Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on Bill C-41. I do so on experience gained as a community worker in the criminal justice system from 1975 to 1993. I have 18 years experience working with offenders, victims, police, prosecutors, judges, correctional workers and the public. I have also worked with many volunteers involved in the justice system.
My work was in the Waterloo region where we pioneered many programs in the field of community justice and corrections. Victim reconciliation, community mediation, Kitchener House where offenders serve provincial time in a halfway house, the first bail program in Ontario, law day and justice weeks were all pioneered in the Waterloo region. In the Waterloo region crime and justice are a community responsibility.
Bill C-41 is an omnibus bill that updates sentencing practices. I applaud in particular the section dealing with the imposition of fines. Under the current law close to one-third of admissions to Ontario jails are for the nonpayment of fines. We have a ridiculous situation where in lieu of collecting a $200 fine we end up spending thousands of dollars to jail the offender.
For too long we have been incarcerating people for no other reason than their being poor. It is reminiscent of debtors prisons. Too many of our aboriginal people and too many of our economically disadvantaged people occupy our jails. This bill will address this injustice and will use community service work to replace costly incarceration.
It is important when we talk of crime and justice issues to recognize that offenders and victims are people who come from communities and are not aliens from another planet. Solutions to issues of crime are complex and involve all segments of our society.
Having reviewed the debates on Bill C-41, I am troubled by the simplistic solutions put forth by the Reform Party. It would have us believe that capital and corporal punishment along with longer prison sentences would produce a safer society in Canada. If the simplistic solutions dictated by the Reform Party had any basis in fact then I submit that the United States would be the safest society in the western world.
We know and I am sure the Reform Party knows this is not the case. The United States has the highest crime rate and the most violent crimes in the western world. It executes and jails more people than any other in western society. Surely the Reform Party would not want to trade the safety of our streets in Canada for that of the United States.
One of the biggest problems we have with the issue of crime is the perception created by the American and our own news media. They create a perception that in Canada we are living in a society where crime and violence are much more prevalent than the statistics indicate. Canada is not the United States.
Our society is much less crime infested than the United States. We do a disservice when we pander and reinforce misconceptions. I would suggest that the Reform Party is pandering to misconceptions. I would further suggest the debate on firearms we are engaged in today is driven by the images of
gun laws in the U.S., along with its horrendous crime statistics, rather than by the reality in Canada.
There is no question that our justice system needs improvement, but in reality we have one of the best justice systems in the world. To continually attack the integrity of our justice system as the Reform Party does is to undermine it. If Canadians were to believe that our justice system does not work they would not report crimes and would not sit on juries. If the public is not supported the justice system breaks down.
There is no question that one victim is one victim too many. The issue becomes how to keep our communities safe. There is no question that to deal with crime we have to make crime prevention and community safety everyone's concern.
In the Waterloo region we have one of the safest communities in Canada and we do not rest on our laurels. We have established a regional committee on crime prevention and community safety that has two main mandates. The first is to mobilize the community to fight crime, for crime prevention is everyone's responsibility. The second is to deal with prevention through programs. We all know that a child who goes to school hungry or a child who is victimized is tomorrow's offender.
The community in the Waterloo region, in co-operation with the provincial and federal governments, has to deal with this social reality. It is of interest that the strongest proponent of dealing with the root cause of crime on the Waterloo crime prevention and community safety committee representing a broad sector of our community is the police.
There are no simple solutions to the problem of crime. To deal with crime we have to attack the root causes of crime and not just deal with symptoms. The answers to crime prevention lie at the level of individual communities where we work to enhance our own, our neighbour's and our community's safety. Crime and justice is a collective responsibility that we all share.
Much of the debate on Bill C-41 centred on the clause of the bill dealing with an offence being motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on the race, nationality, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability or sexual orientation of the victim. If the crime was based on any one of these points it shall be deemed to be aggravating circumstances in the case of sentencing.
We have heard arguments that all crime should be treated the same. I cannot disagree in stronger terms. I am defending this clause because I believe if at any time somebody is attacked for no other reason than being part of a minority group, surely the law has to take a much stronger measure in preventing others from doing the same.
It is imperative to remember that in the case of the Holocaust we had persecution on the basis of religion. It took six million deaths to raise consciousness with regard to this problem. I cannot understand how anybody could extend the clause of the bill which specifically talks about sentencing to talking about spousal support for homosexuals. It talks about someone being attacked for no other basis than sexual orientation, religion or nationality, and about the offender being more harshly dealt with.
That is one of the more important clauses in the bill. I thoroughly support it. I regret some members of the House would have the public misinterpret what that clause says.