Evidence of meeting #30 for Justice and Human Rights in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was serious.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
You said this, and I'll quote, “The numbers are simply staggering”, of those out on bail. Do you have any documented evidence? Can you provide this committee—
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
—with the background information on what you just said, what the sentences are?
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
That's on bail. Well, give the committee something to work with. The decisions need to be evidence-based.
Your emphasis in this bill, in my opinion, seems to be on the mandatory minimums, and I think, in response to Mr. Comartin, you said that we need to send a message. Well, all the evidence, Mr. Minister, in fairness, that we have seen to date suggests that it isn't the severity of the penalty that's the deterrent, but it's having police in the streets, having preventive measures, and getting the information out that makes a lot more difference than just getting the message out on the severity of the sentence. Would you agree with that?
November 7th, 2006 / 4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Vic Toews Conservative Provencher, MB
No, it's not just the police presence. The police presence is an important aspect of it.
In respect of the statistics, I'd certainly be willing to review the statistics that your party considered in coming up with the eight-year mandatory minimum prison sentences, because I don't think that is justified either. There needs to be a proportionate response. But if you could share that information with me, perhaps I could make a more informed decision about whether we should go from the graduated approach that we have taken, the proportionate tailored approach with respect to certain offences, to this blanket eight-year penalty. I'd like to see that information, and that would perhaps help me come to a different conclusion. I'm sure you could share that with me.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
You're the minister. You have available to you all the experience and information from the department. I'm sure you can access that information.
I do find it interesting that in response to a question from Mr. Lee, you did talk about the stats of 2005 but failed to talk about the stats of 2006, because the 2006 stats don't make your argument on the scourge of—
Conservative
Vic Toews Conservative Provencher, MB
If I can just point out, that's where Mr. Lee cut me off and wouldn't let me respond, if you'll recall that exchange.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
The last question I had is that the bill is mainly targeted at prohibitive weapons, handguns. Does it apply to shotgun crimes?
Conservative
Vic Toews Conservative Provencher, MB
Yes, it does. It applies in a specific context, in the context of gang activity. What we're trying to focus on here is gang-related activity. A person using a shotgun, for example, in the context of a gang-related activity, would attract these new mandatory minimum penalties, so would using restricted or prohibited firearms. It does not apply to the long guns in the kinds of situations for which Mr. Bagnell wanted to raise the mandatory minimums to eight years. If an aboriginal hunter got into a fight with somebody and used a long gun to wound somebody, that wouldn't trigger the new mandatory minimum penalties. We feel that Mr. Bagnell's approach of the eight years' mandatory for an aboriginal hunter would not be appropriate in that circumstance. You could see that the firearms, whether they're restricted, prohibited, or long gun, are in the context of a gang-related activity. That addresses, then, also, Mr. Easter, the issue of the concern about simply filling up prisons with people who shouldn't be there for as long a period of time. It's very targeted, rather than a blanket mandatory minimum.
Conservative
Conservative
Myron Thompson Conservative Wild Rose, AB
That's what I heard. But more than anything else, I want to thank you for bringing forward this legislation. I've been here thirteen years, and I've always been excited when some kind of legislation would come forward that would have the victims' interests at heart. I'm seeing that now, and I really want to thank you for that, because I haven't been seeing it for a long, long time.
Conservative
Myron Thompson Conservative Wild Rose, AB
Focusing on the victims is a really good idea. It's a really unique idea to dealing with crime and what we should do.
When it comes to gangs, before the election last year I did some visiting of penitentiaries and checking the gang numbers in the penitentiaries and what their activities were. After the election I got quite interested in it and I continued that until we finally had to come back here to work in April. But I visited with the SIO officers, I believe they're called, the individuals in the penitentiaries who are responsible for looking after gang activity in the penitentiaries. I also visited with some of the members of these gangs. There was the Posse, the Bandidos, the Warriors, Asian gangs, motorcycle gangs. There were all types of gangs.
One thing that's a bit surprising is that it didn't matter what the gang was, there were all walks of life that belonged to those gangs. The Indian gang, so to speak, was not just aboriginal people. There were actually some other people who were involved in it, because it's all about making money; it's all about getting-rich schemes.
I had some interesting conversations with them, Mr. Minister, in terms of what would it do to stop the kind of activity that's going on. I find it sad for them to say, “Well, there isn't a whole lot for us to worry about right now. There isn't too much that's going to occur. Yes, there are some of us in here for life, but that's what happens when you murder somebody.” But there's much more to the active issue. These are the people who are actually trying to change their lives and want to do something.
I asked, “What about the registry? Did that have any effect?” They laughed and said, “Did nobody tell you about gangs? We don't register our guns.” Well, no, nobody really told me that. I just sort of suspected that was true. They said, “Why don't you toughen up the laws? Why don't you build more prisons if you have to? There are a lot of bad people out there in gangs, and they need to be stored.” These are actual words coming from those who were convicted and are in penitentiaries today, those belonging to gangs, saying, “It is getting out of hand. When I got into it, I didn't think it would go to this severity, but it's getting worse and worse.”
