does address the issue of offenders who are out on bail and who are not always adequately supervised.

I am more than willing to work on that, but that will not solve everything. It is only part of the problem. The real issue with firearms is that they go through the border as easily as going in and out of a Walmart.

We are asking for the creation of a joint task force to counter gun trafficking, made up of officers from the RCMP, the Sûreté du Québec, the OPP, the Akwesasne police service, or peacekeepers, and the American FBI. We believe we have to get serious about this because guns come in and out across the river and through Akwesasne's territory. The federal government does not seem to think it is that bad. Last year, Quebec invested $6 million to create a surveillance task force to patrol the river and stop gun trafficking. The federal government has done nothing while guns keep circulating. How many more files like this one is the government failing to act on?

Regarding bail, the issue is what we do with people who get arrested before they are found guilty or not guilty. Do we keep these people behind bars, or do we let them go with or without conditions? The bill is looking to get tough on crimes committed with restricted or prohibited firearms. Offenders will be automatically held in custody unless they can show that they pose no threat to society and that they can be set free until their trial. The onus is reversed, which seems to me like a good idea. We are going to get tough on people who carry firearms, who commit robberies for the purpose of stealing firearms or who engage in acts of intimate partner or interpersonal violence. This seems reasonable to me. However, again, the government has done nothing about gun trafficking.

Nothing has been done about the appointment of judges either. We know that the justice system in Quebec and Canada has had to operate under rules set by the Supreme Court in the Jordan decision. Trials now have to take place within specific time frames. Are these time frames reasonable? The Supreme Court, in its wisdom, has decided that they were, and I accept that.

Saying so is just the beginning, though. Judges have to be appointed if those trials are going to be held within the reasonable time frame set by the Supreme Court. If judges are not appointed, if the provinces do not get funding for better administration of justice, then we end up where we are now. There are no courtrooms. There are no clerks. There are no judges. What then? People are being released before their trial even starts. Has the Liberal government saved us from gun-related problems on our streets? I think not. On the contrary, I think the Liberal government has been negligent for years. As people were saying earlier, the Liberal Party has been in power for eight years, but it has been ignoring these problems for years.

The joint task force must be created. Arms trafficking must be stopped. Judges must be appointed. That seems pretty straightforward to me. A selection committee does the lion's share of the work. It sends a list of five or six names to the Minister of Justice, and the minister picks one. How can that possibly take months? Sooner or later, judges have to be appointed and the government has to transfer money to the provinces for the administration of justice. If that does not happen, we wind up where we are now.

People are saying that Bill C‑48 will solve the problem once it it is passed, but it will not. It will solve part of the problem. It will deal with people who are released even though they should not be. The committee will rework the bill, and I am glad we have come this far, but I am really disappointed that this is as far as it goes.

I would like my colleague, the Minister of Justice, to tell us what he is going to do about judicial appointments. In the coming weeks, can we expect judges to be appointed and all vacant positions to be filled, not 10%, 50% or 80% of these positions?

That is all the federal government has to do. The administration of justice is a provincial responsibility. The only thing the federal government has to do is appoint judges. The other thing it has to do, in terms of substantive law, is to adopt the Criminal Code and amend it. Can it do some serious work on this?

I hope that my colleagues in the Conservative official opposition will finally stop filibustering and allow the work to unfold in committee. I hope it will not take 20 years to get Bill C‑48 passed. We will not be here 20 years from now. This Parliament has only a year or two left to run, at most. It is really sad to see the Conservatives keep griping that the Liberals are doing nothing, but then turn around and filibuster when the Liberals do try to do something. I want to get going on this issue. Back home, in Rivière‑du‑Nord, people are fed up with crime. So am I, and I am sure that the same is true everywhere, across both Quebec and Canada. We need to address the situation.

Section 515 of the Criminal Code currently provides that an accused or someone who is charged with an offence will be detained only if necessary to ensure their attendance in court, for the protection or safety of the public or to avoid undermining the public's confidence. These rules strike me as entirely reasonable and sensible.

