Bill C-5

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

This enactment amends the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to, among other things, repeal certain mandatory minimum penalties, allow for a greater use of conditional sentences and establish diversion measures for simple drug possession offences.

Criminal Code

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Madam Speaker, I made a very light touch in my previous answer on the resource intensity of these MMPs and the tough-on-crime stance that the Conservative government enacted into law prior to this government.

There is no question that provincial governments can expend the resources of their taxpayers in more important and more effective ways to make society more equitable and improve access to all kinds of societal supports, rather than putting people behind bars and depriving them of those very supports that they need so dearly.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-5, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise to speak on the Liberals' do-no-time, soft-on-crime bill, Bill C-5. This do-no-time, soft-on-crime Liberal bill eliminates mandatory jail time for serious firearms-related offences and serious drug offences, and significantly expands conditional sentencing orders, otherwise known as house arrests, for an array of violent and other serious offences.

Yesterday in the House, the Minister of Justice, in an effort to defend this soft-on-crime bill, said something truly remarkable. He said not to worry about it, because Bill C-5 targets “situations where public security and public safety are not at risk.” Really? Perhaps the minister should read his own bill because if he did, he would learn that Bill C-5 eliminates mandatory jail time for such firearms offences as robbery with a firearm, weapons trafficking, extortion with a firearm, using a firearm with the intent to injure and using a firearm in the commission of a crime, among other serious firearms offences. However, the Minister of Justice says that Bill C-5 targets “situations where public security and public safety are not at risk.” Is he kidding?

I think Canadians would be absolutely shocked if they knew that the Minister of Justice thought that robbery with a firearm, using a firearm in the commission of an offence and discharging a firearm with the intent to injure constitute crimes in which public security and public safety are not an issue. We literally cannot make this stuff up, yet there he was in this place asserting that with a straight face.

It goes on. As I noted, this bill significantly expands house arrests. With the passage of Bill C-5, criminals convicted of such offences as kidnapping a minor, arson for a fraudulent purpose, assault with a weapon, impaired driving causing death and sexual assault would be able to serve their sentences at home, instead of behind bars where they belong. There we have it. These are offences such as sexual assault, kidnapping a minor and arson for a fraudulent purpose, but the minister says that Bill C-5 targets “situations where public security and public safety are not at risk.” As I said, we cannot make this stuff up.

I will tell members who disagrees with the minister: Many of the key witnesses who came to the justice committee, representatives of law enforcement, victims' advocates and community leaders. They have a very different take on the impact that Bill C-5 is going to have.

Take the crime of sexual assault. Jennifer Dunn, of the London Abused Women's Centre, came before the committee and said now that perpetrators of sexual assault would be able to serve their sentences at home, the victims of sexual assault, particularly women, were going to be put at even greater risk because they were going to be stuck in the same communities, often, as the perpetrators. No kidding. This is a news flash to the minister.

Then there is André Gélinas, a retired detective sergeant from the Montreal police service who characterized Bill C-5 as “a race to the bottom”.

He went on to say:

It is paradoxical and totally dichotomous to think that abolishing mandatory minimum sentences that apply to criminal offences involving firearms will have a beneficial effect on our communities.

Staff Sergeant Michael Rowe appeared before the committee representing the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. With respect to the mandatory jail times involving serious firearms offences that Bill C-5 seeks to repeal, he said that these specific mandatory jail times “hold significant value when addressing public safety and gang-related violence”.

Anie Samson, a former Montreal municipal councillor and mayor of a borough in the most multicultural part of Montreal, which has unfortunately been ravaged by serious gun and gang violence, said that Bill C-5, in eliminating mandatory jail time for serious firearms offences, “exacerbates impunity”.

There we have it. Contrary to the Minister of Justice's ridiculous assertion, key witnesses before the justice committee said very clearly that Bill C-5 would in fact undermine public security, undermine public safety and put victims at risk, particularly victims of such crimes as sexual assault.

Do members know who would also be hurt and put at risk, contrary to the talking points of the Liberals? It would be persons struggling with addictions and vulnerable Canadians. The Minister of Justice, at second reading, spoke about the fact that we have an opioid crisis in Canada, and he is quite right. He spoke about the need, in order to address that crisis, to implement measures around education, treatment and rehabilitation. He would not find argument on this side of the House on that point.

However, Bill C-5 would do none of those things. What Bill C-5 would do is eliminate mandatory jail time for the very people, the very criminals, who are profiting from putting poison on our streets that is killing 20 Canadians a day and 7,000 Canadians a year in the opioid crisis. Those are the people who are going to benefit from Bill C-5, because Bill C-5 would eliminate mandatory jail time for producers and pushers of schedule 1 and schedule 2 drugs under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. These are drugs such as fentanyl and crystal meth.

I challenge the Minister of Justice to explain how it is that simply eliminating mandatory jail time for the producers and pushers of these killer drugs would make anyone safer. It simply would not. This bill really does speak to the priorities of the Liberal government or, I would submit, the misplaced priorities of the government. The government's priority is to put criminals first, public security, public safety and the rights of victims be damned.

