Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and the other members who have engaged in this discussion.
The discussion has been certainly not totally one sided but I sense a predisposition to move in favour of Bill C-8. I want to speak on the bill generally and really amplify an aspect of this which is of great interest to me personally and to the area of Canada that I represent.
To begin with, I appreciate and understand the excellent point that was made by my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, that this bill in no way precludes or tries to restrict the use of force by a peace officer.
As I understand it, it is merely attempting to clarify the position of peace officers following the judgment in the Ontario Supreme Court decision which basically declared that the current subsection of the relevant Criminal Code violated the right to life in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
It is one thing for us to stand in this House and talk about this subject. It is another thing to imagine oneself being on the scene either as a peace officer or as the master of a vessel in a situation that requires the person to do something for which very few rule books are written.
I am not coming down on one side or the other but I want to bring to members' attention and to remind the House that it is very necessary and important to these people who are pursuing their difficult duties in a time of crisis to have a framework in which they can operate that not only provides protection in the situation for them but as well for the other party involved. In the case of the proposed legislation for a police officer, I have read it very carefully and I understand this is a modernized version of
the Criminal Code which dictates the clear national standard on the use of force which is proportionate. I can assure members that as a philosophy my byword is co-operation instead of confrontation. However, when confrontation does occur then use that force which is proportional to the force required to achieve what it is one wants to achieve.
I suppose it is the antithesis of trying to kill a flea with a sledge hammer. One does not want to use too much force, otherwise one really prostitutes that force. One makes use of force that is not appropriate. In our society today with the crime rates the way they are and with the sometimes apparent disregard for our justice system, it is very important that these measures be discussed in the highest court in the land, the House of Commons.
This bill does allow the use of deadly force by a peace officer or anybody lawfully assisting the officer. The situations are clear. The first is when the suspect poses a threat of serious harm or death and the suspect flees in order to escape arrest and when no other less violent means exist to prevent escape. If a peace office could chase a fleeing criminal and could wrestle him to the ground with a football tackle or would be able to use some other kind of appropriately lesser force than deadly force, then the police officer or the person assisting the police officer would be expected to do precisely that. This is the intent of the legislation as it is amended and clarified.
The bill also does something else of personal and political interest to me. It includes an amendment to the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act to provide the authority for masters of vessels acting in their capacity to use disabling force against a fleeing foreign fishing vessel in order to arrest the master or other person in command of that vessel. My clarification right off the bat is that this is for a foreign fishing vessel and it will not be used against Canadian vessels.
I have heard three speakers talk about the necessity for Canada, which is a great trading nation with the largest coastline in the world to have some pretty clear legislation on how we go about protecting the coast literal, or those resources that are available to those Canadians who depend on the sea and the coastline for their living.
The act has not been as clear perhaps as those of us who have used it in the past and for those who would want to use it in the future would like it to be. At the outset I want to say that this rule applies in the case of a foreign fishing vessel that is to be arrested. I will say peripherally that the requirement on the high seas is not as clear as I have heard it discussed in the House. International maritime law is not determined in the way that civil or criminal law is. It is determined by precedent. Certainly there are precedents for arresting foreign vessels on the high seas.
I do not have the exact wording with me right now but I do know that recently at a United Nations conference the right of a literal country, or the country that has the coastline adjacent to the high seas, was discussed. It has a right, a duty and a responsibility on the high seas with respect to a straddling stock. The recognition of a straddling stock would certainly apply to the nose and tail of the Grand Banks as described by my hon. colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, and does apply in this case. It is not as cut and dried as other members would have us believe. I do not want to get into a debate concerning the nose and tail of the bank at this time but clearly this could be a follow-up discussion at a later date.
I want to discuss that aspect of the legislation which permits the master of a vessel under the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act the action that hopefully will be legislated. The legislation says what can be done and when and under which circumstances it can be done. The government will, at a later date, following the passage of the bill, determine and put together regulations that will decide how it can be done.
In the case of the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act and the amendment that is being proposed at second reading of this bill, the protection officer is justified in using disabling force under three circumstances. The first one is if the protection officer is proceeding lawfully to arrest a vessel, including the person in command of that vessel, if that circumstance also involves the master or the other persons involved taking flight to avoid arrest. Taking flight on the sea does not mean sprouting wings and flying, it means cranking up the engine room to maximum revolutions and trying to escape the chasing vessel. The third condition is that the protection officer has reasonable grounds to believe that force is necessary for the purpose of arresting the master or other persons.
When I talk about the use of force among certain groups, they immediately think that we are going to bring out all the warships, mount a broadside and sink everything in sight. That is anything but the intention. Force is not used that way. I talked earlier about protecting force and to use only the minimum that is necessary.