However, now the government is going to modify these rules by saying that, in certain cases, such as crimes committed with firearms or involving the theft or manufacture of firearms, the crimes will trigger a reverse onus. In the future, the accused will have to prove that they are not a danger to society and that they can be released without fear of failing to return to court, presenting a threat to public safety or undermining public confidence.

I would like to dwell for a moment on the issue of undermining public confidence. It may seem trivial, but it is the basis of our democracy. If the people of Quebec and Canada no longer have confidence in the justice system, it opens up the possibility of serious disorder with lasting effects. I do not want to see people take the law into their own hands. We already have problems with people leaving hospitals without getting treatment because they are tired of waiting so long. They go home, which only makes their condition worse. The same thing must not happen with the justice system.

This is Parliament's job. We must ensure that the rules are reasonable and that everyone, or the vast majority at least, abides by them. We must ensure that the law is applied in a reasonable and satisfactory manner to prevent citizens from “revolting” against the justice system.

It is true that Bill C‑48 will provide a better framework for bail and ensure that people at risk of reoffending are not released back into society while awaiting trial. That said, judges must also be appointed to ensure that these trials are held. Whether or not someone is detained pending trial, if there is no trial, the work will all have been for naught. Judges need to be appointed, and trials need to be held within a reasonable time frame. I think that is just as important.

It is important to recognize that not all accused persons are guilty, as we have already discussed. This is enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and other statutes. There are rules to indicate that people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Section 6 of the Criminal Code affirms this, as does section 15 of the charter and, implicitly, section 7.

The principle of presumption of innocence must be respected. There are countries where that is not the case, and I would not want to live in those places. I am happy to live here, in Quebec, which is unfortunately in Canada, but at least the same rules of presumption of innocence apply. As we often say, and as the courts have even affirmed, it is better that a guilty person go free than that an innocent person be imprisoned. This can be very discouraging because, for victims, the fact that a guilty person is out on the street makes no sense. However, that is the choice our society has made, and I am willing to accept and uphold that principle.

The decision to release an accused person must be taken very seriously. Bill C-48 seems reasonable to me, but, I as I said, trials must also be held. This requires judges and funding. Is my colleague, the new Minister of Justice, serious about this? Does he intend to do his job properly and appoint as many judges as it takes over the next few weeks to fill all the vacancies? I hope so.

In closing, Bill C‑48 responds to a request made by the 13 provincial and territorial premiers in January 2023. It is now September 2023. I know that things can sometimes take years. In this case, it did not take years because it is still 2023, but the bill has not yet been passed, and perhaps it never will be if my Conservative colleagues oppose it. Regardless, from January of one year to May of the following year is still a rather long time. The government could have acted more quickly, but I still applaud this decision.

I repeat that the Bloc Québécois will work seriously with the government any time its work supports Quebeckers' interests and values. I believe that Bill C-48 does just that, and we support it. We will see what happens after the bill is examined in committee, but we will support it.

However, that will not stop us from continuing to demand that this government get serious about appointing judges, among other things. It will also not stop us from asking our official opposition colleagues to stop obstructing the work of the House when a bill is in line with their interests and those of both their constituents and ours. We are asking the members of the official opposition to take their job seriously and to act responsibly.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

As a reminder, the new Standing Orders require members to ask questions from their seats.

Continuing with questions and comments, we have the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I and many of my colleagues see the legislation as legislation that would ultimately make our communities safer places to be. We are anxious, after building upon a wide spectrum of consensus, whether with provincial governments or law enforcement entities that are very supportive, to see the legislation pass. My friend, toward the end of his comments, made reference to a potential filibuster taking place on the legislation.

It would seem that there is wide support for the legislation. Could the member expand on the Bloc's position on getting this legislation passed in a relatively quick fashion?

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I said a while ago, my colleague can count on the Bloc Québécois to support any legislation that is consistent with the values and interests of Quebec, including Bill C‑48.

