Madam Speaker, I do not intend to be so kind about the criminal justice system when I talk. I am not a lawyer but I am one who has been affected by such things as the criminal justice system and I live in an area with many prisons around it.
I want to refer quickly to a newspaper article that appeared not too long ago in the Abbotsford Times in my community:
Corrections Canada reports all 57 inmates granted temporary absences this Christmas from B.C. prisons have returned to jail.
But that doesn't impress local police.
I am going to refer to this point a little later. It is nice to see they came back from their Christmas break.
I rise today to speak to one of the most contentious emotional aspects of the Canadian criminal justice system, the reform of parole. The entire issue of the rights of victims revolves around the parole system and how it has let us down. Let us not mix words here tonight. It has let us down.
Parole horror stories have become so commonplace in the media that the majority of Canadians has completely lost faith in the system. Nowhere is this more evident than when we talk to people who have lost someone dear to them as a result of the breakdown of that system. When we sit in the living room with a family whose life has been forever altered, as I have recently in Langley, British Columbia, we see their eyes. These people are victims. There is sadness, despair and anger in their eyes. It has been a powerful, moving experience for me. I do not know if I would have the strength to be as forgiving as some of those victims are.
What drives me to distraction is the attitude of the bureaucracy responsible for the tragedy. There is no emotion in those eyes; just cold, hard, vacant stares, and endless recital of the regulations. No one is responsible. It is no one's fault. No one seems willing to do anything about it.
In my riding we are surrounded by federal correctional institutions, as I have said, and there are no shortages of incidents involving parolees. Also the article in the Abbotsford Times quoted local RCMP members saying that whenever they have an unsolved crime they just check the list of parolees loose in the street, find out what they were doing at the time of the crime and, bingo, the crime is solved. At the time of story their success rate for solving crimes in this way was 75 per cent. While there were not a large number of those cases, the lasting impression in the public's mind was that criminals were simply being let out too soon.
What response do we get from the criminal justice system when it breaks down? I realize the Parole Board and Corrections Canada are two separate bodies, but in a recent meeting with the head of corrections for the Pacific region I was told that the responsibility for improving the criminal justice system lies with Parliament. They simply follow the rules laid down by politicians.
Another common response is to quote surveys. The Parole Board likes to quote a particular number. It says that long term research shows that 75 per cent of paroles granted were concluded without any return to federal custody during the sentence. As we all know, statistics are a matter of perspective and in some cases outright deception.
Benjamin Disraeli said it better: "There are three kinds of lies: there are lies, there are damn lies and there are statistics". If it is true that 75 per cent of paroles are successful, I want to know what the cost was to society of the other 25 per cent. In my eyes it is a failure rate of one in four and that is just not good enough.
It is time the rules were changed. It is time to stop awarding old friends and party hacks with appointments to the Parole Board. It is time to establish competency tests for board members which address the need for an understanding of the justice system. It is time there was a system of redress for victims who have been injured as a result of incompetence of the board. These board members must be held accountable. Most important, it is time criminals did real time for real crime.
At the heart of this discussion is the fact that somehow we have lost the resolve as a nation to stand and say that when a criminal is sentenced to 10 years he should serve 10 years; not 3, not 5, but 10 years. Sentencing reform is key. It must be mentioned in this discussion as an integral part of the solution.
Where do we start? One of the major hurdles is the way the public sees these issues as falling under one umbrella. In a sense they do. It is all in the justice system. What happens typically is that public outrage is diluted because it often takes a scatter-gun approach. People blame the police for not warning communities, even though they are handcuffed by the charter of rights. They blame jails for letting prisoners out, even though it is the Parole Board's job. Or they blame judges for not imposing stiffer sentences when it might have been a poor submission by a crown prosecutor who caused the miscarriage of justice in the first place.
As I mentioned before, no one is to blame. If the system is so complicated and intimidating to those not close to it, then the first step we must take is to make it clear. We must commit to allowing victims greater access to the halls of what now passes for justice. The public has the right to take part in the decision making process. It must be an integral part of parole hearings.
Before that, victims must be given greater opportunity to be heard at the trial stage. Victims' impact statements are not given enough credence in the system as it now stands. In short, the simple request we have for the criminal justice system establishment is "open your eyes and open your doors to the people whose rights have been trodden upon, the victims of this country".
I would like to close on a personal note which will help to explain why I referred earlier to the eyes of victims. I recently sat in the home of Mr. Chris Simmonds of Langley, British Columbia. There is a picture on his coffee table of two beautiful daughters. The picture and the memory is all that is left to one daughter, Sian.
She was brutally murdered by a hired killer who claimed he was only trying to scare her with a loaded gun. He was out on bail on his own recognizance at the time. I do not have time to explain this complicated case today but what is striking about Mr. Simmonds is his calm resolve to have justice done.
The latest travesty in this case is the decision of the court to move the trial of the man alleged to have contracted the killing to Port Alberni from my constituency. The court says that he can receive a fair trial safe from the influence of the media. Once again, the victim's rights are secondary. The criminal's rights come first.
Out of respect for the Simmonds privacy I will not detail the effect of this savage murder on the remainder of the family. Besides the financial strain, emotionally they are near ruin. However they fight on.
When Mr. Simmonds approached victims' assistance for some kind of compensation for the extra expense of travelling to and from Port Alberni he was told by another steely-eyed bureaucrat that he did not qualify because he did not witness the death of his daughter. This is the only point in the story where Mr. Simmonds eyes give him away. He told that man: "Don't tell me I did not witness my daughter's death. Every night when I go to bed I close my eyes and I see her die".
Madam Speaker, from time to time in this House, you are called on to witness a vote and say that the yeas have it. When it comes time for us to vote on the long overdue reform of the criminal justice system, I for one will remember the eyes of Chris Simmonds.
I call on every one of my colleagues to join me in saying yes to the reform of parole and no to those who would put the rights of the law breakers ahead of the rights of the victim of crime.