moved:
Motion No. 1
That Bill C-45, in Clause 21, be amended by adding after line 13, on page 8, the following:
"(3) Notwithstanding any other provision in this Act or the regulations, the Service a ) shall require the offender to pay as restitution
(i) to the victim of an offence committed by the offender, or
(ii) to the family of the victim referred to in subparagraph (i) where the victim is killed or is unable to manage his or her financial affairs as a result of the offence,
thirty per cent of the gross payment referred to in subsection (1) or gross income; and b ) on the request of or made on behalf of any victim who wishes to undergo treatment or counselling for the purposes of relieving any physical or psychological trauma resulting from a sexual assault, an aggravated sexual assault or a sexual assault with a weapon committed by the offender against the victim, shall require the offender to pay towards the cost of that treatment or counselling an amount to be determined by the Service of the gross payment referred to in subsection (1) or gross income.
(4) Where an offender is required to make any payment under subsection (3), the offender shall not be required to make any payment under paragraph (2)(b).
(5) For the purposes of this section, "victim" means a person described in paragraph 2(1)(a)."
Mr. Speaker, it has been a while since we have had a look at Bill C-45. It was introduced in March 1994. Most of us have pulled it off our shelves, blown the dust off and are having another look at it.
Bill C-45 happens to be, in truth, a bill that was presented once upon a time by the old Conservative group and the bill had a different title.
The government of today took the bill, watered it down, nursed it around and called it Bill C-45 and now are attempting to convinced Canadians we will really do something about law and order once again.
In the two years we have been here I have already come to the conclusion, and I suspected right from the beginning but it is confirmed more and more, that the Liberals are tinkering around with criminals and legislation pertaining to them. This Mickey Mouse approach the government has had with regard to handling criminals has to come to an end.
I remind members of government and members of the separatist party as well, because they are always in bed together on these issues regarding crime and law and order, there are two parties to every crime, a criminal and a victim. Nowhere in any legislation has the government addressed what it will do with regard to victims. Never once, not even when the government received 2.5 million signatures from CAVEAT asking it to recognize the victims of crime.
It constantly considers the rights and privileges of the criminal: "We have to make sure the criminal is protected here and protected there in every aspect. His or her rights are really important".
I am talking about the Solicitor General and the Minister of Justice. They received thousands and thousands of letters trying to get them to realize there are victims of crime. There were letters from the Melanie Carpenter campaign. We keep adding to the list. Only recently a 10-year-old girl was abducted and murdered even while her family was at home.
No, we look at the legislation and it is a bunch of gobbledegook put together by a bunch of lawyers who run around in the little building over there called the justice hall of Canada. They put together a thick pile of documents which would take 14 Philadelphia lawyers to even interpret.
The whole basis of fighting crime is supposed to deal with the problems. Instead we come up with all this stuff that takes a bunch of bureaucrats, highly paid, to make sure we put all this flowery stuff on it which will not solve one thing. It has to start addressing some problems in the country which it not now addressing.
Motion No. 1 is an attempt by our party to get the government to recognize there are victims in the country.
In my riding a student of mine was raped and had to live in fear afterwards because the perpetrator was still free. She almost had a nervous breakdown, requiring medical and psychiatric attention.
The criminal was provided all of those services paid for by the taxpayers of Canada. The victim could get the same services. The only difference was she, her husband and their family had to dig into their purses and pockets to figure how they would pay for this.
I recall a mother in Calgary whose five-year old daughter had her throat slashed, her body thrown in a garbage bag and dumped in a dumpster by a thirty seven-year old perpetrator who said he could not help himself because the little girl kept coming on to him.
The little girl got life while the perpetrator will get 10 years. In the meantime the mother of this little girl, a single parent with other children, has gone through a terrible trauma. Not one penny of taxpayers' dollars has gone to help the victim in this case. However, that 37-year old killer has had psychiatrists, psychologists, dozens of legal aid lawyers throughout the whole period, helping him every whim of the way.
I see a section in the bill that says the government will start doing something about these guys when they are locked up in jail. It will let them work to earn some money. It will take 30 per cent of that money and see it goes back into the government to help pay for meals, et cetera.
This motion asks the people of the House to insist that any money collected from a perpetrator in prison will go to the victims to help them with their problem. Here is the chance for my Liberal friends to show their focus is on the victims of crime and not just the criminals day in and day out.
I look back over the last few months with the Bernardo and Homolka situation, I remember the Olson situation and the hundreds of victims touched by those kinds of actions. It is terrible when we talk about people like that, like Mr. Olson, who are in prison. He killed one person which cost him a life sentence with 25 years before possible parole. The second murder was free, the third one was free, the fourth one was free, the fifth one was free, the
seventh one was free, and on and on it goes. When will we stop making things free for these killers?
The least we can do is if we are to get any kind of money from them it ought to be directed to those most affected, the victims. I am really sick and tired of this Mickey Mouse pussy footing around while really not giving a hoot about anything but making sure we do this glorified stuff in the House. We make sure we present documents so thick that we do not even have the time to read them. Certainly any common, ordinary Canadian could not understand them.
It is time we got down to common sense and addressed the problem instead of creating 160 pages of gun law that will not do a stinking thing or creating another 45 pages of another law called Bill C-41. I am still trying to figure out what it will resolve. When will we acknowledge there are two people in crime, the victim and the criminal, and for a change concentrate on the victims instead of the criminal?
We will look after criminals' basic rights. They are entitled to them. They are innocent until proven guilty. When they are convicted they will be sent to jail. When they are in jail they ought to have to work. If they do not work they should not eat. That is what happens in the rest of the world. If they do earn money and if is to be, as this bill says, 30 per cent of their earnings going back to the government, I say no. Let us put it toward the victim. Let us help them with the problems they face. Let us think about them for once.
We would be more popular in our ridings if we put the victim first instead of the criminal in our legislation. Here is the chance. I beg hon. members to support Motion No. 1.