Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for North Vancouver moved a non-votable motion urging the government to hold a referendum on capital punishment concurrently with the next federal election. Reform members have outdone themselves once again. Since they realize they may be swept off the electoral map in the next election, they are trying to exercise their mandate as legislators beyond the term for which they were elected to this House.
If Reform members think we will not take this seriously, they are wrong. Their publicity-hungry leader took advantage of the summer recess to try to revive the debate on capital punishment. Once the debate on gun control had subsided, he had to find something else to keep him in front of the tv cameras. Burned by the debate on gun control where they finally showed their true colours, Reform members have completely lost their sense of reality, trapped in neanderthal attitudes where repression is the rule and rehabilitation and presumption of innocence are vague concepts thought up by criminologists.
The legitimacy of the penal system is largely based on its effectiveness and fairness. Its underlying principle is the presumption of innocence, a fundamental principle of law which says that the accused is presumed innocent until found guilty following a trial.
Wrongful convictions undermine this fundamental principle. As the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice said earlier, David Milgaard, Donald Marshall and Guy Paul Morin are three names we too often forget. Nevertheless, these individuals each paid an enormous debt to society, a debt they did not owe.
In Manitoba, David Milgaard spent 23 years of his life behind bars before his release. He was unjustly convicted of murder. The Crown's principal witness perjured himself at the trial.
In Nova Scotia, Donald Marshall served 11 years in the penitentiary for a murder he did not commit. Another inmate finally confessed. Thirty-five years old today, Guy Paul Morin paid a high price for a judicial error. He was falsely accused of the murder of young Christine Jessup. He was found guilty at his first trial. After nearly ten years in the penitentiary, Morin was acquitted thanks to considerable advances in science and DNA research.
These three men would have been dead and buried years ago if capital punishment was still the law in this country. Three innocent men sent to the gallows, murders ordered by the government. For all the Clifford Olsons and Paul Bernados that roam our streets, there will be innocent people convicted of crimes they did not commit.
In the United States, according to the Criminal Justice Research Centre, every year 6,000 people are wrongfully convicted of a serious crime. To my knowledge, there has been no similar study in Canada.
The trouble with capital punishment is that it is irreversible. I realize I am stating the obvious, but we must admit that once the injection has been administered, that is it. No appeal, no new evidence that would reverse the conviction and no opportunity to review an erroneous judicial decision.
If the conviction is, as in most cases, based on circumstantial evidence or even if the police manages to get an eye witness, the fact remains that mistakes are always possible and that a human life is at stake. And we cannot change our minds after the execution. I can see the headlines: "Posthumously acquitted".
But do not, above all, conclude that I am forgetting the victim in all of this. His or her life has also been taken. I want to see these murderers tracked down and sentenced severely, made an example of. I am thinking of cases like that of little Melissa Deley, barely ten years old, who was taken away from her home in Surrey, British Columbia, raped and murdered.
Calling for a referendum on the issue of the death penalty is a simplistic solution to a complex problem. Following the same logic, why not ask for a referendum on the budget or social reform?
Since they do not form the government nor are they the official opposition, the Reform members are trying in every possible way to usurp power by sneaky moves.
The Reform Party, especially the member for North Vancouver, wants to govern without being in power. Not content with representing a minority of the far right, for whom coercion is the solution for every ill, they now want to impose upon us their form of gang rule government. They want to pass statutes indirectly for which they have never received a mandate. Their hunger for power is equalled only by their cheap opportunism. You have to have a really colossal nerve to make political hay at the expense of victims and their families. In my opinion, calling for a referendum on all issues is not the way to fulfill the role of member of Parliament. Is this the only way the Reform Party has been able to find to divert attention from the only true referendum which will be held on October 30?
In 1994, 596 homicides were reported in Canada, 34 fewer than in 1993. This was the third year in a row that the number had gone down. The homicide rate was 6 per cent lower than the rate in 1993, the lowest rate recorded in Canada in the past 25 years.
Since we started gathering statistics nationally on homicides in 1961, two trends have emerged. Between 1961 and 1975, the rate of homicides rose consistently. Between 1975 and 1994, the rate decreased regularly, despite yearly fluctuations.
The transition period was therefore between 1975 and 1976. It was in 1976 that the death penalty was abolished in Canada. So much for those who contend that the death penalty is the way to reduce the number of homicides. Since the death penalty was abolished, murders in this country have decreased by 33 per cent.
The wind of the far right blowing over the United States is sending breezes of repression our way. Let us have a closer look. Many states already have legislation making it possible for a jury to condemn an individual found guilty of premeditated murder to death.
New York state has just joined the club and enacted legislation providing for the death penalty in cases of murder. Despite the fact that the United States has the death penalty, the homicide rate there has generally been three times the rate in Canada. The FBI reported more than 23,330 homicides last year, a rate of nine murders per 100,000 inhabitants. To give you an idea of what theses figures mean, 18,390 homicides have been committed in Canada in the past 33 years.
Let us be wary of handing over our criminal justice system to the Reformers. The Reform Party will put us back 1,000 years into the middle ages, when anarchy was the rule.