Madam Speaker, this is a very interesting debate. I have been listening to it very carefully.
I am really very mystified about how this whole question of sexual orientation has managed to take off as such a pre-eminent feature of Bill C-41. As was said earlier, we are talking about a bill that has 70 pages dealing largely and most importantly with the question of sentencing, which we have wanted for some time. There are some very good provisions in this bill that are much needed in our society, particularly with respect to our criminal justice system.
What we seem to gravitate to is one little section. It is not even a whole section; it is just a little itsy-bitsy part of a section. It is in section 718.2 that we refer to the words "sexual orientation".
The hon. member for Scarborough West has done a lot of research on this, and I commend him. He says that sexual orientation should be defined. He mentions that the other aspects-race, colour, sex, and gender-are defined. However
they are not defined in the bill. They may be defined, but they are not defined in the bill because these are incidental terms.
What we are dealing with is the fact of sentencing. That is why it is called a sentencing bill. There are no rights given under this bill to anyone, regardless of race, religion, language, or sexual orientation. We are not saying that anybody in those categories has any rights.
What we are saying is that if somebody is attacked and it can be proven that they were attacked because of their sex, religion, language, or sexual orientation, such as the hon. member for Burnaby-Kingsway has said about some people going into a restaurant and saying "Let's go and get those faggots", then there is objective evidence that they are being attacked for that reason. Because they are being attacked for that reason, it is a question of bias, prejudice, or hate based on those principles. If the people then go to court and are found guilty, they will be sentenced. In the sentencing it will be determined that the reason they committed the crime was because of bias, prejudice, and hate on their part in relation to language, religion, or sexual orientation. If that is the case, then their sentence is greater than if that was not the case.
A member says that is already being done in the courts across the country. Why then, one may ask, do we have it in the legislation? Because it is not being applied equally across the country. It is being applied differently in each province and we want to have it applied equally. Members have said, hate, bias and prejudice are onerous terms, principles, and sicknesses, which creep into adverse and unpleasant actions in our society. We want to apply it equally across the country.
Why, if we want to put it in the act, do we have to use these terms? The reason we have to use terms like religion, language, sex and sexual orientation is because the Supreme Court of Canada stated in the Zundel and Keegstra cases that they have to know what we mean by hate. What is it we are talking about when we talk about hate? Are we talking about hate based on sexual orientation, religion, or language, or are we talking about hate based on someone beating somebody else up because they do not like the Vancouver Canucks or the Toronto Maple Leafs? Is that the sort of hate? Hate can be used in so many ways.
We want to define what kind of hate we mean and what we are talking about when we go to court on this principle. So we put in examples, but we also say that is not the last of it. We also say "national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation or any other similar factor". We are not saying that anything can be hate; we refer to a similar factor that relates to the terms we have previously set forth in that list.
We are not giving any rights at all under this. The bill does not define sexual orientation because it is not a principle of the bill. The worst that can happen by not defining sexual orientation is that someone may make a mistake about what sexual orientation is in the sentencing process.
If some people want a definition of sexual orientation it should be put in the Canadian Human Rights Act. That is where such a definition would apply, not in a sentencing bill.
In Motion No. 10, brought forward by the member for Burnaby-Kingsway, he mentions changing the bill. Instead of saying race, national or ethnic origin, religion, language or sexual orientation, he wants it to say "the actual or perceived race" and so on.
We do not need that because perceived is not a factor either. If someone is attacked because of language or sexual orientation or race it does not matter in the sentencing process if that person actually spoke that language, was of that sexual orientation, was of that race or not. The fact they were actually attacked based on bias, prejudice or hate and whether the victim was correctly identified in that hate, bias or prejudice does not matter. It is the reason for the assault that the sentence is given.
If the person is convicted on the basis of that attack, based on that bias, prejudice or hate on questions of language, sexual orientation or religion, whether the victim was or was not, if the attacker thought the victim was, there is still the hate and there is still going to be the enhanced sentence. It does not matter if it was perceived or not perceived but what the objectively stated intention of the person committing the offence was.
This is a good bill. We are getting carried away, led astray by various factors. Everything in the bill is important but what is most important is what the bill wants to do and can do.