Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Ladies and gentlemen, I think the issue here is whether or not you are satisfied or dissatisfied with what the increase in illegal drug trade has done to the youth of our country, has done to our country. To put it in another way, are you going to stick your head in the sand and do nothing but more of the same or—to mangle Shakespeare a bit—are you going to “take arms against a sea of troubles” and at least try to find a solution?
This is a sad debate to have, but it is where we are at, and I have to tell you, one of the biggest surprises to me, sitting as a member of this justice committee over the last three years, has been to sit and listen to respected academics come to committee and actually say that they recommend that all illegal drugs—all illegal drugs—from marijuana to cocaine to heroin to Rohypnol, no longer be criminalized. This is one academic opinion, and I won't bore you with the reasons, but they had their reasons. I suggest to you that this is simply not in touch with what's going on in our country, and I know one of the other members provided this quote earlier, but I would like you to contrast that academic opinion with the opinion of someone who's on the street.
Mr. Chuck Doucette, the vice-president of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, said the following, and I'm going to read it because I think it contrasts with the academic opinion I just mentioned to you:
Things have changed from when I first started in drug enforcement in 1977. Over those 30 years, I saw the sentences for drug offences getting progressively weaker. At the same time, I saw the problems related to drug abuse getting progressively larger. I also saw the drug scene in downtown Vancouver increase as the enforcement efforts in that area decreased. From my perspective, I do not see how anyone could possibly examine the past 30 years and make a case that weaker sentences lead to less damaging social consequences. My experience is that the more lenient we got, the more problems we got.
Now I ask you, does that not strike a chord? Does that not ring truer to what we really all know about what has happened with respect to sentencing in drug offences in Canada? Is that not a more realistic sentiment than the academic notion I mentioned to you earlier of some academics who simply want to legalize all drugs?
I want to comment a little bit on the issue of deterrence, because once again I have sat here and I have listened to academics come to this committee and virtually say—and I don't want to paraphrase too much—that there is no point in deterrent sentencing. This rather surprises me, because I'm only three or four or five years away from the practice of law and I can tell you that to say deterrent sentencing is practically of no value is simply to be out of touch with what is going on across our country.
Every day, in every major city in Canada, in every courtroom, there are judges who pass deterrent sentences. Are they all wrong? Are all the police who ask for deterrent sentences wrong? Are all of the parents who actually often plead with the court to impose deterrent sentences on their children wrong? Are all the victims who have come to this committee asking for deterrent sentences wrong?
I have to tell you, I swung both ways. I was a defence counsel and a prosecutor for many years. Most of my defence counsel friends recognize that deterrent sentences are often required in order to stop the revolving door of people going in and out of jail. I'm not a big fan of jail, especially when it comes to younger people. I'm happy that this act, along with the previous Youth Criminal Justice Act, indicates to judges that jail should be a last resort for young people.
We had a witness here a couple of years ago, a young man in his twenties, who said he got a lot of little sentences and they didn't faze him at all. Finally, he got a three-year sentence and was able to take some treatment programs to bring some stability into his life, and he came out a much better man. He was grateful. Not every jail sentence has all of the terrible consequences catalogued by the NDP members.
I want to relate something about a judge in my community, Justice Hardman, a youth court judge. Every time someone came before her in an assault offence, she made a point of telling him that if the assault occurred at a school where children are required to be, where they're captive, where they are defenceless, she would impose a prison sentence. Now why do you suppose she said that? She said it so that she would be deterring other young people from committing assaults at school. It seemed to work. She thought it worked, and so did I. You can call that anecdotal evidence or you can just call it common sense based on years and years of first-hand legal practice. Maybe it doesn't measure up to a textbook, but it works.
I want to say one last thing about the issue of deterrence. This bill that we're looking at is targeted largely at organized drug crimes. In the last year or two, we did a study in the justice committee. Some of the members with us today weren't here for it. Do you know what we discovered? We found that, ironically enough, organized crime is run by organized criminals and—what do you know?—organized criminals determine their actions based on their pocketbooks. The more expensive it is, the higher price they pay, the less likely they are to do it, and the more effective the deterrent is.
