We have a few suggestions to make in terms of keeping the bill's principle alive, which is deporting foreign criminals who are serious criminals and a threat to this country and this society, but making a few changes that will reflect the disproportionality of some of the options.
One, we should definitely make an exception between conditional sentences and jail. In its current form, the bill does not do that. So you can have a situation where a permanent resident, facing jail time, may be sentenced by a judge in the community's interest to a conditional sentence due to the fact that the person is gainfully employed. But because of the nature of conditional sentences, they take longer to fulfill by their very nature. Ironically, that would actually lead to the capture of this person with this legislation because it would exceed six months.
We strongly urge that an exception should be made in this legislation between conditional sentences for first-time offenders and people who are facing jail time of more than six months.
A permanent resident who is given a conditional sentence in order to keep their job is a plus for Canada. Because of that positive approach by a judge, that should not lead to them losing their job and being deported because they opted for a conditional sentence. Otherwise, you would have a situation where permanent residents would opt for a jail term; they would lose their jobs or drop out of university for a jail term of less than six months, and they would opt out of a conditional sentence availability to avoid deportation. When they come out, they are out of a job or they have dropped out of school.
The second point is to urge that ministerial discretion in humanitarian and compassionate cases should not be curbed. Ministerial discretion is there for a particular purpose. It is there in these cases when the law, on its face, cannot capture some of the unique cases that should be captured.
What springs to my mind is the case, for example, of the South African family whose child could only live in a place like British Columbia because they couldn't be exposed to direct sunlight. That's something the law doesn't capture, and it's something where we expect the minister to use his discretion in those kinds of cases.