Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.
The current stance of this bill is an admission of failure by successive governments and a failure of our country's social services. It is also an incoherent attempt to camouflage the criminal reality by trying to make it disappear. It is an attempt to shift the responsibility for reducing the numbers of people from black, indigenous and marginalized communities onto the judges by encouraging them to be lax. This is certainly not an appropriate way to reduce the number of members of these communities in the prison population.
The role of the courts is to ensure that the law applies equally to all. That is why the statue representing justice wears a blindfold: it judges the facts, and it must do so straightforwardly. It is not her role to drive down statistics, costs or proportions, or even to care.
For the police and society, a criminal is a person who does not respect the minimum rules we have given ourselves and who compromises the security, development, and well-being of his fellow citizens. The criminal is not a patient or a client as he may be for other entities.
The Criminal Code does not make you a good or nice person. It is the absolute minimum that one must abide by to function in society. It prohibits, as they say in Latin, malum in se, or evil in itself.
This bill is nothing more than a race to the bottom. It conveys the message that if you cannot meet the minimum requirements, they will simply be lowered to avoid your being held accountable for your actions, actions that put citizens' lives at risk. Again, we are talking about gun crimes.
As we all know, particularly the police, the number of illegal firearms is skyrocketing. It is virtually only these weapons that we find in seizures, at crime scenes or in the possession of criminals. The more illegal guns there are, the more they will be used for crimes that are covered by this bill and committed by members of criminal organizations, including street gangs.
Violence and the use of firearms are the basis for controlling an illicit territory or activity, such as prostitution or the sale, production or importation of drugs. This is exactly what the various criminal groups and their members do in perpetrating the criminal acts covered by this bill.
It must be understood that it is the users of illegal weapons who are at the heart of the problem. It is not hunters or marksmen, but members of street gangs or other strains of organized crime. These people are particularly resistant to attempts at social reintegration because of the intrinsic workings of their criminal organizations. It is totally false and naive to believe that a criminal can absolve himself of any connection to biker gangs, street gangs or different types of mafias.
The crimes covered by the bill allow individuals to advance in a criminal organization, climb the ranks and position themselves as violent leaders in their groups, neighbourhoods or communities. In short, it is the preferred way to promote oneself in the underworld using firearms. For them, violence is everything.
Reintegration is possible for some criminals with particular problems. This is not the case for those who use in the commission of their crimes, as they do so for criminal organizations in order to protect or further their illegal and highly lucrative activities. If we are to have any hope of countering this problem, it is imperative that we act upstream, because once we get into the operations, it is usually too late.
I seriously encourage you to listen to what the police will have to say about the total lack of coherence and deterrence in this bill. The police have the big picture, and contrary to what some may think, they are very clear-eyed.
We deal with the criminals and the victims. We see with our own eyes the devastating result of these illicit activities committed with, among other things, illegal firearms. Sometimes we walk in the blood of their victims, whose complaints we hear when they are frightened, injured or dying. We console their families and loved ones. Our 360‑degree view is the most complete that can exist. No other profession has such an insightful and broad view of the criminal landscape.
It's interesting to note that the groups calling for relaxation of the laws are usually those furthest from the commission of the crime, from the victims, from the actual violence and its consequences. I'm talking about the violence we witness first hand because of our mission and interventions, not the violence we can read about in a report or see on TV.
It is paradoxical and totally dichotomous to think that abolishing mandatory minimum sentences that apply to criminal offences involving firearms will have a beneficial effect on our communities. We are seeing a significant increase in the number of shootings in major cities such as Montreal and Toronto. The answer proposed in this bill is to abolish mandatory minimum sentences to satisfy the wishes of certain ideologues. This will only increase the arrogance already present in the criminals who commit the very acts the bill wants to target.
There will be no deterrence. It is as if, faced with a significant increase in school dropout rates and a decline in graduation rates, the strategy would be to lower the passing grade on final exams. This is a concept that defies logic.
The message this sends to the police who confront these criminals will only fuel discouragement and disengagement from these police officers. The same assumption could be made for Crown prosecutors, who are also bulwarks of justice.
This does not bode well for our collective security. As a society, we are facing an abdication and a retreat that is certainly not a solution to the overrepresentation of the communities targeted by this bill.
Finally, I would like to point out that nowhere in this bill is the word “victim” mentioned.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.