Justice Committee on April 22nd, 2009

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

First of all, Monsieur Lemay, you did cover quite a bit of ground.

The provinces are well aware of what we are doing right across the board on our tough-on-crime agenda, whether it's credit for time served, gangs, or drugs. All of these are subject to discussions and consultations; they have been certainly over the last couple of years that I have been justice minister. So they're well aware of that. Quite frankly, they don't hesitate to tell me how big of a problem some of these things are. And guess what? I get it from law enforcement agencies as well, who keep asking us to.... They support us in moving forward on these things.

Again, the people who have, in your example, 10, 15, or 50 plants don't get into the business of trafficking. This is what it is all about, as I pointed out to Ms. Davies. It's not the individuals who are planting for their own purposes. They shouldn't be doing that. They shouldn't get into this. It's a bad business to get into. It's the people who are trafficking who are going to be subject to this piece of legislation.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Minister, I respectfully invite you to read clause 7, which you wish to amend. This section talks about production. There is the consumer, the producer and the dealer. You are attacking the producer by amending clause 7. But this section provides for a mandatory minimum of six months.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

We want to attack the producer. We're after the people who are producing and trafficking in marijuana.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Yes, but these are young people.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

There's no question about it.

I agree with you.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Minister, I agree with you, but I am telling you that these are young people who have 10, 15 or 20 plants. I'm not talking about the big dealers, the Hells Angels or the Bandidos. I am aware of these kinds of cases because I have had the opportunity or arguing some of them. What I'm talking about is young people, who would find themselves in prison for six months after a first offence. That is what the bill provides for.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Give a quick answer.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I'm not quite sure who you're referring to.

The Young Offenders Act applies to people up to the age of 18. Now, if you're asking me if some 25-year-old young person who's in the business of trafficking drugs can expect to be subject to this bill, yes, that's right. If you're a young person, if you're 25, guess what? This bill applies to you.

But again--and I think we're on the same page--we want to send a message to the people who are traffickers, the people who are bringing drugs into this country, that this is intolerable.

One of your colleagues mentioned people around the world. I'm going to tell you something, that other justice ministers.... I was at the Commonwealth meetings and other meetings. They tell me this is a curse, that it can destroy a society if drugs take a hold of the society. This is why we, or my colleagues.... And I hope you join with us, I really do, to send out a message that this kind of behaviour, this kind of activity, is intolerable and won't be tolerated by this Parliament.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

Mr. Norlock, you're next. You have five minutes as well. After that I think we'll go to three-minute rounds.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for coming here today. Thank you as well to the officials with you.

I've been listening to some of the questions here from some of the questioners. What's the real issue here? Is it addicted people with problems, successful treatment of people with addictions, prescribed drug treatment plans, young people who might be growing fewer than 50 plants? How about the person with only one plant?

Then they'll make a statement that they agree with most of what you're doing, “but”. When I took secondary school education, I learned that when you say “but”, it basically negates everything you said before the “but”, because the real issue is what you said after the “but”, so maybe we just need to leave out the “buts”.

As far as I'm concerned, this is about the people who come to me--and before I am accused of being just a cop who just wants to put bad people in jail, I want to tell you what I did when I was a police officer. I brought in programs like the D.A.R.E. program. I worked with Rebound Child and Youth Services.

This will be a question. Hold on to your hat there, Brian.

This is all part of the legislation you brought in. Part of that legislation deals with people who are addicted, but let me tell you what a lot of folks really think. I don't mean the folks who are hung up here playing the political games and all those other things, which every single person around this table, with the exception, perhaps, of the department people--

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

And the minister?

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Well, we're all....

Here's the issue. When I look at the bill, I see that we're talking about drugs that are being sold just outside the school doors, and that could be the person who just grows one plant for the purposes of raising $30 to do something. You know, criminals start small. They don't all start with big grow-ops. They start with the small stuff, and if you leave them alone....

Do you want to talk about treatments in prisons? I have Canada's largest prison in my riding, Warkworth. There's a very good drug and alcohol treatment plan there, but do you know something about drug and alcohol treatment? AA has it down straight: number one, you've got to recognize you have a problem, and number two, you've got to want help. You can have all the programs in the world and you can jam it down some drug-addicted person's face and down their throat, but it won't help them get cured, because they don't want to be cured.

Minister, my question is supposed to be dealing with mandatory minimums, and that's what this all has to do with. People are tired of reading in the newspaper about the sentences some provincial court judge or some judge somewhere gave to somebody who sold drugs: if you spent the last three or four weeks or months in jail, it's time served, boom, out the door, or you go to jail for six or seven or eight weeks. That's what the mandatory minimums are about.

