Justice Committee on Feb. 14th, 2011

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

So your view is perhaps that the people who drafted this legislation may also be uninformed. I understand.

The reason I ask is I regularly survey my constituents on Bill C-54 and other bills that our government has put forth on criminal justice issues, and I have to tell you that I get overwhelming support for this legislation and for other legislation on our criminal justice agenda from my constituents. I checked the stats, and Statistics Canada tells me that 65% of my constituents are regular church attenders and attend many of the churches that your organization represents. So I'm just curious as to why there is such a disparity between what they tell me.... And of course I have to represent all of them and I have to be concerned about their perception of the efficacy of our criminal justice system and the integrity of our criminal justice system, and they tell me that this is something we should do.

[Lorraine Berzins]

My experience is that people do not understand how the criminal justice system works. People do have a moral reaction that is very appropriate to what they would like to see happen to take the problem seriously. But that's quite different from understanding how the criminal justice system works.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I understand that your view is that the general population is uninformed.

[Lorraine Berzins]

About how the criminal justice system works.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Right. And the members of the church organizations are uninformed about this criminal justice issue, Bill C-54, and what our criminal justice system response should be to people who sexually abuse children.

Did you review the transcript of this committee's hearings on January 31 of this year?

[Lorraine Berzins]

No, I didn't.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Okay. It's too bad you didn't, because if you had, you would have seen some very compelling testimony from people who themselves were child sex victims, and organizations that represent child sex victims, and organizations that run, for example, the child pornography alert system in Canada. They told us very clearly that these provisions in Bill C-54 are important and necessary. I would recommend that testimony to you, and I hope you'll take the opportunity later today to go back and look at it; it's all on the Internet.

Specifically, they told us that the mandatory minimum penalties in these provisions are important and necessary. They're necessary to them for a lot of reasons, and one of the reasons is the victims say it's very difficult for a victim to come forward and tell these stories and go through this process, and they need to feel a sense of self-worth. When they see the person who sexually abused them go back home without any time in jail whatsoever, that tells them that society is saying to them that their life is not worth very much.

Are they uninformed, Ms. Berzins, those child sex victims? Would you call them part of the uninformed group of Canadian citizens who don't understand as you do why this legislation isn't necessary?

[Lorraine Berzins]

They have their experience, and for many of them that may very well be true. But there are others, and many others, who also have their experience and for whom it's not true. I think we do have the measures for those who really want and need this. It is possible to do it without having mandatory minimum sentences.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Did you know there are mandatory minimum penalties for many of these provisions currently?

[Lorraine Berzins]

Yes, I do, and two wrongs don't make a right.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Okay, so you're saying you disagree with the provisions that are currently there.

The Liberal justice critic told us earlier that some of those mandatory minimum penalties were imposed when her former party was in government a few years ago. Did your group attend before the justice committee at that time and oppose those mandatory minimum penalties?

[Lorraine Berzins]

Yes, we did.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Okay. And were they--

[Lorraine Berzins]

We don't win them all.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Would you say the members of the committee at that time were uninformed, that the members of Parliament who passed that legislation--

[Lorraine Berzins]

We're talking about information about how the criminal justice system works and how crown attorneys and defence counsel make decisions about these things that are quite different from some of the provisions here, and it's going to produce different results from what you were hoping for.

We're also extremely in favour of processes that hold people to account--never a process that just doesn't take seriously what happened.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Can I ask you about two specific new offences that are included in Bill C-54? One of the new provisions will prohibit anyone from providing sexually explicit material to a child for the purpose of facilitating the commission of a sexual offence against that child. That's a new criminal offence that's being created by Bill C-54. Do you think this offence should be created and should become part of the Criminal Code of Canada?

[Lorraine Berzins]

I have no big objection to that.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Okay, so you agree with that statement. You agree with that part of Bill C-54?

[Lorraine Berzins]

It probably is not necessary, but I don't think it does any harm.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Those people who testified on January 31, the people who represent child sex victims and who monitor the usage of child pornography on the Internet, said that was very important. In fact, most countries in the world already have that sort of legislation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you. Your time's up.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

All right, thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

We've come to the end of our time. I want to thank all our witnesses for appearing here. Your testimony forms part of the record, and we'll take that into consideration as we continue a review of Bill C-54. Thank you to all of you.

The meeting is adjourned.