Justice Committee on Nov. 17th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

I'll just interrupt you for one second. They are bringing the food in. Once it's out, people may wish to wander over and pick up something to eat. We'll suspend just at question period.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

So I'm going to eat and talk at the same time, and at 1:50 we'll go to question period?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

It depends on how long you talk.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Chairman, we're here debating what is effectively a closure motion, or time allocation, which has become a bit of a theme since we've been back, since May 2.

May 2 seems to be a date at which the Conservatives decided they have the right to bully their way through Parliament. Since the election, time allocation has been invoked nine times by this government. We only sat in June for two or three weeks. It was used twice then, and time allocation has been used seven times since we came back in September. Seven different bills have been affected by time allocation, six of them since September.

We came back on September 20, we sat for two weeks, then we had a week's break, came back for another three weeks, and then we had another constituency week, and now we're back for four weeks with lots of opportunity to deal with this in a reasonable manner as reasonable, professional parliamentarians on a committee that is supposed to be dealing with justice and human rights, some of the most important values of our society—so valuable and important that they're covered in the Canadian Charter of Rights Freedoms. Much of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is about ensuring the rule of law and the protection of citizens and human rights through the constitutional method.

Our committee is called the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. We're now having imposed on us—or there is sought to be imposed on us—time allocation on a bill in order to prevent proper discussion and consideration, not of one but of nine bills that have been put into a pot and called the Safer Streets and Communities Act. We can and do have legitimate disagreements about this legislation. We feel that these legitimate differences should be aired and discussed. Reasonable amendments are being put forward, and whether they're accepted or not, they're presented in a bona fide attempt to make the bill more acceptable to the Canadian public and more acceptable to Parliament.

It doesn't make any sense to think that the only people who have any wisdom about how the criminal law ought to be amended happen to come from one side of the House. Yet we have the Conservatives saying they don't want debate on this to take place on more than one day.

On seven of the last 24 sitting days—seven times—time allocation has been brought in the House of Commons. It's a bit of a serial problem for this government to think that now that we're in a majority Parliament.... I guess they're giving some substance to the cynicism we see out there. We see it from the media from time to time, and we see it in the general public: “Well, you guys can't do anything in opposition, because you're outnumbered.”

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, I want to state for the record—and I have a proposal that might be acceptable to Mr. Harris and the NDP and the Liberals.... But Mr. Chair, I would like to point out that we have had not just one committee meeting today, because the first one we had ended at 10:45, nor two committee meetings today, but as of now, we have had almost three committee meetings, or the total time of three committee meetings.

Mr. Harris said earlier that we could have it done within one or two meetings. Well, we've already had two and a half meetings, in essence, in which they have filibustered a motion that was just trying to exercise some opportunity to have this dealt with today, because Canadians and victims have asked for it.

I would propose this motion, Mr. Chair. It's a friendly amendment to the motion: that we double the time—and the Conservative government would be prepared to double the time—to 10 minutes. I personally will forego any other discussion during the time, but if Mr. Harris were prepared to accept this, the motion would not read five minutes, Mr. Chair, but would read 10 minutes.

If that were to be accepted, the government would be in favour of it.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

On the same point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

The clerk tells me we have a little problem.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

The problem can be amended. I understand what the problem is, and I'll remove it as a friendly amendment—because that would solve the problem—and make it an amendment.

The reality is that we are here today, and we can vote on the issue, and we can move a new motion if necessary. If Mr. Harris was prepared to accept the fact that the government is prepared to double the amount of time we've set aside for time limitation, that would give his party the opportunity on every single clause to deal with it on that basis. Certainly, Mr. Chair, I would suggest that since we've already been here for two and a half meetings, five hours, it would be reasonable in the circumstances, because we only have 10 hours left, which of course, Mr. Chair, is another six meetings.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

To the same point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

We need to clear the floor first. You spoke on a point of order. We can't accept a motion in your point of order. We'll rule your—

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

He raised a point of order. During his point of order he talked about something else. Someone has asked to comment on the point of order, and I think in order for that to happen—I'm speaking. I still have the floor, not him. He's raised a point of order, and I think we need to deal with the point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

That's what I was getting to, Mr. Harris, if you'd just....

I was at that point, where Mr. Harris had the floor. Your point of order was noted, but Mr. Harris can continue on. I don't know where Mr. Lamoureux was with his point of order.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Actually, it wasn't a new point of order; it was more to reflect on the point of order itself, Mr. Chairperson.

I can understand the sensitivity the government may have in terms of the motion they have provided, but I think the government needs to recognize that whenever you take an action—and this is a motion—in which there is going to be a great reaction to it....

This is a very lengthy bill. It's a very controversial bill. Not all political parties agree on this particular bill. When you want to put in limitations—and that's what this motion is doing in the severest of ways, it's putting in limitations, and—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

Mr. Lamoureux, you're debating the whole issue. You're on the list to debate the motion, so I think we should do that.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Let's wait, and we'll just say he does not have a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

Fair enough.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

Let's move on.

Mr. Harris.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

To the point of order, it's not a point of order; it's an opportunity to make an interjection merely to suggest that the time allocation motion continue with a slight modification. As to his suggestion, I guess the point of order really was that we've had two and a half meetings this morning.

