Is who subbed in? Me?
Evidence of meeting #14 for Justice and Human Rights in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was c-9.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #14 for Justice and Human Rights in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was c-9.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
You don't have to be subbed in to raise a point of order.
Conservative
Burton Bailey Conservative Red Deer, AB
I am seeking unanimous consent for this committee to proceed to the consideration of Bill C-14, the bail and sentencing reform act.
Liberal
Liberal
Patricia Lattanzio Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC
Mr. Chair, it looks realistic that we are not going to be able to finalize clause-by-clause today. I am still very hopeful and positive, but at this point, I will seek unanimous consent. Conservative members have said time and time again that Bill C-14 is very important, and so have we, so we seek unanimous consent to send the bill back to the House.
If we keep going in this direction.... Look at the amount of time it is taking for us to study Bill C-9. It is a very important bill, so I seek unanimous consent to send Bill C-14 back to the House.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
We do not have unanimous consent.
It's straightforward. She sought unanimous consent based on discussions earlier to send the bill back to the House for third reading, and we didn't get unanimous consent.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
You're not at the table, and you've been subbed out, Mr. Brock. I'm sorry.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON
Mr. Chair, on a point of order, you referenced that previous discussions had taken place. I'd like to know with whom Ms. Lattanzio spoke on the Conservative side. I'm the vice-chair. I've not spoken to Ms. Lattanzio for weeks on prioritizing Bill C-14 without any study and without hearing from any witnesses whatsoever.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON
I'd like some clarification as to where that came from.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
That's a valid point, Mr. Brock. In my comments, when I used the word conversations, it was a reference to the numerous times you and your colleagues had wanted to expedite Bill C-14. That's what I was referring to.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON
Expediting means studying and hearing from witnesses.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON
That was the exact wording of the motion I sought unanimous consent for.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Look, Ms. Lattanzio sought unanimous consent to expedite it even further. It has not been provided, so we will move on.
Mr. Allison, you have the floor.
Conservative
Dean Allison Conservative Niagara West, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I hope to speak again. My remarks will be a little shorter this time.
Just in case I don't get a chance to speak again, I want to thank the staff. I've chaired committees before, as you are doing, Mr. Chair, and I know the staff always do great work. They're the ones who have to work long hours to make sure they provide...so I want to give them a shout-out. I've worked with a lot of clerks, legislative clerks, etc., in the past. I'll just start with that and wish everyone a merry Christmas.
One of my concerns in the 20 years I've been here is that there are always unintended consequences of the legislation we create. This amendment has been one of those things that have created a whole bunch of unintended consequences that haven't been thought through. Some of the regular members on this committee pointed that out, quite frankly. It's probably better to go back and have a look at that. That's not for me to decide, but I'll point it out.
When we bring forward legislation in this place, we need to consider all those things. When things are brought to our attention, it's never a bad thing to say that maybe we got one thing wrong and that maybe we should go back and look at it.
When I look at faith communities, in Niagara in particular, I feel that there's a huge disconnect with what's going on in Ottawa versus what's actually happening on the ground. I've noticed, after being here over the last 20 years, that sometimes we think things are so smart and so wise, but if we go back to our ridings, people wonder what we are talking about. They say they've never heard of it before and wonder why we are doing it.
When I show up at Tim Hortons, I don't hear people saying they think we need to deal with some of the scripture study groups in their churches because they're terrified about where quotes come from in some scriptures. We all agree that hate speech has no place in our society. We don't incite violence, and a number of these things have issues.
People in my community are talking to me about crime. My riding is Niagara West, which is between Hamilton and St. Catharines. There are cars being stolen out of driveways. We know this has happened in big cities before, but the amount of crime that's migrated around the lake, past Hamilton and into Niagara and small communities blows me away. I represent about a half a dozen small communities, like Grimsby, West Lincoln, Lincoln, Pelham and Wainfleet, that aren't major communities at all. We have rural break-ins.
During the campaign, as a matter of fact, a jewellery store was hit for the third time in three months. It was three or four doors down from my campaign office on the main street, in broad daylight, in the middle of the day. A truck backed into it for a smash-and-grab. There was a gentleman in there fixing the cabinets from the previous smash-and-grab, and he was almost run over.