So I commend you on this legislation. It's a step in getting tough on them. I get sick and tired of hearing about the registry, which has not saved one life that I know of--not one. We have to do something about protecting the innocent people, the victims, and I applaud you for that. I think this bill is going to do it.
That's my speech.
I have one question, on Mayerthorpe. I'll never forget the Mayerthorpe tragedy. It's one of the worst we've ever seen in this country, where four officers lost their lives. You know the mastermind behind that activity, the criminal that was involved? If this kind of legislation had been in place, what would be the likelihood of that guy being out where he could commit that kind of crime?
Conservative
Vic Toews Conservative Provencher, MB
I agree that the Mayerthorpe situation was a terrible tragedy. Indeed it was more than a tragedy, it was a crime. I always like to specifically call things a crime rather than a tragedy. A tragedy somehow indicates to me that it couldn't be averted, and I prefer to see these as cold-blooded crimes.
I don't know what the record was of that individual. I have to agree with Mr. Comartin that some of the repeat offenders here would be fairly rare, but isn't that who we should be targeting, those repeat offenders who keep on coming back and using firearms to injure their fellow citizens and injure the police who are out there every day helping us go about our lives? I don't know whether he had prior offences.
Obviously, had that individual lived he would have faced first degree murder charges. The 25-year mandatory minimum for first degree murder was brought in by a Liberal government, and it's something that I support--life imprisonment for those individuals convicted of first degree murder.
In that particular case, had the individual been left alive and let's say the officers had not been killed, let's say they had been injured, we certainly would have been able to then attack him under the dangerous offender legislation. As a result of the decision in 2003, the number of dangerous offender applications has been halved in this country. It's gone from about 25 a year--because we're talking about the really dangerous individuals--to about 12 as a result of that decision. So what we are trying to do in our dangerous offender legislation is restore the law as it was prior to that Supreme Court of Canada decision in order that the 12 or 13 individuals who are now escaping this dangerous offender net are picked up in that net so that people are protected. That's what we're trying to do.
Are we going to get everyone? No, we're not. But we can do a much better job than we have been doing. Part of it is mandatory minimum prison sentences. Another part of it is policing. Another part of it, which I happen to believe in very strongly, is diversion of youth, opportunities for youth, so that we get them out of the gangs and so that they don't get into the gangs. It's a very important aspect. That's why I'm proud of my government's efforts in that respect.
So you can't look at this bill and say it's going to cure everything. It's not going to cure everything. There has to be a holistic, societal approach to dealing with the issue of crime.
I'm proud that my government is supporting more diversion. I'm proud of the aboriginal justice strategy programs that my department is involved in. But I also want to say that with all of the money we're putting into social programs, educational programs, community programs, if we're leaving the guys with the guns and the drugs out on the street, what chance does that next generation have when they're recruiting these kids at eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve years old? When we leave those individuals out on the street, what chance do those young people have to ever get out of that life of crime?
So this is one aspect of giving those younger kids a break, because they're victims too, the individuals who in the early years are tempted into the gang life. I've seen that development over the past 15 years in a place like Winnipeg, especially, which I'm most familiar with. The kind of gang crime that we have going on now didn't exist back in 1990. In 1991 there was an explosion of gang crime. We need to find appropriate tools. Diversion is a good one, but also policing, giving our police the support they need, and thirdly, the mandatory minimum prison sentences for those guys who just won't learn.
Conservative
Myron Thompson Conservative Wild Rose, AB
Recruiting of young people by the gangs is one thing they mentioned that is getting completely out of hand.
Liberal
Brian Murphy Liberal Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
There's some agreement that mandatory minimums are useful in this justice context. The effect of the 1995 introduction of mandatory minimums probably hasn't been objectively empirically studied enough to see what good they have done in deterrence. One would think that has to be done as we go forward.
The second thing I'm happy to hear you say—and I want to get the tape of it—is that you considered Liberals, at least during the campaign, to be tougher on crime than the Conservatives, so I appreciate that comment.
I'm going to ask all of my questions at once, because you're passionate about your beliefs here—perhaps often wrong, but never in doubt. I don't want to give you short change on the answer time, so I'll just posit the questions one by one.
When we received our briefing from the Justice people, there was a Mr. Daubney who prepared a report for Justice, and unless things have changed drastically—and I was certainly new at the job—I didn't think the Department of Justice was overwhelmingly recommending further mandatory minimums. I'd ask you to comment on whether there has been a born-again retribution and denunciation religion that I'm unaware of within the justice department.
On the studies themselves, you mentioned that you have the names of studies. We're looking forward to getting those once the copyright translation issues are dealt with.
Conservative