That is not to say that I plan to give carte blanche. We will study the bill, and then we will see. Some amendments will probably be necessary. I look forward to hearing what the minister and some of the experts have to say on the matter.

Obviously, this legislation is not immune to legal challenges. Detaining someone before their trial could be construed as an attack on the presumption of innocence. We will have to wait and see how the courts interpret this and whether such a course is acceptable in the kind of free and democratic society provided for in section 1 of the charter. We will work on the matter in committee and ensure that the legislation comes into force as quickly as possible. We need it.

Now, I would ask my colleague the same question again: Does he plan to work on judicial appointments?

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to see you and all my colleagues in the House again, especially the hon. member for Rivière-du-Nord. I greatly appreciate his contribution to the public debate based on his experience as a lawyer and parliamentarian for nearly eight years. We will soon be celebrating this anniversary.

My colleague spoke at length about the official opposition, and so I would like to set the record straight. The first Liberal carbon tax, with the support of the Bloc Québécois, gave the federal government the power to impose a price on carbon for the first tax. The hon. member also forgot that the second Liberal carbon tax, which his party supports, would also be imposed in Quebec and, more importantly, drastically increased. Those are his colleague's very words. As a third point, let us not forget that the Bloc Québécois voted in favour of legislation that gives the federal government veto power for a few hydroelectric projects, for example, those that Quebec could have.

Let us talk about the bill itself. Reference was made to last year's famous G‑4 amendment on firearms, which was hundreds of pages long and covered several dozen hunting weapons. I would like to ask the hon. member for Rivière-du-Nord to tell us who, on November 24, 2022, said, “I almost get the impression that the definition in G‑4 was written by the Bloc Québécois. I know that's not the case…but I must say that it meets the Bloc's expectations.”

Who gave this enthusiastic support to amendment G‑4?

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it was I who said the words quoted by my colleague, whom I salute and also respect very much. I freely admit that it was me, but I was not talking about the list at that time. We were talking about the definition. We said that it was a good idea for the bill to define what was being prohibited.

The government cannot just prohibit whatever it wants. It must be specific. We wanted the bill to be even clearer. We were against the list. We worked so hard. Again, it was my colleague from Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia who was working on it. It is a good thing she was there. Otherwise, if we had had to rely on our Conservative colleagues, Bill C-21 would have passed as is or would simply been defeated.

That said, I will come back to the bill. I am not surprised that the Conservatives are opposed to it. The Conservatives are against reintegration and rehabilitation. We have heard it many times. We saw it in committee, at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, for example, which I have sat on for some time. They are against that and, as I said earlier, they are against anything that does not come from their leader. I will not dwell on that too much.

I just want to reiterate that this bill is essential and that the issue of its constitutional validity will probably be raised in committee. Then we will see whether the bill has to be amended, but, yes, we will work to make sure it is passed quickly and comes into force as soon as possible. We need it, just as we need judges. I look forward to hearing the new Minister of Justice tell me, before Christmas, that he has filled all those positions.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard broad support for the bill from all parties in the House. It is supported by premiers across the country, and it addresses urgent concerns in our communities. Given these points, would my colleague from the Bloc support swift passage through this place so that the bill can be brought into force and start to take effect as quickly as possible?

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague. I would also be happy to work with him and anyone from the third opposition party who is on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and who will be studying this bill with us.

To answer his question, yes, the process will go quickly, but we are not going to botch the job. It must be done right. I want to look at it. As I said, I have concerns about certain aspects of the bill from a constitutional perspective, such as the fact that, if someone has previously been charged with certain offences, that could be held against them at a bail hearing, even if they were acquitted. That is a bit questionable, in my view. I am not saying no to this bill, but it is not an automatic yes. We will need to look at it properly.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord for his brilliant speech. It is clear that the summer vacation did him good, because he is really in fine form today. His speech was really relevant and enlightening.