I posted this footage on my Facebook account, and millions of people from around the country had a chance to look at it. The crazy thing was that they used a stolen vehicle to do the smash-and-grab, and they got in a stolen vehicle in daylight. People were filming this on their phones in downtown Grimsby, which has a population of 25,000 people. A stolen truck was used for the smash-and-grab. A stolen car was used for the getaway, and they ditched the stolen car just as they were heading back towards Toronto. Obviously, I didn't know where they were heading at that time. There were three stolen vehicles.
Bill C-14 has been talked about here, but people are not talking about hateful text in the Bible. They're talking about not feeling safe. They don't feel safe when they go for walks after dark. With the amount of extortion I've seen going on out west, in B.C., it's mind-blowing to me that we're not dealing with that in any major way or with the whole issue of repeat violent offenders.
In Welland, a man broke into a home and raped a little baby. You guys heard about it on the news. The challenge was that this individual was a repeat violent offender and was out when he should not have been out.
I realize the Liberals are in government and they've decided that this is a priority, but the other disconnect I have is that while we're here talking about trying to move towards Bill C-14, Kevin Lamoureux is in the House of Commons asking for the swift passage of Bill C-14. That's kind of ironic. We're here dealing with issues for which, once again, none of my constituents came to me and said, “Dean, we have a burning issue here. This is a problem. We need to deal with it.” As a matter of fact, they came to me after we announced this and said, “What is going on? How did this end up happening?”
The church groups in my riding are there to reach out to. We have a disconnect when we have someone like Kevin Lamoureux in the House today—while we're sitting here trying to deal with this issue—calling for the swift passage of Bill C-14. I find there's a bit of irony there. At the end of the day, bail reforms are pretty important.
We talk about clearly hateful statements coming out of religious texts. In Niagara, our faith communities are not fringe groups. I am so grateful for our church communities in Niagara. They are very constructive. They volunteer. We have a number of organizations. We just built a new hospital in Grimsby. It took 20 to 30 years to make that happen. So many groups came forward and made it happen. As in all of your communities, we have a great sense of community.
When we start talking about faith communities, I don't really.... A lot of the people who participate in our communities are part of faith communities. That could mean synagogues, temples, community centres, churches, mosques or a number of other different things.
We need to look at this and we need to be concerned. When we look at the very narrow defence in the Criminal Code that protects people who are, in good faith, expressing religious beliefs based on scripture, it's only for one offence: the wilful promotion of hatred. It doesn't apply to the incitement of violence—I know we talked about that before—advocating genocide or threats or any other Criminal Code offences. This is part of the safeguards that are already there to make sure this is not an issue.
When we look at some of the examples mentioned before, we talked about Adil Charkaoui. He was mentioned by some of the previous speakers. Some of his statements were actually illegal, and they were already chargeable and already outside the possible defences, so it seems like we have an extra layer now when we already have laws in place to deal with these things.
Quite frankly, when we have laws to deal with these things, I think we should be working on trying to make sure that.... When I talk to police in Niagara, they're frustrated when they bring people forward and charge them with offences. The revolving door of justice seems to frustrate even the police.
I think if you talk to police in any of the communities, you'll hear there's a huge disconnect. There's a concern that they're feeling. They wonder, “Does our work matter?” They work all the time. They work to make sure that people are actually taken in and charged, but before the paperwork is even done, what ends up happening is these people are back on the streets. That's a challenge we have as we move forward.
We just went through an election six months ago, and I heard at the doors people saying, “Listen, Dean, fix the bail system. We've have to keep criminals off the street. We have to give police the tools they need and we need to make communities safe again.” When we say to give police the tools, the police do have the tools; the challenge is the revolving door of justice and the fact that people are not kept behind bars when they end up there. That's one of the things we need to do. I know Bill C-14 is part of that, so at the end of the day, these are some of the things we need to look at.
You're not going to be surprised by this, Mr. Chair, but I want to present a motion that we proceed to the consideration of Bill C-14, the bail and sentencing reform act. I'm going to put that motion before us.
Liberal