This is a reckless and dangerous bill that would undermine safety in our communities, put victims last and put vulnerable Canadians at risk. That is why we on the Conservative side of the House will continue to fight this bill every step of the way.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Madam Speaker, while I disagree with my hon. colleague on his framing of the bill, I always appreciate the very well-delivered speeches he gives.

The member selectively quoted Jennifer Dunn in her appearance before the committee, talking about conditional sentencing. I also read what Jennifer Dunn said at committee, which is that, “Women are not protected by the law unless all mandatory minimum penalties are considered.”

Basically, she seems to be arguing that all mandatory minimums should be removed from the Criminal Code. Does the hon. member believe that really buttresses the case that he is making in his speech?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, I do not know how we are going to make anyone safe by eliminating mandatory jail time for serious firearms and drug-related offences.

With respect to conditional sentencing, which was the main purpose of her testimony, she noted that it is going to have a very negative impact on women because those predators are going to be serving time in the victims' communities. On top of that, it is often difficult to supervise these people, which again is putting vulnerable people at risk.

Very simply put, this bill from start to finish is a badly drafted bill that gets it precisely backwards. It is why we are going to continue to fight it.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank our colleague for his speech. He made a lot of references to safety. I do not think anyone in the House doubts the importance of safety. Montreal is going through some tough times these days.

Does my colleague really believe that a person with mental health issues or a substance abuse problem is a safety threat?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, with respect to my colleague, that is not what I said. What I said is that when it comes to addressing those who are struggling with addictions, we need to look at alternatives. We need to support treatment and rehabilitation efforts. Incarceration should be a last resort, and indeed there is a directive issued by the Public Prosecution Service of Canada not to prosecute in case of simple possession.

Where this bill is wrong, however, is that it would eliminate mandatory jail time not for simple possession, for which there is no mandatory jail time, but for the producers and pushers of the very drugs that are hurting those who are suffering and struggling with addiction. That is the problem with Bill C-5.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, if we are to address systemic racism in our justice system and the overincarceration of indigenous peoples, racialized people and Canadians living in poverty, then we need to do more than the timid measures put forward by the Liberals in this bill. Can the member share some ideas of how this bill can be improved so it is less timid and actually serves to address the systemic racism we see in Canada?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, respectfully, my position regarding this bill is that it needs to be scrapped. It needs to be defeated and the government needs to go back to the drawing board.

On the issue of systemic racism and the impacts the criminal justice system has on marginalized Canadians, yes, it is an issue that needs to be addressed. One of the things that was noted at committee is that many of the victims, in fact a disproportionate number of victims, also come from racialized and vulnerable communities. What we need to make a priority is putting victims first, and this bill puts victims last and criminals first.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-5, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise virtually to speak to Bill C-5, a bill I support, although it does not go far enough in the two areas it proposes to address. Other members today in debate have wished that the bill had been proposed as two separate bills, but in any case, what we have is a bill that deals in the first part, and in the main, with removing certain sentences that are referred to as mandatory minimums, and the second part in dealing with the ongoing crisis of drug poisonings. I do not refer to them as overdoses any longer. The more I learn about what is going on in the opioid crisis with the fentanyl contamination of drug supply, the more I realize this is a poisoning crisis in which many people die.

The bill in this case introduces a second section called “Evidence-based Diversion Measures”. There really is not anything in common between the first part and the second part of Bill C-5. Let me address the first part first. I hope I can fit in all my comments, because there are many.

The use of mandatory minimums, as many Conservatives have pointed out in the debate, is not entirely a legacy of the government under former prime minister Stephen Harper, but I was here in the House during the debates on the omnibus crime bill, Bill C-10, which introduced many more mandatory minimums. Let us say, just to get it out of the way, that former Liberal governments under former prime ministers Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien did bring in some mandatory minimums. Others were brought in under Bill C-10 while I was serving in this place.

Even as we brought in the mandatory minimum sentences that were under Bill C-10, it was well understood that there was no competing literature from experts in criminology and proper sentencing practices about the impacts of mandatory minimums. It was not that there were two different sources of evidences, as there was only one. All studies that looked at mandatory minimums concluded they did not work. All of them concluded that. Jurisdictions around the world that had brought in mandatory minimums, including in the state of Texas, were getting rid of them because they did not affect the crime rate, but they did have many serious negative effects on our criminal justice system. Let us try to walk through some of those.

We certainly know that Canada's crime rate has not been rising dramatically, as has been suggested by some in debate here. The last statistic I could find of our homicide rate is 1.95 homicides per 100,000 people. Obviously that should be zero. It would be ideal not to have any homicides in our society. Our rate is approximately two times the rate of the European Union, but three times lower than our neighbours to the south. The United States has an appalling rate, as we all know, of gun crime and murder. It is something that legislation we will be talking about even later tonight proposes to deal with.

