Thank you, Minister.
I have a limited amount of time and a lot to get through.
You may or may not agree with me, but the public's confidence in our judiciary has been shaken significantly as a result of some pretty controversial Supreme Court of Canada decisions. With the time permitting, I want to touch upon two decisions: Bissonnette and Sharma. In my view, you need to know what the feeling is on the street and the community, and I want to have your thoughts in terms of the government's response.
As we know, in the Bissonnette decision, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously struck down section 745.51 of the Criminal Code as violating section 12 of the charter—not saved by section 1—and made it retroactive to the day it was enacted, in this case 2011.
We all know the facts of the case. We need not belabour the point. It was a horrendous crime that shocked the conscience of not only the Muslim community but everyone across the country. In their ruling, the justices indicated that longer periods of parole eligibility, in this case upwards to 75 years, were “degrading in nature and thus incompatible with human dignity, because they deny offenders any possibility of reintegration into society, which presupposes, definitely and irreversibly, that they lack the capacity to reform and re-enter society”. They said that “Although Parliament has latitude to establish sentences whose severity expresses society's condemnation of the offence committed, it may not prescribe a sentence that deprives every offender on whom it is imposed of any realistic possibility of parole”.
Minister, I want you to listen very carefully to the words we heard from various victims when we studied government's response to victims of crime. One such victim was Sharlene Bosma. She indicated that, on May 6, 2013, her husband, Tim, was taken from their home and shot in his own truck across the road from their house. His body was eventually taken to the Waterloo airport and then burned in an animal incinerator. She spent eight days searching the province for him, not knowing where he was. On the eighth day, her world fell apart when she learned one of the most horrifying phrases in the English language: His body was burned beyond recognition. She says:
I cannot convey the overwhelming amount of joy and relief that we as a family shared when the court determined consecutive life sentences in each case—75 years and 50 years for cold-blooded, heartless killers. As the mother of a little girl who was not quite two and a half when her father was murdered, I was extremely thankful that she would never, ever have to face the monsters who killed her father for no reason other than they simply could. In May of this year, our government took away one of the very few things that we as victims had to hold on to, which was consecutive sentencing. It was one of the greatest blows that the Canadian government has ever dealt to victims of violent crime. It says to us that someone can kill as many people as they want here in Canada because sentencing will not change. It says that Canada only places value on the first victim, with the lives of any other victims not mattering—not here in Canada.
We also heard from another family who indicated the profound impact this decision has had.
I know that you showed compassion in the House of Commons, Minister, when the decision was released. I'm looking at a news release from one of the publications on the Internet. In a media statement, you indicated as follows: “Our position was clear, we supported a sentencing judge's discretion to impose a longer period of parole ineligibility where appropriate. However, we will respect the court's decision and carefully review its implications and the path forward.”
Since hearing those words—and I remember you in the House using those or similar words—what has the government done? What is the government doing to address the pain that these victims are feeling and the overall sense that this is no longer a justice system but merely a legal system?