Thank you.
Evidence of meeting #50 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 amendment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #50 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 amendment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Art Hanger
The next one is amendment G-8 on page 15. After Ms. Jennings' intervention here, I assume we can't deal with these as a block. We will have to do each one separately.
Mr. Moore.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Rob Moore Conservative Fundy Royal, NB
This accomplishes the same goal—as Mr. Comartin mentioned--as the NDP amendment. It leaves in place the five-year minimum and seven-year escalating sentences, but eliminates the ten-year minimum sentence for a third offence. So for subsequent offences it would be seven years.
Once we deal with this, unless there's some problem in dealing with the rest as a block, I can't see why we can't deal with all of them together. Every one of our amendments does the same thing for each of those offences—takes away the ten-year minimum. If someone has a problem with that for one or two offences, we could deal with them on an offence-by-offence basis.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Art Hanger
The effort here, then, would be to apply the vote on this particular amendment, G-8, to amendments G-9 to G-15. Is there consensus and agreement?
Ms. Jennings, do you agree?
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
Marlene Jennings Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
First of all, yes, I'm in favour of dealing with the government amendments as a block, but I do have a question. Am I mistaken when my memory tells me that last week some Liberal amendments that sought to do the same thing were ruled out of order?
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Art Hanger
That's right. You're not mistaken, but they didn't apply in the same fashion as the government amendment has, or the NDP amendment.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
Marlene Jennings Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
The Liberal amendments sought to remove the escalator clauses. These government amendments seek to do the same thing. Therefore, by the logic of the ruling you gave last week, I would assume these government amendments are also out of order, because they seek to remove an escalator clause.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Art Hanger
Ms. Jennings, there is still an escalator. It's first and second offence, and there was no escalator in the Liberal amendments, if you recall.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
Marlene Jennings Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
Thank you for that clarification, Mr. Chair.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
For the record, I want to support what Ms. Jennings said. All we were doing was reducing the length of the sentences. They were reducing the length of the sentences, and there was no escalator.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Art Hanger
There was no escalator in your amendments.
We are on government amendment G-8. We are going to do amendments G-8 to G-15 as a block if we can.
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
Marlene Jennings Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
I have a question for clarification. Has the NDP withdrawn all its amendments?
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
I have one more, but on these sections I have withdrawn all of mine.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Art Hanger
You have another one coming up, but on these particular sections we will apply government amendments G-8 to G-15.
I now call the question.
(Amendments negatived)
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
Marlene Jennings Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
I am withdrawing the Liberal amendments that deal with the same clauses that amendments G-8 to G-15 concerned.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Art Hanger
Liberal amendments L-12 to L-18 are withdrawn.
(Clause 17 negatived)
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Art Hanger
Clause 17 is defeated. Is there agreement to apply this vote now to clauses 18 to 24?
9:40 a.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
Rob Moore Conservative Fundy Royal, NB
Mr. Chair, I'm just noting the Liberals voted against our amendment that would reduce the escalator from three, seven, and ten years to three and seven years, so obviously they feel it doesn't go far enough.
Is there unanimous consent, then, that for these clauses we adopt the Liberal platform and just double the mandatory minimum to eight years for all these offences? What the Liberals proposed was an eight-year mandatory minimum for each of these offences, so does Ms. Jennings want to move that we just adopt their platform?
That's much further than we wanted to go. We have five, seven, and ten; they are proposing eight years across the board.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
Marlene Jennings Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
Chair, we expressed ourselves through Bill C-82 and through the amendments we brought forth. I think our position is quite clear that we actually want to be smart on crime and have criminal provisions that are actually effective.