We do not have a crime wave, but we do have a problem that mandatory minimums have exacerbated. Certainly, the courts have been very busy because so many of the mandatory minimum sentences, as we argued in this place as opposition members when Bill C-10 was brought in, violate the charter. We could see that it was going to violate the charter. We argued that at the time.

Currently, there have been hundreds of charter challenges against mandatory minimums in Canada: 69% of such challenges related to drug offences have been found to violate the charter and 48% of those related to firearms have been found to violate the charter. Bill C-5, when I talk about it not going far enough, does not even eliminate all of the mandatory minimums that the courts have already struck down.

Let us look at those negative side effects. We have heard primarily, and I think it is a huge issue, that mandatory minimums are one of the reasons there is a disproportionate number of people of colour and indigenous people in our prisons, which exacerbates systemic racism against members of those communities.

However, that is not the only problem with mandatory minimums. Mandatory minimums clog up our court dockets by removing the incentive for the accused to plead guilty early in the process. Mandatory minimums take away a judge's discretion to look at the person who has committed the crime before him or her and decide that this person would benefit far more from being diverted into a program that helps them with mental health issues. However, under this mandatory minimum, they have to sentence them to, for example, five years.

We know that mandatory minimums and longer incarceration times increase the risk that someone will be coming back. Mandatory minimums and longer incarceration times take someone who may have had one offence that was serious, and that one offence may lead them to basically getting an education in crime from spending time with criminals in prison and not having the opportunity to rehabilitate and get back into normal, civilian, non-criminal life and out of jail.

Prosecutors have a problem with dealing with mandatory minimums in that they are then the ones who take the discretion, taking it away from the judges. There is a lot wrong with mandatory minimums, including overcrowding prisons, and they have a knock-on effect of increasing the costs for the provincial governments that have to deal with prisoners. Overcrowding in our prisons is another big problem.

In the time remaining, I want to turn to the second part of the bill, which is about evidence-based diversion measures. For the first time, this is to say that, for the law enforcement officer who comes upon someone who has a relatively small amount of prohibited drugs, it encourages that law enforcement to think about whether, in that instance, it would be better to divert this person from criminal justice to a different set of programs for mental health and to give them a warning as opposed to prosecuting them.

I have been very educated in this crisis we are facing of deaths due to opioids by one of my constituents who is extraordinarily brave. Her name is Leslie McBain. She lost her son in he opioid crisis, and she is one of the founders of a group called Moms Stop The Harm. There are now hundreds of parents who are active in that group. It breaks my heart every time I talk to someone who has lost a child in the opioid crisis.

This tiny little measure in Bill C-5 is okay but not nearly what is required. In the same way for Bill C-5, I brought forward amendments for which have I been pilloried. Members would not believe the words used against me for introducing amendments to get rid of more mandatory minimums. Let us be clear. Getting rid of mandatory minimums is not about letting prisoners walk free. It is about making our communities safer. It is about ensuring that the punishment fits the crime, and it is up to a judge to decide that.

People are not going to walk free out of prison if they have committed offences without a mandatory minimum, but they will be sent to jail for the time appropriate to their circumstances and the offence they have committed.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was a little disappointed during committee. There were certain amendments brought forward to remove mandatory minimums for heinous crimes committed against children. As the father of an eight-year-old son and a soon to be seven-year-old daughter, I find that revolting.

Would the member care to apologize for entering those amendments?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely will not apologize. This is based on evidence. In fact, the Canadian Criminal Justice Association, the Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Sentencing Commission, which met in 1987, have recommended getting rid of all mandatory minimum sentences other than the one for murder. That is because they do not work. They do not deter crime.

We want to ensure this absolutely. I am not only a mother. I am also a grandmother, and I completely understand where the hon. member is coming from, but when we dig into the evidence and ask if these mandatory minimums keep our children safe or have any impact whatsoever on someone who is twisted and horrific with an impulse to hurt a child, no, they do not.

What we need to do is make sure those people get the punishment that fits the crime. Judges in this country will not let people who abuse children, and who were brought through the criminal justice system and found guilty, walk out of jail.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.

She mentioned examples of what is being done internationally. We know, for example, that the tough‑on‑crime approach did not work. It has not worked in Switzerland.

Portugal, however, has a model for decriminalizing drugs that has worked well. As my colleague surely knows, in the case of Portugal, what has worked is that the whole system has really recognized the opioid issue as a public health issue.

In Quebec, we share that vision. Community and social service workers are part of a system that shares this vision of restorative justice. I worked for a community organization that did this.

However, what we lack is the means. I am talking about the financial means. It is important that the federal government do its part by increasing federal health transfers to 35% to help these organizations and to enable Quebec to reinvest in its health care system. I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about that.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my Bloc colleague from Shefford for her question.

She is absolutely right. Portugal's innovative model is an example for the whole world. It is clear that we should not treat drug addicts like criminals, but rather take an approach that focuses on public and mental health.

We need to make this change here in Canada. We need to adopt the same system as Portugal to protect the lives of citizens who are suffering in our society.