I wish to comment briefly on the issue of judicial discretion. The NDP always supports judicial discretion when it permits a judge to be more lenient. In the last few days, however, we have been trying to pass a law that allows judges the discretion to exercise a little deterrence, to permit custody or more consequential remedies. Now where are the NDP principles in favour of judicial discretion? They disappear like the wind. There's a place for judicial discretion, and there's a place for removing it. But if you're going to hang your hat on the notion that it's good to give judges discretion, then there's absolutely no reason to deny judges discretion to impose more consequential remedies as well as more lenient ones. I notice, by the way, that this same inconsistency appeared every time the Canadian Bar Association representatives came to our committee.
A brief word is necessary about the rather misleading comparisons that the NDP members often make between what this government is doing and what occurs in the United States. Much was made in the media recently about Texas adopting a more lenient approach to sentencing, and warning Canada not to go down that path of being less lenient. Well, my friends, it's necessary for you to know that even the more lenient sentencing rules that Texas is adopting still result in an incarceration rate five times greater than anything you see in Canada.
Nothing this government has proposed comes anywhere close to the ten-year mandatory minimum penalties that are imposed in some U.S. jurisdictions. Nothing this government has proposed comes anywhere close to the infamous three strikes and you're in jail for minor, puny little offences. That's not even rumoured anywhere by this government; it's not going to happen. The comparison is completely untoward. Instead, we have carefully targeted penalties for the worst offences or the worst offenders. In fact, if you actually read this bill, you'll be surprised by some of the things you see in it.
For example, if someone is convicted of trafficking in cannabis without any aggravating features—they haven't produced it, they haven't gotten children under 18 involved, they're not doing it near a school, they're simply trafficking in cannabis.... Do you know how much they can traffic without any mandatory minimum penalty? You will find this, by the way, in what will become under this act subsection 5(3) paragraph (a.1). It's three kilograms. Regrettably, I'm still a pounds and ounces type of guy, but it seems to me that three kilograms of anything is a good whack. Under this bill you can traffic three kilograms of cannabis. So if all you're doing is trafficking it—you're not producing it or invoking any of the other aggravating circumstances—there is no mandatory minimum penalty. That's how non-draconian this bill is.
I want to mention one or two other clauses that are of interest in this respect, Mr. Chair. I'm simply relating them to the comments about clause 39, but I want to jump ahead a little bit. You'll find that this bill will insert a new section 9 into the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Do you know what it requires? It says:
9.(1) Within five years after this section comes into force, a comprehensive review of the provisions and operation of this Act, including a cost-benefit analysis of mandatory minimum sentences, shall be undertaken by any committee of the Senate, of the House of Commons or of both Houses of Parliament that may be designated or established for that purpose.
In other words, ladies and gentlemen, this Bill C-10 has built into it a five-year review that will tell us what the cost benefits are of mandatory minimum penalties. So why don't we give a chance to those carefully targeted instances that I'm going to refer to in a moment?
One other provision that is of some interest, and showing you how moderate and balanced Bill C-10 is, is what will become subsections 10(4) and 10(5) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. What this section says, and it's not mentioned by my opposition friends—or perhaps they mentioned it when I wasn't listening earlier—is that the mandatory minimum penalties under this part that we're discussing are not going to be required if the offender attends a treatment program and successfully completes it.
So when you hear the NDP talk about these drug addicts who are going to be thrown in jail because they're lower-level participants in the drug trade and happen to get caught up using a weapon or assaulting somebody, the reality is that those folks, if they successfully complete a drug treatment program, will not be subject to any mandatory minimum penalty under the act. That is how moderate and balanced this bill is.
I truly recommend to anyone that they read the bill, because what they will find is that it is targeted.
