Justice Committee on Oct. 19th, 2009

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

Don't put words in my mouth, please.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Ms. Jennings, and the rest of the committee, I want to assure you that I'm not going to cut off members of this committee unfairly. But we have to manage time. Each of you is allotted a certain amount of time to ask questions and receive answers. It's my job to make sure that we get through the meeting and allow enough individual members to ask questions.

Ms. Jennings, I'm not cutting you off. What I'm doing is making sure that the minister has an opportunity to respond to some of the concerns you raised.

Monsieur Lemay.

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

Mr. Chair, may I take one moment—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

No. That's the end of it.

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

I have a point of order, then.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

All right.

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

Under the rules and procedures, I have five minutes to ask questions and have them answered. I was in the process of speaking. You had not told me my time was up. The minister interrupted me, began speaking over me. Rather than call the minister to order to allow me to continue, you allowed him to continue speaking and then claimed, as a second justification, that my time was up.

I think that is clearly a violation of the rules. Had my time been up when I had been speaking, you could have told me so and allowed the minister to answer. You did not do that. You allowed the minister to interrupt me as I was speaking. I was polite with the minister—I asked my questions, made my statements, and I allowed the minister to speak. I did not interrupt him once. When the minister had finished speaking, I began to respond and tried to ask a question. He interrupted me, and you allowed him to do so.

I am very disappointed in this. Just as it is impolite for members to interrupt a witness who is speaking, so it is impolite for a witness, even if it's a minister, to interrupt a member of this committee who is within her time and who is asking a question or making a statement.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you, Ms. Jennings. You've made your point.

I will reassert that I will manage the time of this committee. You can challenge me at any time, but I'm going to do my best to make sure everyone at this committee has an opportunity to ask the minister questions and get answers from him. I've always acted in this manner and I'm going to continue to do so.

Monsieur Lemay.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will try not to get into an argument with you.

Mr. Minister, I am not sure whether you or anyone in this room has ever watched someone convicted of first-degree murder apply for parole. I have seen it, and I can tell you that it is an extremely painstaking process.

I have done all the analysis, I have met with Mr. Giokas, and I have studied everything carefully. Instead of proposing everything in Bill C-36, why not propose just one other thing? We all agree that murder is the worst crime that someone can commit. When someone is convicted of first- or second-degree murder, why not give that person one chance only? After reading your bill, I did the math. A person is not eligible before they have served a minimum of 15 years. They have to go before a judge, and if they are not successful, they will probably have to go to 25 years.

As a lawyer, I would much prefer preparing my client just once. There is no need to do it two or three times because the rules are very clear and the judges, very strict. That might satisfy a lot of people at this table. Why not say that you have one chance only, that you cannot miss that chance and that you have to prepare properly?

Your bill promises something that is not necessary, since the individual who is unsuccessful once will have to wait five years to reapply.

After analyzing everything, I truly believe that we should say you have one chance only and you need to prepare properly, and we need to explain how it will work. That is the only solution as I see it.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

That would be very interesting, Monsieur Lemay. I suppose the person gets their chance at 15 years. If they miss out then, I take it they'll be there until they die there at whatever age. So you'd be getting rid of the 25 years as well. It's fair enough, I suppose.

I hear what you're saying, but I think what I'm saying is very reasonable. You go at 15, 20, and 25 years. Again, I'm always concerned to make sure it will pass the constitutional test.

I'm sorry, but are you saying that at 15 years, they do, and then that's it?

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

I do not want to interrupt you, but what I mean is between year 15 and year 25, the person will be able to apply only once. After 25 years, we will have to see, in any case, depending on all of the rules. I am talking about the period between the 15^th year of incarceration and the 25^th. Proper preparation is necessary.

With all due respect to my colleagues and you, I suggest that you consult with lawyers who have worked on these kinds of cases. They are so tedious, so long. I would like you to take a close look at that, if possible. I am certain that the Supreme Court's conditions would be upheld, based on what it said in Swietlinski.

I would like to hear your thoughts on that.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Well, I think that's a very interesting point, Monsieur Lemay. You're coming at it from a direction I actually wasn't expecting from you or your political party, but I continue to be surprised on this.

Again, I think we're only talking about the people who are already in the system. I appreciate there are a number of numbers for them. I'm not sure it's 4,000, or exactly 4,000.

Again, one of the good things we have done is there is now some certainly as to when that application is going to be made. And with your proposal, if they have one time to do this, you would have the victims who are waiting, wondering whether it's 16 or 17 years or whether the individual is going to make the application after 18 years for his or her one time.

