Madam Speaker, I am particularly pleased to follow my hon. colleague from Fraser Valley West. I thought he used a particularly poignant example to conclude his address. After hearing it, it is very difficult to move to another phase of the debate. However I would like to talk about the cost of crime as it pertains to ordinary citizens. We do not even think about it on a day to day basis.
I know when I was door knocking during this campaign, and I am sure it was the case of virtually everyone in the House, what we noticed was that everyone has a burglar alarm. Did hon. members notice that? When we went into the higher income areas, then everybody had burglar alarms plus dogs.
The cost of crime and the paranoia associated with crime and the fear of crime is a tax every one of us pays to businesses which have increased costs because they have had to install burglar alarms.
For those of us here and those Canadians at home watching, we all know what happens when we have been the victim of crime. During the campaign when I was making this point I would just ask people: "How many people here in the last year have been a victim of crime either personally or someone in their family?" Members would be amazed. I think it was something like 15, 20 or 25 per cent of the people would raise their hands every time. That was just in the past year.
I know as a victim the first thing that happens is you feel like you have been violated. You think your sense of safety is no longer there. The street that you have lived on, the neighbours that you have had all those years, all of a sudden you are locking the door. You just do not feel good about it anymore. Gradually that fades. You get over it. You get your alarm company. You get your alarm in. You start feeling good about it. Then you go into a drawer to get something that you have forgotten about and you find it is not there because that is one more thing stolen.
The frustration comes back in the neighbourhood with young offenders, when people know who is breaking in. A street with 20 or 30 houses and 5 of them have been broken into and they are all the same people.
That is the situation. It is partly due to our wonderful Charter of Rights and Freedoms that has put the cart before the horse. We have the rights of the criminal paramount to the victim.
Let me give another example. A rape victim wanted to find out whether she had been infected with AIDS. She went to court to get a court order so the convicted rapist would be tested for AIDS but it was said to be a violation of his rights. He raped this gal and it is a violation of his rights that she cannot have the peace of mind of finding out whether she ended up with AIDS because of what he did.
My friends, we have to rethink, we have to deal with the situation as it is. No wonder people think that we have lost the handle on this.
In doing a little research I asked: Where did we start to go off the rails? No one on either side of the House got up one morning and asked: "Well, how are we going to screw up the criminal justice system? How can we make it worse instead of making it better"? It did not start that way. But that is how it has ended up.
It is only a mistake if it is recognized as a mistake and it is not changed, then it is experience. Let us get some experience from it.
This is how it started and I quote from Hansard , Thursday, October 7, 1971, and the words I am going to read from the Hon. Jean-Pierre Goyer, Solicitor General, are going to shock you.
Folks at home, when you hear the words I am going to say you are going to realize why we got into the mess we are in. It is quite a long and involved quote but it says: "Consequently we have decided from now on to stress the rehabilitation of individuals rather than the protection of society". That is right out of Hansard . The Solicitor General of Canada, Thursday, October 7, 1971 in this very House and I well bet he was standing right over there somewhere when he said: ``Consequently, we have decided from now on to stress the rehabilitation of individuals rather than the protection of society''. Is it any wonder we are where we are at today?
It started because in 1971 the recidivism rate was 80 per cent. People went to jail, they served their time and 80 per cent of them were back in after they were released. Something was wrong somewhere, so we had to change things. This was an attempt to change things.
I think they were on the right track. They just went too far. It ended up with the rights of the criminals coming before the rights of the victim. It has come to the point where we do not have enough money to go around to pay for day care and other things that people would love to have but we can put $675,000 into expanding the recreation complex at Bowden Institution. Or we can build a jail in Grande Cache where all the rooms face the mountains.
I want to point out the fact that we did not get started on this track yesterday. We have been on this road for a long time and it is now time to make about a 180 degree U-turn.