Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Cariboo—Prince George.
It is always a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak on behalf of the fine constituents of my riding, and it is significant for me as a former participant in the criminal justice system for almost two decades. This is an issue that I have been pushing for, and it is an issue for which I have been advocating for change. Really, it is one of the rationales as to why I left the Crown attorney system in Ontario and sought to become a legislator, which was to make and pass laws that would improve community safety.
If we take a look at the last 10 years, we see rising crime rates, which is a very serious matter right across the country. I have embarked on a cross-Canada tour and engaged with all of the stakeholders we can imagine who would have a position on this. All of them were unanimous in what needs to be done. For the last four years, these stakeholders engaged in their own advocacy with the federal government, writing to not only the current justice minister but also former justice minister Virani to affect change. For four years, that was largely ignored.
We know how we got to this situation. I often get asked the question as to why the Liberals are so preoccupied with the rights of the accused at the expense of victims and community safety. I have never really had a concrete answer to provide without doing a bit a research, so I did that.
Surprisingly, this goes back almost 50 years, to the early 1970s. The Trudeau government, this time the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, appointed a solicitor general by the name of Jean-Pierre Goyer, who stood in the House of Commons, not this building but Centre Block, and proudly proclaimed in the House, at that time, his intention to stress the rehabilitation of individuals rather than the protection of society. That struck me as a wow moment, as it is the origin of the whacked out hug-a-thug mentality of the Liberal government in making it so much easier for them to conduct their trade.
We then heard from Justin Trudeau and his justice ministers, who said to not blame them, that they are simply following what the Supreme Court of Canada literally asked them to do to codify changes in bail with the passage of Bill C-75.
I have read those decisions, both in my professional capacity and, again, as a parliamentarian. Specifically, I am referring to the decisions of Antic, Zora and St-Cloud, which never instructed the federal government to do anything and never instructed it to codify any principle in the Criminal Code.
How criminal justice is administered in this country is that we follow the Criminal Code. We also bear in mind case law, the decisions of our lower courts, the decisions of our superior courts, the decisions of appellate courts and the decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada. That is how the administration of justice works.
Justin Trudeau and the current Liberal government did not have to do anything, but they did.
At the time, and this was 2019, I was in the trenches. I was dealing with bail court. I was asking myself why it has become exceedingly difficult. There would be an obvious case, such as when someone had proven themselves to be unreliable in making promises and to be a menace to not only themselves but also the community, but they were being released. Of course, we would get memos from our superiors in Ontario and Queen's Park, and, lo and behold, I found out that the federal Liberal government had changed the law, changed the direction and changed the trajectory of what bail court is all about.
This also instructed, in my view, all judges and justices of the peace who hear bail applications every single day to prioritize the release of the accused with the principle of restraint, releasing them at the earliest opportunity on the least restrictive conditions. That is and will always be the origin of catch-and-release. I lived it. I experienced it, and unfortunately, the rest of Canada is still experiencing it.
Then the Liberal government made it worse in 2022 when it decided it had to pass Bill C-5 to make it even easier and softer for criminals to get through the criminal justice system. It decided that, for all the most serious gun offences, to take away the mandatory minimum penalties and to give the ability to ask for conditional sentences for very serious offences. We all know the consequences. Then the government started to hear from the stakeholders, and again it promised that it was listening and would make some changes. Hence, it introduced Bill C-48, which increased reverse onus provisions in the Criminal Code. We know that did not have the desired impact.
When I look at Bill C-14, I see more reverse onus provisions, much like those in Bill C-48. I cannot say that this bill is Bill C-48 2.0, because it is not. I listened to the justice minister, who wants to provide some confidence to Canadians and victims that the Liberals are finally getting it right, that they are striking the right balance and that community safety is going to be paramount, but there is nothing in Bill C-14 that directs judges not to release in certain circumstances. It makes recommendations that they should not give primary consideration to early release, but it does not mandate that these dangerous repeat criminals should remain in custody. We all know what happens when we lock up the repeat violent criminals. It is that crime rates go down. In fact, when we look at Statistics Canada's statistics over the last 15 years, over the last four or five years of the Stephen Harper government, the crime rate went down significantly. When we look at that same graph, we see a spike the moment Justin Trudeau took government and every year thereafter.
I am not saying that Bill C-14 is going to be manna from heaven, because it is not. It is being supported by law enforcement, just like they supported Bill C-48, because, let us face it, law enforcement is desperate for something. I have spoken to all of the major stakeholders who are now saying in the media that they support Bill C-14. They have made recommendations to the government, and some have been captured, but not all. There are many avenues for improvement, and I would encourage the government, as it listens to the debate in the House and, ultimately, as it reviews it at committee, to look at the common-sense solutions in the member for Oxford's jail not bail act. That would provide direct instructions to judges on how to deal with repeat violent criminals.
If we start by scrapping the principle of restraint and replacing it with the principle of public safety and protection, that is an instruction that would telegraph to judges that, when they are dealing with a class of individual who has been on a number of releases or who has a criminal record, it shows repeated behaviour of not abiding by conditions, and the priority is on the protection of the community, not the convenience of the accused. I encourage the government to look at that.
Bill C-14 is good, but not good enough. Conservatives will make it better.