So I think this is a reasonable proposal. In the end, if we're moving to get rid of it, I hope it has your support.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you, Minister. We're out of time.

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

Over already?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

We'll have one more question.

Mr. Woodworth.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank the minister and his officials for joining us today.

I want to comment particularly on the eloquence of the minister in speaking about the difficulties the faint hope clause has caused for victims of crime. I can tell by his eloquence that the concerns and interests of victims are very close to his heart and are a major consideration in this bill.

I'd like to shift a bit just from that to perhaps something that may not be as major but is equally important. It stems from the statistics that were touched on earlier about the April 2008 report showing that out of 125 offenders released under the faint hope clause, 15 had been returned to custody. In fact, one statistic was left out—that is, as of April 2008, one of them was still unlawfully at large.

So at least one in eight of the people who were paroled under the faint hope clause were returned to custody. And far from it being merely a technical concern, I personally regard every parole violation as a gamble lost. Every parole violation represents a failure of the faint hope clause, and every parole violation represents a risk to Canadians across the country.

That's what I want to ask you about, Minister, because under your bill, if it had been enforced, none of these people would have been released under the faint hope clause. That seems to fit in with your policy to keep our streets safer, and it seems to fit in with the government's policy. Is that another piece of this puzzle? Are you proposing this bill as part of the government's policy to make streets safer for Canadians?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I don't think there's any question about it.

I did have an interesting question. Somebody asked me when I introduced the bill whether I was saying that somebody who was going to commit first degree murder might not do so because they would now no longer be eligible to apply for that faint hope after 15 years. I said it would be very difficult for anybody to try to figure out, for starters, what could be in the mind of somebody who would commit premeditated first degree murder. But the point I made was that I know there will be less victimization in this country. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the individual who has committed this heinous crime will spend 25 years before federal parole eligibility. It will be a blessing to the families who have to go through this, or have had to go through this process that has been described here, not to have to do this again, because they continuously get victimized.

But you're right: we want people to have confidence in the criminal justice system. We're trying to get rid of the two-for-one credit; that's just down the hall. That's part of it. I think that will increase people's confidence in the system they have in this country, and this is another part of that. When people have confidence in the system, it works to everybody's advantage.

So yes, we want to better protect Canadians; we want to reduce victimization; we want people to have confidence in the criminal justice system of this country. We want to be fair to those individuals who are being charged under our criminal justice system. They have to have rights—of course they do—and we want them to be treated fairly, but all as one part of it. You can't support one at the expense of another.

As Mr. Norlock and others have been saying, we have to make sure that victims are heard, that they are part of the process, and that their interests are taken into consideration. We can't ignore them, because then everybody loses. But you're right: this is part of our overall package to make Canadian society a safer one in which to live, and part of making it safer is to make sure that people have confidence in the system. That's what we are about.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you.

About the question of people who have already been sentenced and therefore have the option of the faint hope clause, I understand there are some procedural changes in this bill relating to the number of applications or how frequently and when, which will provide some relief to the victims of those criminals. Could you provide us with some detail about those things that are constitutional and procedural?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Yes. You have them before you.

I gave my opinion as to the constitutionality if we were to wipe it out retroactively. But what we have done is to put some parameters and make some procedural changes with respect to those people who are already eligible or that was part of their sentence. I think closing the window on when the application can be made, spreading it out to every five years, and giving them a 90-day window in which to make the application or they're out of luck for five years are all reasonable steps and in the right direction. You'll get away from the system that has been in place where they may apply after 15 or 15 and a half years, or they might wait, whenever they do it, and then every couple of years after that. It's not the way to do it.

This is a huge improvement, and again I hope this gets the support of everyone here. It's a step in the right direction.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you very much.

Minister, you had committed an hour to us. I thank you for that.

I'm in the hands of the committee. Do you wish the staff to remain behind? Are there any further questions you wanted to ask?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

I have one question, which the staff can answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Minister, you're free to leave. We'll simply continue with questions to your staff.

Mr. Bagnell, you have five minutes.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you. It should be very short.

Do you have statistics on the percentage of people who have been released on faint hope clauses who have committed serious crimes after being released?

[Catherine Kane]

The only data I have is what I already quoted to you, that out of 265 faint hope applications, 127 people were ultimately granted parole. According to our statistics, which are from April 2009, 13 were later returned to custody, but I don't know specifically for what reason they were returned to custody. I undertook to Monsieur Lemay and Monsieur Ménard to follow up with any additional information we could get to break down why they were returned to custody.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Even if they were all returned for new offences, this is far below the recidivism rate of regular criminals, so those statistics suggest that these people are much safer than any other criminal who's been released into the general population. It's very interesting.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.