We need to send a signal not necessarily just to the criminals, Minister, and I'd like you to respond to this. We need to send a message not just to the criminals who are doing these things, but to the people who want us, the politicians, to pass laws that make sense to them that the people who are committing the offences suffer the appropriate consequences.

You've been asked about mandatory minimums. I'd like you to talk about mandatory minimums--not what they mean to the criminals, not what they mean to the defence counsel, but what they mean to the average person on the street, to the mother and the father out there.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

You've covered a lot of ground, Mr. Norlock.

I can tell you that I think what we have here is a very balanced approach to the whole problem. We do want to get that individual who's an addict some help. As I've outlined in answer to a number of questions I've had today, we genuinely want to get help there. But we do have to send a message out to the individual who commits these crimes, and we have to send a message out to society that we're worried about them as well. One of the previous questioners said the problem is these people are getting into prisons. Yes, these people who get into prisons are a problem. But guess what? It's a problem for the victims that these people leave behind.

One of the things that we have constantly emphasized since taking office in this country is that we have to stand up for victims and law-abiding Canadians. Somebody has to speak for them. I've told this committee before that we've instituted the first federal ombudsman for victims of crime. That's what that office, that individual, has to do, but we have to send out the right message here, that this kind of activity is not going to be tolerated, that you don't get off without, perhaps, a prison sentence if you're bringing drugs into this country. I'm sure there are people who say, “This poor fellow, he's involved with organized crime. He's just bringing drugs into the country.” Well, I have news for you. He's one of the individuals who is trying to destroy this country. Don't be bringing drugs into this country, and if you are, you can expect jail time in this country. You could say, “Oh, the poor fellow, he only has 500 plants.” He's just destroying a house and a neighbourhood, and he's trafficking. That's not an excuse. He shouldn't be into that business here. Again, we send out the right message. This is targeting trafficking. People want to sell to children. People want to sell around schools, people who have been into this business for a long time, people who are bringing it in and out of the country, people who are producing these drugs.

This bill is very focused, and I'm hoping this bill is going to get passed. Believe me, there are a lot of Canadians who are very supportive of what we are doing here. They're looking to this committee and to this Parliament to do something about these problems.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We'll move on to Mr. Murphy. You have three minutes.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Aside from the hyperbole that dominates question period and how we characterize each other as parliamentarians, there is no doubt that we all want a safer community, and we all want to deal with issues regarding drug addiction. Drug addiction and the sequelae of all that, Mr. Minister, you rightly characterize as the scourge of our communities, and I think we all agree with that.

If you look at the principles of sentencing in the Criminal Code and deterrence...in denunciation you get an A-plus for your speech, for your ethos today. You're all about denunciation. That's part of what we should be doing. There's no doubt about it. On deterrence, I honestly believe that you believe this will have a deterrent effect, so I can't fault you on that. I know we may disagree on the empirical evidence, of which there is really none, frankly, but where you haven't really come through is on the issue of rehabilitation.

It was an earlier question. Have you talked to corrections officials? Have you talked to public safety officials, to Minister Van Loan or anybody, about the effect this bill will have on the number of people who have drug problems and whether there will be enough resources to treat them? After all, it is about the victims. Somebody who is sent away is going to get out again. If we send them away and they come back a worse person with worse drug problems and worse needs, it's ultimately worse for the victims. There ought to be something that can be done in the system. You alluded to some wonderful programs that my friend, Mr. MacAulay, brought in or ministered and so on.

What is the state now? Does your bill increase the “customers” in the prisons, and are there enough resources to make those programs accessible to people ?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

You touched on a couple of things. I was asked the question in the context of the gang bill. They asked, if a person, under the new changes of the murder provisions, spends 25 years in jail after they've murdered somebody as part of a gang-related activity, will they not do the crime because they're going to get, say, another 10 or 15 years? You know what I told them? I told them the truth. I said, I know that in those last 10 or 15 years there will be fewer victims in Canada, and this will certainly help break up gang activity by having these people detained.

I think you should make a distinction as well, because I make the distinction. The people who are, for instance, trafficking in drugs, bringing them into this country, they're not necessarily addicted. Many of these people are not addicted. In my limited experience with people in the grow-op business, many of these people don't even use the product themselves. They're just in the business of trafficking. So in answer to your question of whether they are going to get help with their addictions, they're not necessarily addicted just because they're drug dealers. Some of them are. Again, I did more than allude to it. I mentioned, both in my opening remarks and in response to one of the questions I was given, how supportive I was, for instance, of drug courts in this country to provide an alternative to the people who are addicts and building on the programs in the federal institutions that help these individuals. You heard Mr. Norlock just talking about the excellent programs that exist.

