Justice Committee on Feb. 22nd, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Is that amendment acceptable?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Shall the title as amended carry?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

It has been carried unanimously.

Shall the bill as amended carry?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Shall I report the bill as amended to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Shall the committee order a reprint of the bill as amended?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, committee.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Mr. Rajotte.

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

Mr. Chairman, very briefly, I want to thank all the committee members for their work. I sincerely appreciate it. I think they certainly improved a bill that I put forward. I very much appreciate all of their efforts.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Mr. Rajotte. I appreciate your time.

Committee, we have two motions that we must deal with. Given that there is going to be some discussion on one, maybe two, I'm going to take them in a different order from how they were presented, if that's okay with the committee. I will take Ms. Jennings' motions first.

I'm going to suspend for two minutes until we have these motions in everyone's hands.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

We will reconvene. We have two motions before us, a motion presented by Ms. Jennings and one by Monsieur Ménard. Mr. Ménard's motion came before the committee first.

If it's agreed, I would like to handle Ms. Jennings' motion first, given the fact that there may be a little more discussion on Mr. Ménard's motion.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Ms. Jennings.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

I'd like to move my motion.

All members of the committee are aware of my notice of motion from two days ago. I would ask the committee to adopt this motion:

That this committee recommends: That this House take note of the importance of the contribution that the ethnocultural communities make to the prevention of crime, social reintegration of offenders and rapid growth of safer communities and that it recognize the need to ensure every means and resource to allow police departments, the Correctional Service of Canada, the National Parole Board and the ethnocultural communities to respond better to the needs of the increasingly diversified offender and prison population. That the chair report the adoption of this motion to the House.

I would simply and quite briefly like to explain why I am moving this motion. Further to Mr. Ménard's motion, our committee examined the issues of crime and street gangs. We've heard from several experts, police officers and representatives of at least one cultural community which is a victim of street gangs itself. Mr. Harry Delva, from the Maison d'Haïti in Montreal, explained how they became experts in the matter and indicated that law enforcement, Correctional Service of Canada and the National Parole Board often call on them for their expertise.

However, the fact that ethnocultural communities are themselves part of the solution is not something that is necessarily recognized by our Parliament or our governments. Moreover, ethnocultural communities can and should participate in creating resources and solutions, and they should receive the means and resources necessary to do so.

Police experts were entirely in agreement with the recommendations made by the Maison d'Haïti representative. Before entering politics, I gained a great deal of experience working with cultural communities in the law enforcement field. If we really want to address the problems of crime in general, we need to have the communities involved.

So I would ask the members of the committee to adopt this motion. It does not specify an amount which the government should allocate, etc. It simply seeks to make sure that police departments, Correctional Service Canada, the National Parole Board and the ethnocultural communities are all part of the solution, and that they be given the resources and the means they need.

I would like to point out that there is a typo in the word ethnoculturelle in French: the "t" should be before the "h".

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Ms. Jennings.

Mr. Moore.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I've read it over. I think I know the intention of the motion, and I'm pleased to support the motion. The government supports providing resources for the prevention of crime, the reintegration of offenders, and safer communities. I am pleased to support the motion.

I notice it says “to ensure every means and resource”. I don't know if it's the entire budget, but I think I know the intent of the member who's moving it. On sufficient means and resources, I am not proposing an amendment. It's probably okay the way it is. I'm happy to support it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Mr. Moore.

Mr. Lee.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

I don't have any problems with the motion and the intent. I only want to flag that the practice of committees generating business for the House is not something I would normally subscribe to.

We have not done any substantive work on this issue. It is a sentiment expressed by the members here. We could adopt it and send it out to everybody who cared about the issue, including the government departments. We wouldn't have to report it to the House. The end consequence of reporting it to the House as a committee report is it becomes grist for the mill in the House. I'm only being honest about that.

We're going to have a five-minute discussion here. In reporting to the House as a report of the committee, the House would not have the benefit of any transcript or any substantive discussion of the issues. It really wouldn't be much different if a member simply proposed a motion to the House under private members' business and brought it up there. But of course on a concurrence motion, a committee report manages to preempt some routine proceedings and other parts of the day's work. I only wanted to be honest about that.

The motion is well crafted and well worded. As a one-off, having heard some of the evidence we heard during Bill C-9 and Bill C-10, I'd be happy to support it and send it off to the House.

Although some other committees may engage in it, I wouldn't want it to become a common practice for us to do wishful motions at committee and then send it off to the House as if we did some work on it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Mr. Ménard.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Chairman, unfortunately I disagree with Mr. Lee. I find the motion to be a good one, for two reasons. First off, it is our responsibility to express wishes, and it is absolutely appropriate for us to adopt motions. This motion invites us to take note of a phenomenon: members of ethnocultural communities need public services to adjust to this new reality, from all of the testimony we've heard.

It is true that when the chairman reports a motion to the House, parties may ask to debate the motion before the House, but that would certainly not be a waste of time, because it is an important reality to acknowledge. We shall see what parties make of it. Either way, our committee has not been excessive in this regard up until this point. We would support it with pleasure and thank Ms. Jennings for having made the effort of drafting this motion.