We haven't had two and a half meetings this morning. We came here to do a clause-by-clause study of this bill, and the clause-by-clause study of the bill was shut down by the government. They said “No, we're not prepared to do a clause-by-clause study of this bill today unless these limitations are placed on it. This committee is not going to consider clause-by-clause unless it's under our terms.” This committee can't consider clause-by-clause of this bill. It can't study it properly. It can only study it in one day, under conditions of time allocation per clause, whether it's five minutes or ten minutes. That's what the motion was.

That's why we've had no clause-by-clause study today. We haven't had two meetings. We had one meeting that started at 8:45, and at a quarter to ten there was a motion to continue, to not adjourn. That can go on forever, I suppose. There's no magic about 11:59. If this committee is not going to adjourn at one o'clock or two o'clock or twelve o'clock, 11:59 means nothing. There's nothing that says this committee meeting is even over at 11:59 tonight, unless we agree with this motion, or this motion passes somehow or other.

We're having one meeting, and the meeting so far is based on the fact that this government doesn't want to have clause-by-clause study of this legislation unless they're in charge, unless it's all done today.

I know there is going to be some spin put on this by the government. I fully expect that: “The opposition won't let this clause-by-clause study proceed.” Wrong. The opposition wants to have clause-by-clause study. We came here this morning to engage in clause-by-clause study. Instead we were faced with a motion, right off the top, that says clause-by-clause study must finish by 11:30 tonight, and that's the only condition under which it's going to start.

So we can't start clause-by-clause. In fact, when we start talking about clauses the chair rules us out of order. Right, Mr. Chair?

He's nodding his head, and that's what he's been doing. When I start talking about a clause and a problem with a particular clause and why it can't be discussed in a time-allocated period of five minutes...or the suggestion now is they might want to change that to ten minutes. That doesn't stop the fact that we came here this morning to do a clause-by-clause study of a bill, which the government is not prepared to engage in unless we accept their bullying tactics.

That's what we got here today. There will only be clause-by-clause consideration of this legislation if it only happens today and never again and if this bill goes back to the House tomorrow. There are nine separate pieces of legislation, some of which have never received the kind of attention that this committee should be giving them. That's what's happening here today. We haven't had two and a half meetings. We've been here since 8:45, I'll grant you that. The reason we are still here now is because the government is refusing to proceed with clause-by-clause study of the bill. They're refusing to do it.

We came here at 8:45. I was ready to listen to the next amendment. Mr. Cotler had a proposal on clause 8. He didn't get to make it. Why? Because before anybody got a chance, one of the government members, Mr. Goguen, put forth a motion saying we must have clause-by-clause study completed by 11:59 tonight—if it's not, it's going to be finished anyway—and imposing on all of our lives, and not only that, imposing on the people of Canada a limitation of consideration in hearing what people have to say about this legislation, in hearing what the officials who are here from the Department of Justice have to say about this in terms of the questions we have to ask, in terms of the motions we're proposing, in terms of amendments in dealing with what the Quebec government has quite rightly put forward as significant concerns.

There are amendments in my name to give effect to the suggestions of the Government of Quebec. They wrote us a letter after the committee meeting on Tuesday. This is not a rush job. What are we dealing with here? We're dealing with serious national issues that have significant consequences for the future of criminal law in Canada and for the costs in the hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of dollars that are going to be imposed on the provinces and territories. These consequences have to be discussed.

We've heard from people. Yes, we've heard witnesses and there's a public debate. But there's a public debate that this government wants to shut down. They're saying we should move on. They've got the control. They've got the power. They want to move on to something else because this debate is not doing them any good. They don't like being criticized by other governments for not doing a proper job of consultation. They know the Attorney General from Quebec—

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Chair, a point of order.

Relevance? It has nothing to do with the motion, sir.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

It has everything to do with the motion. We had the Minister of Justice of Quebec come here last week and say he hadn't been consulted, or hadn't been listened to or responded to by this government when he wanted to give the Government of Canada the benefit of the experience and success of their government in the Province of Quebec under the youth justice provisions, and how they felt they had succeeded in reducing youth crime and reducing recidivism and making sure that young people who may have come.... He was passionate in his understanding of the factors that lead to people coming before the courts, the young people who don't have the same advantages as people like us.

More and longer prison sentences mean more school dropouts, more unemployment, more divorces, more family dislocations, more addictions--all those negative consequences that we see coming from people who aren't in a position to be rehabilitated and end up before the courts. All of these things were presented to us by Mr. Fournier. He said he wanted to talk to the Government of Canada, but he didn't get a response. He came here to the committee.

We have a letter from him with some suggested amendments, and by the way, he's indicated in his letter that he also has more suggestions that weren't able to be presented on Tuesday. His letter says they have other proposed amendments with respect to adult sentencing. We're not going to hear them if this motion passes and we limit the debate to today; the Quebec Attorney General is being told by this government that they're not going to wait to hear from him. They're not going to wait to hear from the people of Quebec or hear from their government. They're going to pass all this today and report it back to the House tomorrow. That's what this motion says.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

On a point of order, I thought we had heard from all our witnesses so far and we're in clause-by-clause now. We've heard from all the witnesses who were going to testify on this bill, unless there are specifics for the department. I don't know what he is talking about. We've already heard from the Government of Quebec. We've heard from other provinces that want this bill to go ahead as is.

I would ask you to be relevant in relation to the motion as well.

Mr. Chair, I know you're offering a lot of latitude here, but the truth is it does not have anything to do with the motion in front of us today.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

If you want to make a ruling, Mr. Chair, you can.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

Fair enough. We did hear from a number of witnesses and we're not going back to hearing witnesses.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

No, we're not going back to hear witnesses, but we did have—