He raised one point several times in his speech that I would like to come back to. It is the issue of public confidence. Our justice system is based on public confidence. It is a key element. This immediately led me to reflect on something that my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord also mentioned. Right now, there is a problem with the justice system. It is that the federal government is not appointing enough judges. That is what led me to reflect on public confidence and judicial appointments.

It reminded me of some newspaper articles I saw this summer that said people with Liberal connections are very likely to be appointed judges, more so than people of other affiliations. It made me wonder. I am not saying that this is still the case, but if we have a government that makes these kinds of decisions and sometimes appoints people on a partisan basis, what effect could that have on confidence in the justice system?

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague. I saw him this summer, and I know he worked hard as well. He did not just kick back and relax. I am glad to see him here today for this debate on the issues that concern us, namely Bill C-48, which is no trivial matter.

My colleague is right. The Liberals have a lamentable habit of using something they themselves dubbed the “Liberalist”. That is appalling. This is neither desirable nor even reasonable in a self-respecting free and democratic society, a society governed by the rule of law. Judges must not be appointed based on their membership in a political party. That is the kind of thing that happens in what is commonly referred to as a “banana republic”. I should hope that the Canadian federation does not see itself as a banana republic. I can say that Quebec certainly does not. I want the federal government to get serious and not make partisan appointments.

Yes, judges must be appointed. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is calling for it, and so is the Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Quebec. Everyone has been worrying over the past few months and wondering what the government is waiting for. It has gotten so bad that people are being set free because there is no time to hold trials. Is that acceptable? Is anyone in Quebec or Canada okay with that? I can say that in Quebec, the answer is no. I cannot speak for Canada, but I would be shocked to find anyone in Canada who would say yes.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am extremely pleased to rise in support of Bill C-48 today.

I did not think we would get the bill to this stage as quickly as we have in this Parliament. One of the reasons we did so is that the justice committee recognized the public concern about repeat violent offenders and problems with bail. It conducted hearings last year and came up with a series of recommendations that helped inform this bill. Therefore, today, we have something before us that the justice committee has already considered, that the premiers have been calling for and support, and that has broad support in the law enforcement community.

Today, we have heard many people talk about things other than bail reform. However, when we talked about bail reform, we heard the minister say that the government is prepared to proceed expeditiously. We have heard the Leader of the Opposition say that the official opposition supports the bill. I heard some more ambiguous things from the last speaker from the Bloc Québécois, but he still said that the Bloc supports the bill. Therefore, the question I have been asking in this session is this: Since we have this broad support for the bill, are we serious about moving expeditiously? Maybe the bill does not have everything that everyone wants, but certainly there is broad support, as well as an urgent need to make the public more confident in our bail-reform system.

Since the leader of the official opposition personally gave me credit for a crime wave on Vancouver Island, I have to take a moment to say that I have dedicated my entire life to working to help keep communities safe. I say that as someone whose professional career was in teaching criminal justice before I came here. Therefore, for him to say that I have somehow supported measures in a deliberate manner that provoke criminality or a crime wave is really quite personally offensive.

What we get from the Leader of the Opposition is talk about common sense. I want to point out a piece of common sense that contradicts most of what he was saying today. Over the last 30 years, we have tripled the number of people in pretrial detention in this country. If detaining more people caused a decrease in crime, we would have way less crime than we have today. Therefore, common sense would tell us that detaining three times as many people does not solve the problem.

Bill C-48 would not cast a broad brush, as the Conservatives are asking for. Rather, it has some narrow and targeted measures aimed at repeat violent offenders; New Democrats are in support of those measures. This means that it would insert a definition of “repeat violent offender” into the Criminal Code so that we would know whom judges should be looking at when it comes to denying bail. It would also create some additional reverse onus categories. “Reverse onus” is a technical term meaning that when it is proposed to put someone in pretrial detention, in certain cases, that person has to show why they should not be detained.

