Justice Committee on May 20th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 19 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, March 31, the committee is meeting to study Bill C-5, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website.

As a reminder, for interpretation, for those of you who are on the monitors on Zoom, there's a globe icon at the bottom of your screen. You can switch to the language of your choice. Make sure that your headset is House of Commons compliant, with a microphone. That would be helpful.

We want to welcome our witnesses. Again we have Andrew Di Manno and Matthew Taylor from the criminal law policy section, who will assist us in any questions as we go through clause by clause.

(On clause 10)

I believe we were at Green Party amendment 17. I believe we had done with debate and were going to vote on that clause, so I will read it out.

Shall PV-17—

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I thought that Mr. Brock was still.... He had an intervention. I don't remember all of it, but I thought he was still speaking and I thought we still had debate before Green amendment 17.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

My recollection may be bad.

Mr. Brock, I assumed that you had concluded at the time.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I certainly had not concluded. I had approximately another dozen points I want to make, in addition to reviewing some pertinent case law on the particular issue.

I think I left off where I was going to discuss the distinctions of various jurists that I've had the pleasure of appearing before in the province of Ontario, the differences by which they approach gun crime and how they approach conditional sentences, but given the exhaustive discussion that I had on Tuesday, I think it's probably prudent that we move ahead.

I have nothing further to add, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Mr. Brock.

I just want to remind you that if PV-17 is adopted, Bloc-1 and Conservative amendment 7 cannot be moved, as they amend the same line.

We'll have a recorded vote, Mr. Clerk.

Do I have a point of order from you, Mr. Morrison? I see that your hand is up.

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I wasn't sure if we were quite ready to move on. I want to speak just briefly to this clause, to all three clauses.

I just want to get in a bit of a point that hasn't been brought up yet. I'm sure the Bloc is well aware of what I'm going to be talking about. It was in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, where an 11-year-old boy was gunned down while playing with another 11-year-old on a playground at a church, when there was a gang war in Montreal.

That sort of changed how policing responded to gangs, violence and shootings. They reached the point where they had had enough. Now, we are talking here, in this clause, about drive-by shootings, which is exactly what happened there to that family and to that victim. It was horrific. Every day in Parliament we're talking—and it is not just the Conservatives but also the Bloc—about the increase in violence in Montreal and especially in drive-by shootings. Now here we are discussing conditional sentences, almost, for this offence.

Of all the offences with guns, drive-by shooting has to be the most serious. It is with intent. It is not just somebody taking their shotgun out and firing off a few shots. This is intended to kill someone. Unfortunately, these gangsters are not the best shots. They end up killing civilians and innocent children.

I do not want go on. We talked quite a bit about this at our last meeting. We have to focus more on crime prevention. For people who commit these crimes, there has to be a deterrent. It does not matter who it is. If it is a Canadian, there has to be a deterrent to this. We need to start really going back into the root of the problem, which is crime prevention and not having youth getting involved in gangs and organized crime and gun violence and the illegal drug trade. That is where I believe we need to focus.

I just wanted to get that point out before we moved onto another clause.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Mr. Morrison.

I see that Mr. Brock's hand is up.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Just following up on Mr. Morrison's comments—and I think I reiterated this several times in my interventions on Tuesday—this particular point and this particular section of the code are probably the most topical right now in our country. They have been topical for the last 10 years. It's what strikes at the heart of community concerns and safety. I just worry about the message that this particular Parliament is sending to like-minded individuals who would be so cavalier with the lives of innocent victims as they carry out their vendettas in a gang-by-gang type of warfare. As I reiterated many times on Tuesday, they are very poor shooters. They shoot at random, quite often from moving vehicles, and innocent victims are impacted.

To my colleague Mr. Morrison's point, we need to send an appropriate deterrent message to the Department of Justice officials. I am sure if I were to pose the question directly to them, they would agree with me that the primary sentencing features and focus of this type of offence are denunciation, deterrence and removal from society. We already have a problem in terms of that messaging with mandatory minimum penalties already on the books. It's abundantly clear that these like-minded violent recidivist criminals have absolutely no regard for criminal law and the penalties that flow from it. Now, once it is heavily advertised that this is the new law, that Bill C-5 would actually make it easy for them to prey on each other and to impact communities, we are definitely going to see a spike in crime.

I certainly want to go on record, as a former Crown attorney who fought daily to ensure that my community was as safe as possible, who fought daily to hold these recidivist criminals to account for their behaviour, that I certainly do not want my DNA on any part of Bill C-5 that supports this amendment. I will be voting against it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Mr. Brock.

I guess we'll go to a vote on this now.

Go ahead, Mr. Moore.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you.

I want to make one quick point, because you mentioned, Mr. Chair, that should Green 17 pass, then BQ-1 would not be dealt with or CPC-7.

I want to quickly remind.... I even heard this idea today in question period. I believe it was the parliamentary secretary, who did a great job of standing up and responding, but the only problem is that I want to make sure we have the facts. Because we should all be well informed on this legislation, as well as on the amendments, I don't want any member of the justice committee to be under any illusion as to the origins of this particular provision.

Paragraph 244(2)(b) and its mandatory minimum penalty of four years, originally, for discharging a firearm with intent, was introduced into our Criminal Code in 1995 under a Liberal government. I don't know how many of you on the Liberal side know her, but Marlene Jennings, I believe, used to be the parliamentary secretary for justice. When I was on the justice committee she was on there as well, both in government and I believe in opposition. Marlene is from the Montreal area and a long-time Liberal, and I just want to quote her. She said:

It was a Liberal government that brought in mandatory minimum sentencing for firearm related crimes. There is a whole category of them where currently it is a minimum of one year.

