Public Safety Committee on Feb. 17th, 2011

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

What years?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Well, it's dated 2010-11 to 2012-13. So it's for the next two to three years.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

So it's also last year from the beginning.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Whatever. Is it correct?

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Well, it's not correct on the basis of the actual numbers we have at the end of the first fiscal year, which that assessment purports to deal with. You'd have to take off the 1,290 minus the 390 and say that it is the estimate at that time. Whether they're going to have to take down the numbers, given what has happened in this past year, I don't know.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We'll now move to Mr. MacKenzie.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to the witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Holland was pretty loud about head counts, and I have some records from the House on June 8, 2009, where there are head counts on the passing of a particular bill. I think we all understand that this is a minority government. My friends across the table scream about the government passing bills, but the government doesn't pass bills without having support from people on the other side or without their failing to stand up and vote against it.

It happens that on June 8, 2009, Bill C-25, the bill they're making most of the noise about, passed on division in the House. What that really means, as you understand, Minister, is that the opposition did not stand to oppose it.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

That's right.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Had they done so, they could have defeated the bill.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

That's correct.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

We are now a year and a half or more past that date, and now they seem to have problems with what was passed on June 8, 2009.

Another thing Mr. Davies doesn't seem to understand is that victims are also taxpayers. We had witnesses here on Bill C-59, and one of them was asked by Mr. Davies about the cost of the bill. The witness told this committee that the additional cost, whatever it was, was small compared with the cost that he and others are paying as a result of some of these criminal acts. He also related one of those costs in detail: two people he knew who had been victimized had committed suicide. Somehow, those costs get lost on the side.

When we look at these costs, and it's fair to look at them, there is also another cost to society that the victims suffer as a result of criminal acts. I don't know if we've ever heard the other side talk about that. Have you ever heard those questions?

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I certainly have heard the concerns of many victims about the cost of crime.

We can roughly guess what crime costs Canada, on the basis of the Department of Justice study that said the cost of crime is $70 billion. I've never gone into what that includes in terms of the finances.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Seventy billion dollars?

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Seventy billion. Now, I've never gone into determining what makes up this cost, whether it's mental health services, hospitalization, police services, all of these things, but that's generally the number that was accepted. I believe that report could be dated by now; I can't remember the exact date of it. But that was the analysis that was done.

The other cost I mentioned is the psychological damage to individuals who are frightened to go outside of their houses at night—not only at night, but during the day. You have heard stories, and most of us MPs have heard them. There are the older seniors living in poor neighbourhoods who have to walk down the street to buy their groceries; they are worried about making it to the store with the money and, just as importantly, making it home with the groceries. These are tremendous costs that can't even begin to be calculated.

When people talk about a break and enter into a dwelling house as a non-violent crime, that is the most serious misrepresentation of a crime there could ever be. The psychological damage to someone who has had their house broken into in that fashion is irreparable. There's a constant fear in your own house that your privacy, your person, has been violated. There is no way of placing a cost on that. What we can do is to put people away who choose to break into people's houses. We know that during the course of time that they are not out on the street, they aren't committing break and enters.

Most of the break and enters are committed by a very small group of the total criminal element, and if you lock up those individuals, you'll see the rate of break and enters drop dramatically. For example, when I was the Attorney General of Manitoba and we arrested the Manitoba Warriors--there were about 50, as I recall, perhaps more--in a massive swoop on that organization, the rate of break and enters during that time dropped very, very significantly. It was all attributable to a few people in that organization doing break and enters, not only in the city of Winnipeg, but in the outlying areas.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. McColeman.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Minister, first of all, thank you for being here. This week we heard the Liberal critic on public safety passionately speak in response to Bill C-59 and advocate that we should keep white-collar criminals out of jail. He says he has compassion for the victims of these crimes; however, he does not believe criminals should be accountable to their victims.

The committee would be interested in knowing your response to this, and how keeping dangerous prisoners behind bars, not on streets, increases public safety.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. McColeman.

Minister Toews.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Well, I think it is very important, because I believe white-collar criminals are deterred, to a very great extent, by heavy sentences. Many of these individuals are well educated and sophisticated, and they play the odds on this. And if the odds are that you're going to get a year or two in prison for stealing $100 million, if you could get away with a good chunk of that, isn't it worth playing the odds?

In that respect, you have to be very clear. We have to understand that has a very big deterrent effect in the context of white-collar crime.

I appreciate the support the Bloc has given us on C-59. I think they see exactly the nature of what white-collar crime is.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

We'll now move back to the Liberals. Mr. Kania.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Minister, for being here.

I'd like to start off by saying that I feel just as strongly as you do, and as the government does, and as my colleagues on the other side do, about protecting victims and, as you would phrase it, being tough on crime. I have often challenged the government to be stronger in their legislation to protect Canadians, one example being the sex offender registry. I give you credit, as a government, for coming back and making amendments on that piece of legislation to actually make it tougher and more logical. So I give you my compliments on that.

The issue is members of Parliament have a responsibility to make sure that the legislation that goes through is logical and makes sense in comparison to the amount of money that the government asks the public, the taxpayer.... It's not my money, it's not your money, it's not the government's money. It's the taxpayers' money. So we have an obligation, all of us, to make sure that the legislation that goes through is logical and necessary, solving a problem, because we shouldn't have legislation passed just to do it. It should be addressing something and solving a problem, and we need to find out how much that will cost.

One example is Bill C-59. That's now gone through the House. We had victims testify in terms of the piece of legislation, and the victims obviously have no tolerance for persons like Earl Jones, Mr. Lacroix, and neither do I, and we all said that. We're happy that persons like that will not be able to get out early. So great. But for the victims who were here, I asked them questions about this and they agreed with me that they would have preferred if they had been before the committee discussing legislation that actually would have helped the victims, that the legislation as it was passed doesn't actually help victims. It would have been better if we had been here discussing things like increasing sentences. Rather than having the minimum they have now of 14 years, I believe, make it 20 years. Increase sentences. That was not before the committee, that was not subject to closure, and that would have been better, and they agreed.

We have victims here who have tax issues with CRA and they're paying taxes in circumstances where they never made money and in fact lost money. They would have preferred if we were here discussing how we can give them tax breaks.

So I encourage you to consider that to help them out. It's not fair that they have to pay taxes, in my view, on something they've lost money on through fraudsters.

The victims who were here agreed with me that it would have been preferable if we had been discussing mandatory restitution, so that when Mr. Jones eventually gets out he will not be able to walk away with this money. As you know, as a lawyer, as I do, there's no mandatory restitution right now. We're having a situation where people actually have to sue civilly, spend money on lawyers, go through the process. I don't know why that's logical in circumstances where the criminal justice system has a higher burden of proof.

We have other things like—

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Well, let me just—

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Sorry, I only have five minutes.

We asked for money for investigations, and they agreed, yes, it would have been better if we were discussing money for investigations so that we could stop this in the first place, which is a better way to protect victims. We have money for enforcement, which puts money into the system for enforcement so that we stop this and we help victims in a better way.

So we have all these other suggestions, which I will say that the Liberal Party actually put forward. When we had, you will recall, the second prorogation of Parliament, we had a number of workshops—we were here working—and we had one on white-collar crime. We put all these ideas forward. It's been over a year, and nothing's come of that.

So I just want to highlight that, in terms of—

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Well, I am surprised. Have you not put those bills forward?

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Sorry, I'm not being disrespectful.