Mr. Speaker, I was pleased that the hon. parliamentary secretary had a wide ranging look at this bill in her speech.
There are some comparisons that I might make to the comments she has made. I have in my hand a report from the Canadian Police Association, a group that was lauded by the justice minister for its support of Bill C-68.
In the introduction to the report, the association says this:
Bill C-41 with a few exceptions is unwieldly, complicated, internally self-contradictory, duplicitous and what is worse, almost all of it completely unnecessary for anyone with any knowledge of or use for the common law heritage of Canada. While it would attempt to codify basic sentencing principles, eliminating this most basic judicial discretion, at the same time it would bestow huge new discretionary powers to a whole range of persons within the justice system.
The common thread in these new powers is that all are to the benefit of the offender in the sense of non-custodial consequence for criminal actions.
Where sentencing reform calls for protection, this bill offers platitudes. Where it calls for clarity, it offers confusion and outright hypocrisy. Given its previous life as Bill C-90, [from the Tory administration] it is in no way a creature of this government yet if passed, it will certainly be identified as just that. It will almost certainly cause the already skyrocketing criminal justice budget to expand further still, in particular, the fastest growing component of that, namely legal aid.
When all is said and done and when one considers the truly great challenges the justice system faces in real crime prevention and protection of the public, it is tragic that this bill occupies debate while other legitimate issues are ignored. This, too, will be the legacy for the government should this bill be passed into law.
In concluding this report, the Canadian Police Association says that:
Bill C-41 is confused, contradictory and in large part wholly unnecessary. It is a blatant example of what a former Liberal member of the justice committee described as smoke and mirrors legislation. It is put forward as meaningful sentence reform but it is only that in the sense that it will generate endless litigation with huge attendant costs for little or no purpose. It is a blatant example of our worst tendencies in criminal law amendment in that it is impractical, badly drafted and will produce results wholly inconsistent with the overwhelming majority of Canadian sense of what needs to be done.
It is a bill that was not created or refined in any sense by the political response of elected members of the government who will be responsible to their constituents once its results are made clear as they will be.
In these days when so much needs to be done to prevent crime from occurring in the first place and to provide protection to society from those chronic violent offenders, Bill C-41 is and will be an embarrassment.
As I think about why the government is putting forward Bill C-41, I am compelled to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister what is the justification for this bill. I can only assume that it is to assuage the interests and the demands of the politically correct movement that you so capably represent.