Therefore, the bill would add to the list of offences. It would not create a new category; there are already lots of reverse onus provisions in bail. However, it would add illegal weapons, including handguns. That is an important provision, which I definitely support. People have to go to a lot of trouble to possess an illegal weapon; they do not accidentally possess a handgun. Therefore, if someone has a charge that involves a handgun, they should have to show the judge why they should be released and why they are not a threat to the public.

In addition, the bill would increase the reverse onus in cases of intimate partner violence. Again, we know that when there has been intimate partner violence, it is usually not a one-time incident. When people are charged more than once, this bill would make it much tougher for the offender in an intimate partner relationship to get released, which is something that New Democrats definitely support. It goes along with our proposal, which is now a private member's bill, Bill C-332, sponsored by the member for Victoria.

Bill C-3s32 calls for making coercive and controlling behaviour in intimate partner relationships a criminal offence. That would move the goal posts in the Criminal Code; instead of having to wait for broken bones and bruises, a pattern of behaviour that leads to such violence would be a criminal offence. This would allow earlier intervention and prevent much of that violence from happening in the future.

Therefore, this bill goes together with our proposal on coercive and controlling behaviour to help provide better protections for those who suffer violence in intimate partner relationships. In this country, we continue to lose women to violence; every six days, one woman is killed by an intimate partner. This is part of the urgency of this bill and why I believe that we should deal with it expeditiously.

There is a third piece in this bill that I think no one else has talked about today. It is a piece that came up in the hearings we held at the justice committee. In addition to the real problem we have with repeat violent offenders getting bail, which this bill I believe will solve, we have the problem that we detain way too many people in Canada and at far higher rates than any comparable countries around the world. Why is this a problem? There are two reasons it is a problem.

One is the injustice. One-third of the people who are detained before their trial are never convicted but found innocent. What happens to people who are detained and held in jail before the trial? Most often they lose their job. Often they lose their housing. They lose custody of their kids. There are all kinds of negative impacts for people who are not found guilty of anything. Therefore, we need to improve our systems so we are detaining the people who need to be detained and not detaining other people. Who are the people who are over-detained? Disproportionately they are poor, women, indigenous or racialized Canadians.

This bill adds a provision that would require judges to look at community-based bail supervision programs, which are very successful. The John Howard Society has been running them in Ontario. I am looking through my notes, but I am pretty sure I am right. The success rate of the John Howard Society programs, as limited as they are in Ontario, is about 90%. What does a 90% success rate mean? It means that those people who are on community-based bail supervision have a caseworker assigned to them, they will not commit another offence while they are on bail and they will show up in court when they are supposed to. In the meantime, they can maintain their jobs, housing and custody of their kids. Even if they are eventually found guilty, they may not serve prison time. Therefore, having a community-based bail supervision program would help maintain that coherence of families.

Here is the kicker in all of this. Those who serve even limited time in custody before trial are far more likely to reoffend. If we are actually worried about public safety, one of the best things we could do is get people into community-based bail supervision programs where they are put in touch with the services they need, whether mental health services, substance abuse programs or upgrades to their education. If people are in a community-based bail supervision program, they can get that assistance, which will help lead them out of whatever problems they were in to begin with. When they are in pretrial custody, they are in the provincial system and there are no programs available to them. There are no mental health programs, no addiction programs and no education programs while they wait, with the current delays in our trial system, up to six months for a trial. If we are really interested in public safety, we need to put more people into community-based bail supervision programs, which Bill C-48 would now mandate as an option to be considered by the judge. That would require the Liberal government to provide the upfront funding to get community-based bail supervision programs more widely available across the country.

Now all members will say that the New Democrats are demanding more spending, but guess what? It costs about one-third the amount to put people into community-based bail supervision compared to putting them into custody. Therefore, we need upfront start-up funds for community-based bail supervision, which ultimately would produce huge savings in addition to better public safety outcomes and avoid injustice to those who are eventually found not guilty of the offence for which they were charged.