So I ask my NDP colleagues, if you found that someone was trafficking drugs for the benefit of an organized crime group, would you think that maybe they ought to go to jail to put a dent in organized crime? That's one of the aggravating features that requires a mandatory minimum penalty in this act.
Is it so terrible for the government to want to try to put a dent in organized crime? I don't think so, and I don't think most Canadians believe that either. I think the NDP and others who argue that we should not try to put a dent in organized crime in this fashion are out of touch with what's required in Canadian society today.
If it's not enough that a drug trafficker is working for organized crime, would it be enough for you that the drug trafficker used violence in the commission of his offence? Would that be enough to suggest that maybe a jail sentence was warranted?
I see Mr. Harris nodding his head yes. That happens to be the second aggravating feature in this act that would invoke a one-year mandatory minimum penalty.
But if it's not enough that violence was used, would it be enough that somebody used a weapon in the commission of their drug trafficking? We have a great concern about gun offences in this country. Surely if someone uses a weapon in the course of trafficking drugs, that ought to justify a mandatory minimum penalty. Indeed, that is another one of the aggravating features that will allow a mandatory minimum penalty of one year.
I don't often quote from The Toronto Star, but I want to mention an article on a rather in-depth study of young offenders court. It appeared on October 29, 30, and 31 of this year in The Toronto Star. With respect to weapons, at least—I'm going to come back to this point—and the use of young people in drug offences by organized criminals, but in particular with respect to drugs, it stated: “So many are arrested, charged and convicted of carrying, pointing and shooting guns, prosecutors call the problem a scourge.” They're right. Young people should not be using weapons, using guns, pointing them, and threatening with them. A justice of the peace in Toronto is quoted as saying about Toronto that our city is plagued with guns that exist in the hands of young people. So maybe a mandatory minimum penalty to deter the use of guns and weapons isn't such a bad idea.
If that's not enough to justify a jail sentence, would it be enough that a drug trafficker is hanging out at your daughter's or your son's school, at the skating rink where young people are accustomed to going, or any other place where young people are accustomed to going, in order to lure young people into the use of drugs? Would that be enough, I ask my friends across the way, to justify a deterrent mandatory minimum penalty? That's another aggravating feature under this act.
I'm going to mention one more. If it's not enough that drug traffickers are out where children congregate, luring them to purchase drugs, would it be enough for you if a drug trafficker actually enlisted someone under the age of 18 to sell drugs for him or her? Would that be enough to justify giving that trafficker a jail sentence?
Before you answer that I want to quote again from that Toronto Star article. I'm not going to mention names, but there were examples of three young people referred to in that article. One of them was convicted of marijuana possession after a car he was riding in was pulled over and found to contain hundreds of dollars in cash, half an ounce of crack, and a gun holster jury-rigged from a coat hanger. This was a young person engaged in the drug trade.
Another one was convicted of attempted break and enter and marijuana possession in April, then re-arrested in June after police allegedly found two starter pistols in his bedroom and more than a gram of narcotics up his rectum. A third one is referred to as one of the many crack dealers—a sixteen-year-old—to come through the youth court in 2011.
There is no question that organized criminals are recruiting young people to traffic drugs because we have to treat young people differently when we sentence them. They don't get penalized as heavily as adults. So if we know that an organized criminal has recruited a young person, surely that's enough to justify putting that drug trafficker in jail. That, my friends, is another aggravating feature that is one of the instances to invoke a mandatory minimum penalty under this act.
I could go on, but I think you get the drift, ladies and gentlemen, that this act is specifically targeting aggravating features and aggravating offenders in an effort to do something about a real scourge in our community. It is simply recognition that our government is in touch with police, parents, courts, and prosecutors in attempting to respond to a problem in a way that, unfortunately, for ideological or other reasons, you will never see from the NDP.
I will perhaps have an opportunity to speak later about the other provisions of this bill, but I appreciate this opportunity to express myself, Mr. Chair. Thank you.