I recall in July 1985 when the Canadian navy arrested two Spanish fishing vessels. We did not go around shooting them up and Ramboing them, basically we used a loud speaker system and said: "You are under arrest and if you don't stop we are going to have to consider escalatory measures". Without going into the details, the finale of the exercise was that the two Spanish vessels had armed boarding parties put aboard them from the warship involved, HMCS Athabaskan I believe it was. These ships relented, succumbed to the arrest and were towed back to a Canadian port. The masters were subsequently
charged. This is an example where the use of force involved a loud hailer, a few threatening manoeuvres I suppose is a good way to put it, the stopping of the vessel and the sending across by boat of two armed boarding parties.
All kinds of things are done to show force, but force that is proportionate to get the vessel to stop and arrested and taken back to port so it can be properly charged. I agree on the high seas it is going to be much more difficult and I would not expect people to go and do that tomorrow.
I want to tell the House that when this government was elected on October 25, 103 vessels were on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks, and 72 of them were fishing. Today there are 39 that are engaged in any sort of credible fishing endeavour. There may be 70-odd, I did not get the count for the day. But the point I am making-and please do not hold me to numbers-is that the numbers have decreased significantly. That has, in my opinion and in the opinion of others, been the direct result of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the Prime Minister making it very clear that we do not intend to stand for foreign overfishing, where foreign fishing vessels from other nations plunder our stocks, either by using small mesh size, by disregarding quotas, giving themselves great quotas, literally vacuuming up the ocean of a stock that Newfoundlanders and Atlantic Canadians and Quebecers cannot catch because of the rules that we have imposed on ourselves, to say nothing of the fact that there are no fish to catch anyway. If we have to stand on guard quietly and watch our fish disappear under some rubric that we are not really allowed to go outside the 200-mile limit, this government is not going to stand for it.
The rules we are discussing are intended to apply within our jurisdiction. The parliamentary secretary has made that clear. However, these are rules that can be developed. After all, in my lifetime we have gone from a 3-mile territorial sea because that was the range of a cannon-ball. We went out to 12 miles because that was the range of high definition radar for an average size vessel in an average sea state. We are now out to 200 miles because that is where the resources are and we have technical detection devices and aircraft that can tell us what is in the 200 miles. I do not expect to live the rest of my life with a 200-mile limit. I have gone from 3 miles to 200 miles so I can assume, in the interest of avant-garde international law, we may well go beyond the 200-mile limit.
I want tell members how we can use this kind of force. We have our ship at sea and we are involved with a foreign fishing vessel that is fishing in an area where it is not supposed to be. We are told that this vessel is to be arrested. The first thing we do is make it clear to the vessel that it is under arrest. We go through all kinds of pain. We hoist international codes. We use our radio, flashing lights and, if we have speed advantage over that particular vessel, we do circles around it. We basically stand on our nautical head to do everything we can to make sure that vessel understands it is under arrest.
If the vessel proceeds and ignores the order, we have to make it clear to the vessel that we must now ratchet up our force. Without going through all the measures, I suppose at some point a shot would be fired in the general direction of the vessel and eventually across the bow of the vessel. In an ultra necessary step, where force is absolutely necessary and where hours and hours have elapsed, at some point the captain of the arresting vessel has to make it clear to the vessel on which force now has to be used, a disabling force after hours of negotiation: "We are now going to disable your rudder so get your people out of the stern of the vessel and we will give you an hour. Let me know when they are out". The captain may not hear from the vessel.
At some point we may have to fire a shot into the stern of the vessel to disable it. It is terrible stuff but necessary, that force which is necessary to disable the vessel to allow the arrest to be carried out. Hopefully that should be enough under regular circumstances to allow an armed party to be put aboard that vessel, a tow to be put together and the vessel to be towed back to a Canadian port where the master would be charged and duly put through the process.
The importance of this legislation in allowing regulations to be developed by the government, to make it more clear and to buttress the determination of the government to take charge of foreign overfishing I cannot reinforce enough. I believe it is safe to say that this kind of legislation not only clarifies section 7 of the charter and responds to the Ontario court ruling which made some form of legislation necessary-and I am delighted to see it is already in our mandate-but it makes the change to the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act in such a manner that the rules and the intent of the government to masters of vessels involved in arresting foreign vessels that are overfishing are very clear, unequivocal and concise.
I commend the Minister of Justice and his parliamentary secretary for putting forward this legislation at such an early date. I commend all members of the House because the presentations I heard seem to indicate an understanding of the intent of the regulation. I was delighted there were indications on both sides of a good understanding of what was involved in the necessity to improve the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act. Certainly I saw a general predisposition on the part of all members to move forward with second reading to get the bill into committee so that we could have a good look at it there.
I thank you, Mr. Speaker, and all members of the House for the attention accorded me.