I'm not going to list off all those offences because we've already dealt with a bunch of them in our clause-by-clause and eliminated the one-year minimum, but she went on to say:

There is [a] second category of designated offences where currently it is four years. In committee, and again at report stage in the House, the Liberal members attempted to increase the one year to two years and the four years to five years.

This was May 17—so just about this time—in 2007.

For those of you who know Marlene, number one, you know that she is certainly not a racist—because that term has been tossed around in the context of Bill C-5—and you also know that she knows what she's talking about. She was a long-time Liberal member of Parliament.

Before we vote on Green-17 and deal through that vote with possibly BQ-1 as well as CPC-7, and then go on to clause 10, I want it to be abundantly clear that the mandatory minimum we are dealing with in this section has its origins with a Liberal government.

With that, I've finished with my comments, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Mr. Moore.

Seeing no hands up and nothing from the room, we will have a recorded vote.

(Amendment negatived: nays 11; yeas 0 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Mr. Chair, I want to seek unanimous consent on a matter.

I would like to ask for unanimous consent to dispose of all the Green Party amendments from 18 through to 43 without consideration by committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Does anybody oppose that of the sitting members...?

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Okay. We'll take the vote, but the clerk and the analysts are just going to quickly look to make sure there is no effect on the subsequent votes in some of those cases, if we can just hold for a minute or so.

Thank you.

I've been advised by the analysts that it's fine. Those are all considered, I guess, deemed zero to 11 as voted on. I will move forward. Next, we have Bloc amendment 1—

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I thought the parliamentary secretary asked for unanimous consent to deal with all of the Green amendments at once, and I denied consent, so what...? Are we voting on something right now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

No—

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Are we moving on to BQ-1?

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

You have my apologies. My understanding was that there was silence and you just said that.... I might have misunderstood it, so I guess you're saying that we do not have unanimous consent and you want to vote on them one by one.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

I do. I think we can deal with the vote on them quickly when they come up because some of them are so profoundly ignorant. I don't think we should just lump them together and do away with them, because some of them would have an extremely profound impact on the safety of young Canadians particularly.

When you look at the number of clauses where the Green Party is seeking to eliminate the mandatory minimum penalty, since they took the time to put these into our committee, I would like to take the time to vote against them and be on record as saying that we need to do everything we can as parliamentarians to protect young people.

I don't know if you heard it, but I had unmuted and said “no” when you asked for unanimous consent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

I take that as a no. There's no unanimous consent.

We'll go to Bloc amendment 1.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I have a point of order.

Just to be clear for the committee, the vote that you had moved towards would have already been recorded under the UC that was proposed by the parliamentary secretary.

From a Green Party point of view, we think we've been clear already, at our last meeting, with respect to the rationale behind judicial discretion, and as I've stated already, that mandatory minimum penalties do not deter crime. On this unanimous consent motion, these points have already been made, in our view, and we would be very supportive of this committee moving them in one group, as has been recommended by the parliamentary secretary.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you.

Unfortunately, we'll have to go line by line as we do not have unanimous consent.

We'll move on. We'll go to Bloc amendment 1. That's on page 25 of the package.

Again, if Bloc amendment 1 is adopted, Conservative amendment 7 cannot be moved, as they amend the same line.

Would Mr. Fortin want to say anything on this or are we good to vote?

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Chair, this amendment is in line with what we have proposed to members of the committee and to the House on a number of occasions.

In general, we agree that the courts should have all the flexibility they need to determine appropriate sentences, while taking into account the maximum sentences contained in the act. We agree with eliminating mandatory minimum sentences, but we think that would be inappropriate in some cases. I think it was Mr. Moore or Mr. Morrison who talked about the rise in violent gun crime that we've seen over the last year or two, particularly in Montreal, but also elsewhere in Canada. We believe that mandatory minimum sentences should be maintained for these serious crimes.

That being said, I would like to remind you that a witness we heard from at a previous meeting, Professor Desrosiers, from Laval University, in Quebec City, made a proposal to us. She said that an acceptable compromise would be for the court to waive the mandatory minimum in exceptional circumstances. In fact, Minister Lametti told our committee that, in certain circumstances, it seemed inappropriate to impose a minimum sentence. He gave the example of someone who used a firearm to shoot at a cement wall to impress his buddies. If that person clearly deserves to be punished, sending him to prison would not necessarily be appropriate. The courts should therefore be given the opportunity to waive mandatory minimum sentences in exceptional circumstances.

We are proposing this amendment, which maintains the mandatory minimum sentence. This still sends a message to the public that the offence will be dealt with severely, but gives the court the opportunity to override the mandatory minimum sentence in exceptional circumstances. Before waiving the mandatory minimum sentence, judges will have to explain why the circumstances of the case before them are exceptional.

We think that would help prevent things from going off the rails. Some crimes should not be given a prison sentence, but because of the mandatory minimum sentences, a sentence is given anyway. This would avoid sending a message to the public that Parliament is being flippant in dealing with crimes as serious as the one referred to in BQ‑1.

That is the reason for our amendment, which I think is a very honourable compromise. It maintains mandatory minimum sentences, but it gives judges the opportunity to waive them.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Monsieur Fortin.

I think Mr. Moore has his hand up.