Evidence of meeting #33 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 slide.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
My point of order was that it was my turn, not Mr. Petit's. I thought you recognized me as next, Mr. Chair.
Conservative
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
He did have one round, but when we go into the second round, after everybody is done, then we go back.
On slide 6 you have as a category “other firearms”. How is that defined as separate from handguns, rifles, and shotguns in the other two categories?
Chief, Policing Services Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
That includes sawed-off rifle shotguns and fully automatic firearms.
Chief, Policing Services Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
It could even possibly be something like a starter's pistol, if it were to cause death.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
With regard to the statistics on the murder rate, which is on 4, when you have a case like the Picton case, where we might safely say from everything we've seen, at least in the public media, that there will probably be some murders that will not ever be identified--when you have a serial killing like that. There's been some suggestion that we have the same situation in the Olson case, and I know at one time there was a suggestion we might apply that in the Bernardo case; that is, we simply never find the remains of a victim so we can never identify them. Is any assessment made in that regard? I guess they would be unsolved murders or maybe suspicious murders. Do they show up anywhere in the statistics?
Chief, Policing Services Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
Obviously, we can't comment on any specific case, but what we get is the number as determined by police, the number murdered in any particular incident.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Do you know how they handle that, where they have a suspicion that there may be...? Do they simply not record that?
Chief, Policing Services Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
I couldn't comment on the individual practices. It's entirely possible. There aren't that many cases of the kind you're talking about that would influence the numbers very much. Basically, they use our scoring, so if there's enough evidence to deem that a homicide has taken place and there's a victim of some sort, they will score it that way.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
In that regard, do you keep records of unsolved murders? Can you tell me, in 2005, what it was?
Chief, Policing Services Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
The proportion of unsolved? Yes, I can. We recently did a study. We went back to 1961 and we followed up on all unsolved homicides in Canada, and 85% are solved.
Chief, Policing Services Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
It's been fairly constant, but dropping over the last few years.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Do you break that down by category, in the sense of whether they are gang-related or not, organized-crime related or not? Are there any breakdowns of the unsolved?
Chief, Policing Services Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
Yes, we could get that, since we've started collecting that data.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Could you get that to us, and the other question of how many there were?
I'll pass on any further questioning, Mr. Chair.
Conservative
Daniel Petit Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Thank you.
Mr. Turner, you got off to a good start. I think I'll be needing the documents you're given me and that you'll be handing over to the clerk so that we may consult them.
I have a question that always comes to mind and which is generally asked by the Liberal Party members. Whenever we are looking at homicide, attempted murders, sexual assaults, they always ask if there are more Indians among the group. For instance, in Montreal, because of the Haitian street gang phenomenon, the question is automatically asked about blacks. When the time comes to amend legislation, people tell us that what we are doing is inverse racism, because if you put them all in jail, there will be an over population of blacks or Indians.
I like to put forward an hypothesis to you. Take for instance the city of Montreal, it should be rather short for you, at least I hope so. If all of the districts were controlled by Haitian street gangs and that they killed people, there would automatically be more Black murderers in jail. So, tomorrow morning, I would have the Black Coalition on my back, telling me that we, the Conservatives, are racists.
In your statistics on homicides, what does that correspond to? Are these people whites, blacks or Indians? It is important. Usually, the Liberal Party members say that there are more Indians than whites in jail. So, I want to know what this corresponds to. I think that if you had their names, you would be able to give me an answer, or at least to say whether they are blacks, whites, Indians, etc. It's very important because it will help us later on, in studying other parts of Bill C-10.
Chief, Policing Services Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
I can tell you that for homicides we collect the aboriginal status of both the victims and the accused persons, and selected police departments send us the aboriginal status for all crimes committed—but there are some data quality issues with that particular variable.
Conservative
Daniel Petit Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Could you forward these documents to the clerk so that we may consult them?
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
One of the concerns you hear from opponents of the bill is that we're going to fill up all our jails and it's going to be very expensive. One of the intuitive things I've thought about as I go through this is that ultimately, some of the people who will be serving time under mandatory minimum sentence, given the alternative, would spend a significant amount of that time in prison because they would commit multiple crimes over the same time period.
You may have a person, for example, who's in prison for, let's say, seven years. That same person, getting out early after three, if they had three years for their crime the first time, may be in a year later for another three and be in for six of the seven years anyway.
Is there a calculation—I'm looking again at slide 11—or have there been studies done on the amount of time, over a time span, that individuals in bars 1, 2, and 3 on that graph would have spent in prison, the average amount of total time? I guess this would be much the same as calculating penalty minutes in hockey statistics when a player might have two penalties, a two-minute penalty and a five-minute penalty.