These are the reasons that I think we need to proceed expeditiously on this bill. We need to get a commitment from the government to help fund community-based bail supervision programs.

I know this bill is going to pass. We had the hearings. The hon. member for Rivière-du-Nord who spoke before me said that he wants to examine the bill. The bill is the result of the hearings we already held at the justice committee, so I do not think there is a need for that detailed examination. Maybe the other opposition parties will decide we have to go to committee and do it all over again, and I am prepared to do that, but we could proceed expeditiously, get this bill passed and get a better start on making Canadians safer.

I am not saying that the concerns that Canadians have about repeat violent offenders are unjust. There are many tragic examples that all too often are exploited in this House for political reasons, and I have sympathy for those families, but we have to pass Bill C-48 to prevent the release of violent offenders.

Let me say the other part of this. New Democrats continue to call for on-demand mental health and substance abuse programs.

When the Conservatives like to talk about the 6,000 rolling, revolving-door incidents in Vancouver, those are not violent crimes. Those are people who are poor, who shoplift, who are drug-addicted or who have mental health issues. If we could get, first of all, better support in this time of increasing costs for all Canadians who are poor, if we could get better mental health programs and if we could get better substance abuse on-demand records, then we will have progress in making communities safer.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague's speech and I think it is important to underline where the fault line actually is in this debate. I think there would be agreement throughout the House that a young person who makes a mistake should have a second chance. Of course, there are many cases where it is legitimate for a person to have bail.

We have highlighted these cases of repeat violent offenders who continue to get bail. Somebody who commits a violent crime is on bail for that violent crime and then goes out and kills someone. Clearly, there is a problem in those cases of extremely violent offenders getting bail and committing those offences again. It is a problem that owes a great deal to a decision made by the government, supported by the NDP, to make changes to the bail system when it first took office.

We are not talking about the many instances where bail is legitimate. We are talking about these cases of repeat violent offenders.

I would like to hear from the member why he does not support our position of reversing those changes, to actually get back to somewhere we were previously on this.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, once again, the member is mixing bail with all kinds of other questions in criminal justice and the Criminal Code. What I do have to say, and I want to emphasize it once again, is that while there are a few cases, and they are not very numerous, of repeat violent offenders reoffending, they are serious and we need to act and take care to make sure those do not happen again.

Bill C-48 addresses those. The police associations across the country say that it does. Premiers are satisfied that it does. I am not sure why the Conservative Party is not satisfied that it would deal with that problem.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed my NDP colleague's speech, which seemed to go beyond partisanship. He certainly made an effort to rise above partisanship in his speech.

In it, he mentioned that he thinks too many people will end up in pretrial detention, also known as remand. That would have a major impact on the lives of potentially innocent people, who would no longer be able to pay their mortgage, who would lose their job, and who would lose their relationship with their family and children. Nevertheless, one of the consequences of Bill C‑48 is that it would increase the number of people in pretrial detention.

We think that this bill is worthwhile and that it should be studied because there are some criteria that are worthy of consideration. However, as our justice critic, the member for Rivière-du-Nord, said, the fact remains that the lack of judges is one of the main reasons for how slow our justice system operates. All of these people in pretrial detention are waiting for a trial, but they are not getting one and, in some cases, they are being remanded unfairly. Sometimes, the solution does not necessarily involve changing laws. The government opposite also needs to appoint judges.

Does my NDP colleague agree with that?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to address something that the member said, which is that Bill C-48 would result in more people being in pretrial detention.

Precisely because it allows the option of community-based bail supervision, the opposite would be the case. This bill would actually result in fewer people being detained before their trials. That is the important aspect that New Democrats argued for and convinced the government to include in this bill.

If we are interested in public safety, as I said, yes, we need to deal with repeat violent offenders. We also need to deal with recidivism. The way one deals with recidivism is to keep people out of jail, keep them in their employment, keep them with their families and provide them the supports they need to be productive citizens in this country.