Yes, my colleague, the Minister of Public Safety, who is responsible for the federal penitentiary system, is very aware and very supportive of getting people the help they need. But we can't characterize these people as addicts just because this bill is targeted at traffickers, because in many, many cases, according to law enforcement agencies, in fact they're not. They're just in the business of destroying other people's lives with drugs. So we have to be very careful.

Again, as I indicated in my opening remarks, Mr. Chairman, this represents a very balanced approach. This is very reasonable, and I hope this has the unanimous support of the members of this committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

We have time for one more question.

Mr. Moore, you have three minutes.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you, Minister, for your work on this bill, as well as all the others that you're sending our way as a committee.

You did touch on this in a couple of your answers, but I do want you to speak a bit about something that certainly the police and attorneys general have made this committee aware of, and that's disrupting criminal enterprises. That's the notion that we just passed through the committee the other day, Bill C-14, dealing with gang violence, the notion that at some point, through the good work that our police do and our prosecutors, we have to have sentences that disrupt the enterprise or the activity, whether it be gang violence or trafficking in illegal drugs that, as you rightly said, harm our communities.

I appreciate what you've said about rehabilitation and ensuring those who are in need have the resources they need to get help, and I think that is a goal we all share. We want to see every Canadian get the help they need to be productive members of society. When it comes to these criminal organizations and what's necessary to disrupt their activities, could you comment a bit on how this bill fits with that goal?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I'd be pleased to do that, Mr. Moore, but I would be remiss if I didn't single out both you and Monsieur Petit for all your work as parliamentary secretaries to the justice minister. I think I've indicated to you before that I was very proud and pleased to be a parliamentary secretary to three justice ministers starting in the late eighties, and what a great experience that was for me, and a great training ground, quite frankly, to take on the role of Minister of Justice—though we're not contemplating any changes in the near future, just to be clear. But thank you again, you and Monsieur Petit, for all that you are doing and, quite frankly, for your support of this.

One of the common themes that we have had throughout our legislation is exactly that: we want to disrupt the criminal activity. I indicated to you that we made it tougher for people to get bail. We reversed the onus on people who have a record dealing with firearms and firearms offences and put the onus on them to get out on bail. I can tell you what police officers say to me: they say this sends out the right message. If the person who took a shot at you is back out on the street in a few hours, this actually sends out the wrong message to a neighbourhood. It sends out the wrong message to witnesses and to the victim. So what we have been attempting right across the board on these things is if you get some of these people off the street—that's what they tell me, that's what they're telling me in British Columbia—it disrupts the criminal activity they're a part of. That's exactly what we want to do. We want to break down these gangs. We want to disrupt their activities.

This bill is a perfect component of what we have been trying to do: worry about victims and law-abiding Canadians, and at the same time disrupt criminal activity and try to send a message to these individuals that this is not the way they should be living their lives. They should straighten themselves around. We are prepared to help them, but they have to get that message, that what they're doing is wrong and will not be tolerated.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you, Minister.

Before you go, I have a short question.

We've dealt with rehabilitation. We've dealt with deterrents. We've dealt with denunciation. What we haven't discussed specifically yet is protection of the public.

I think most of us would agree that the large number of drug dealers arrested are arrested time and time again. They're in; they're out. They're repeat offenders, and for every crime they're actually convicted of, many of them have 10, 30, 50, 100 or more crimes they've committed for which they've never been caught. It seems to me that when we are talking about mandatory minimum sentences, we're presumably talking about longer terms in prison for people who are a danger to the public and are repeatedly offending.

Could you comment a little bit on the protection aspect of implementing mandatory minimum sentences, just briefly?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I don't think there's any question about it. I mean, you get an individual who is in the business of violence, in the business of destroying other people's lives. I mean, you're doing society a favour by interrupting that person's criminal activity and doing something with that individual. It's like the case I talked about when they asked if the guy is going to not commit the crime because he's going to get 25 years in prison instead of 10. I said, “Well, I know that Canadians will be a lot safer for that last 15 years.” For sure, we can all agree with that one. And this, ultimately, is what we want.

Ours has always been a balanced approach, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for your interest and support in this area. I can tell you that we are continuing. We're continuing to give Canadians what they want and what they deserve in the criminal justice area.

Again, with respect to victims, I'm always pleased--always. I wish I got more questions, quite frankly, about the victims. I don't get that many, but that's life. Nonetheless, they are still of great concern to me, as I know they are to you and to many of our colleagues.

So again, thank you very much for the opportunity.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I think the departmental officials will be able to stay. Will they not?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

No.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

No. Okay, fair enough.