Thank you very much for coming today.
We're here discussing an issue about your having to relive what you went through as families, and here we are making you go through it again, and we're talking about having you go through it another time. So I thank you for that. I give you my condolences.
Having been a policeman for 30 years, I can tell you that we never get over how victims feel, because we're intimate with the investigation. Every member of Parliament, I believe—all 308 members of Parliament—would express the same feeling of condolence and remorse to you about your having to go through that, because we share that feeling.
We also have different philosophies on how to deal with the people who commit these crimes. As a member of the public safety and national security committee, and now the justice and human rights committee, I'm going to ask that when you have the time, you go through some of the things we have been doing over the last couple of years and what we're doing now. I say this because in the public safety committee, we're looking at Canada's prison system. We're going to be travelling and looking at that, some of which has to do with this.
What I'm going to say is to take a look at some of the witnesses who are coming here and what they say. Some of the members here will give you statistics. The Department of Justice gave us statistics—and you heard them—that in Canada we keep murderers in jail longer than other places do. I would say that it's probably not as long as some places. The countries studied, of course, are western countries like New Zealand and Australia, the countries that share our same type of society and judicial system. But some of the other countries in the world don't keep their murderers very long, because they kill them.
As a police officer up until a few years ago—around the time I had this job and realized I'd have some tremendous moral obligations I'd have to research and would have to look at my own value systems—I used to believe in the death penalty. But without using certain words and going down another path, I would say that I've changed since then. I used to believe in the death penalty and that anybody who did believe in that had better be ready to pull that lever or push that injector. But now I believe in the sanctity of life from its very beginning to its very end, and therefore I now do not believe in the death penalty.
But what I want to say to you, and I want to do this very tenderly, before I go through some of the other things, is to look at the kinds of witnesses we see before our committee. They outnumber you greatly, and every single one of them believes that we're already too tough on the people we're sending to jail, whether they be from the John Howard Society or the pantheon of criminologists and sociologists, the very experts who some people here believe should be on those panels of 12 people deciding the fate of those prisoners. I guarantee that if they're on those panels, the applicants, the very people you feared, will get out sooner. I would much rather be judged—and that's what our system of justice is built on—by my own peers, the mothers, the grandmothers, the grandfathers, the uncles, the aunts, the mothers and fathers who actually live in the society I live in, not by someone who's cloistered. I'm not demeaning the sociologists or criminologists, please understand. I believe they have a place in our system. But when it comes to judging your fellow man, no one is better suited for that task than your equals—not those who are superior in any way, shape, or form.
So when we talk about qualified people, I believe the average person out there, the people like you, are better qualified to decide that, because they live in the same world you live in. They'll go through the same things you do, day in and day out.
Madam McCuaig, you asked why people like that ask for early parole. It's because we give them the opportunity to. That's number one.
You say you're still afraid to walk the streets and that you're going through psychiatric care. As a police officer, I will use the example of someone I know of who abused three of his four daughters for years, and I'm ashamed to say he was a police officer. But pedophilia and those types of things cross every line, from the very highest in society to the very lowest. The judicial system gave him six years of jail and six years of probation, and the judge said he was being tough on him. I know what their families are going through. Mothers are afraid. His daughters are afraid to allow their husbands to take their children to bed because they think the same thing is happening to them. So they're going through that psychologically.
He was given six years. Somebody said that in the United States they'd give him 60 years. Well, I'm not saying 60 years is right, but I know six years is not right.
You also said these are cruel things to have to live through, and I apologize for that, but we need to hear from you. We need to hear from more people like you to bring our feet to the ground instead of always looking at the numbers and everything else. You are just a statistic if we only use statistics to figure out what to do with our judicial system. That's all you are, and you're the minority--and the people who perpetrated the crime against your nephew, and against your daughter, well, they're the small statistic, and if they're still small, well, we shouldn't count them as much as we should count the majority.
You know, we have white-collar crime. Mr. Teague, you asked who committed the worst crime. That's what we're struggling with in this Parliament, because we are looking at that and deciding as a government what to do. But I'd say, who committed the biggest crime is the person who's carrying the gun or the knife. Our society says that when you pick up a gun or a knife to make somebody do something they don't otherwise want to do or should do, that's more serious than just cheating them. The cheat should go to jail, but the guy with the gun or knife goes to jail for a longer time, because the consequences of not handing over the money might be your life, and that's a terrible thing to do.
I think, Mrs. McCuaig, you said, in terms of conviction for more murders, it was a “freebie”. Today our justice minister announced some more legislation. He doesn't call it a freebie, but he refers to it as a “volume discount”. These words are unfortunate when we deal with people who have gone through some of the things you've gone through, but you know, it's all about grabbing that headline in the press.
Mrs. McCuaig, I did follow the trial evolving, as closely as I could, and I would just like you to comment on some of the things I've said.
