That's why I asked you. If I had case citations, I would make reference to them for the committee. Sometimes I have citations in this version, and sometimes I don't.
Those are the questions, Mr. Chair.
Now I want to move on to debate.
In addition to my previous comments about clause 3, there is a feature of section 96 that affords the prosecution discretion. I will highlight discretion throughout much of my commentary, because I think it's important to drive home this message, particularly when you hear a consistent message from the government that this bill is to address the overincarceration of indigenous and other marginalized individuals, and to give a break to the first-time or low-risk offender.
They never talk about recidivism. We as Conservatives do that and, to a certain degree, the Bloc does. That's where our concern lies as a Conservative team. Our focus is on the protection of our communities from coast to coast to coast. It's no wonder, when I post various messages on my social media—either as a result of interviewing witnesses at this committee or making statements about some of the weaknesses of this particular bill—that I get a flurry of messages from across the country, and from many parts of the United States, about it being high time a Conservative or Canadian politician actually put the needs of the community before the needs of the offender. I didn't think it would be that much of a stretch, for my colleagues across the floor and beside the Conservative bench, to understand that we have a dual purpose here as legislators to try to improve the law to assist Canadians and to assist those who find themselves in conflict with the law, particularly “first-time offenders”, to use the words of the Liberal government.
This section contemplates that. It contemplates the very scenario the Attorney General made the very first time this bill was introduced at first reading. He said, to the entire House—and I'm paraphrasing and this is not an exact quote—to imagine a scenario where a person decides to have a few pops on a Saturday night. For the benefit of my colleagues who may have sensitive ears, we're not talking about Pepsi. We're talking about alcoholic pops. That person finds himself in possession of a loaded gun and decides to shoot wildly into a barn. He asked how you would feel if that were your child making the mistake of having too much to drink, finding a gun—not even considering for one minute that maybe it was acquired through the commission of an offence—and choosing to discharge that weapon into a barn, not knowing whether there happened to be any farmers or farmhands inside the barn, or animals for that matter.
He used that example to highlight the import of this particular bill and the significance of trying to distinguish a first-time offender from a seasoned, dangerous criminal, one who finds himself or herself in possession of a weapon and shoots wildly, not knowing about the dangers this might present. Section 96 contemplates that.
Section 96 is a hybrid offence where the Crown has the option to take a look at all the circumstances of the offence, to take a look at that person who had a few too many pops and found himself for the very first time in possession of a loaded weapon and shot wildly into a barn. If that person happened to be an indigenous male from my riding on the Six Nations of the Grand River, the very largest first nation in all of Canada, a first nation that I'm very close to, fond of and fight hard for every day as a politician to ensure that the inequities on that reserve are addressed at a federal level and that I worked hard for every day as a Crown prosecutor to take appropriate steps to address the issue of overincarceration, I now have the tools already under section 96 to exercise my discretion, to pull that unique offender away from the harshness of the punishment of a mandatory minimum penalty, most likely because we have a “Gladue court” or, as we call it, the indigenous peoples court.
I have the opportunity to find out why he had too many pops, why he found himself in possession of an illegal firearm and why he felt it necessary to discharge the firearm in the fashion that he did. It gives me an opportunity to explore all the racist and systemic issues that person grew up in. Maybe he's a product of the residential school system. Maybe his parents or grandparents were involved in that. Maybe he suffers from poverty. Maybe he suffers from housing inequities. Maybe he suffers from a lack of education, or maybe he suffers—or she suffers, I can't discriminate here between males and females—from addiction issues. These are all rampant on the Six Nations of the Grand River.
