I will translate it for you, Mr. Chairman. Oh, oh!
There are tons of offences that are punishable by one-year sentences, including theft and shoplifting. It all depends on the value of the goods that were stolen. If a person steals something worth $5,000 and more, once, that person can be fined. However, the accused will be criminally charged, i.e., by way of indictment. If the stolen object is worth less than $5,000, the offender will still receive a fine, but will be convicted of a summary offence.
Let's us say that the stolen object is worth more than $5,000, and that later the person is caught fighting outside a bar. Those are two different offences committed within a few days of each other. Do you follow?
This is a simple example. A man enters a store and shoplifts merchandise worth more than $5,000. He gets caught, pays a fine and is automatically given a criminal record. Two or three days later, he goes out to a bar with his girlfriend, and then he gets into a fight with someone who tried to pick her up. That is something that happens every day and sometimes, unfortunately, turns ugly.
For the second offence, he might be sentenced to 3, 4 or 5 months, or even more, if the judge considers that he used a serious or lesser form of violence. How in fact does one assess violence? That is another issue. It depends on who the judge is. If the person is given a one-year sentence, he is put in jail. If he received a one-year sentence in a provincial jail, he can expect to be released after having served one sixth or one third of his sentence, given that there are so many people in those institutions. Let us say that he comes out after a few months. He finds his girlfriend, but she has left him. I would say that things are not going too well for him, and he ends up committing another theft, but this time he is also charged with assault. That is his third offence. He is sentenced to one year and a half in prison, and when he is released, that is it: he is no longer eligible for a record suspension.
However, he had the good fortune of meeting a chaplain in jail who helped him turn his life around. He says to himself that he will take charge of his life, will work on managing his anger and go see a psychologist for help. He has to recognize the cause of his inner rage.
I am not talking about myself, but about the man in my example. I am play-acting, Mr. Chair. This is a Conservative performance, and the show must go on. Oh, oh!
So the man tells himself that he will manage his anger. To do so, he will attend anger management classes. With a little bit of luck, he will meet a psychologist—that is not a given, because waiting lists are quite lengthy. He will meet a good person who will set him straight. He will meet a nice, very caring woman who will get him to forget about his former girlfriend and stop sniffing coke. She will offer to help him heal the wounds from the abuse he suffered, the incest he experienced.
You know, people do not become criminals just like that. They always come from a horrible background. I worked a long time in prisons, Mr. Chair, and I have never met a prisoner who had had a good life.
As for the man in my example, he took charge of his life and he is now working, has a family, is doing well and applying for jobs. He is told that he cannot be hired because of his criminal record. He does not want to go back to a life of crime. And so he holds low-paying jobs to feed his family, and even goes back to school. He graduates and could hold a good job. But he is turned down, because a Conservative government decided that he would unfortunately be ineligible for a record suspension, having been charged with three offences.
A number of people experience a similar fate. That man went to school, worked hard and was very happy when he could request to have his criminal record suspended. Finally, he says to himself that he studied, took charge of his life, has a woman and children, and things are going well. He might have a low-paying job, but he is not alone in that predicament, and he can now request to have his criminal record suspended so that he can work in his area of expertise. That is why he went to school. He sees the authorities, fills out the form that is presented to him, has his fingerprints taken, but then is turned down because he committed three offences and is no longer eligible for a record suspension. It has been years since he committed a single crime. He has become a law-abiding citizen. He pays his taxes, thus allowing the Conservative government to invest in prisons. He is able to move ahead. But he is now told that he is no longer eligible for a record suspension because he committed three offences. And those were not serious offences, but offences resulting in sentences of less than one year.