Mr. Speaker, Motion No. 19 concerns a difference of opinion about whether or not there should be or may be a mandatory review of parole board decisions if someone who is out on parole commits a crime.
Our belief is that there should be a mandatory review of parole board decisions when it makes errors. I will give some examples. I have mentioned it twice but I have to mention the Wayne Perkin case again because it is so close to the real problem. This fellow went into a home, coerced an individual in my community into her garden shed, beat her over the head with a hammer, raped her, taped her hands behind her back, injected her with cocaine and left her for dead. He got six years, which is light, was put out on parole and while on parole murdered Angela Richards.
I always wondered in that particular case as I attended the sentencing hearing where the parole board was. What responsibility and what accountability are on the parole board for the absolutely disastrous error it made? Had Perkin not got out on parole the first time for such a terrible crime, Angela Richards would be alive today. I have talked with Corrine and Ron about it, Angela's sister and brother-in-law. That is one of the significant questions they have.
Why is the parole board that made this terrible decision going on with more decisions? Why is it not held accountable? Why was it not brought in to listen to the whole court case? Surely we need to have better answers.
This is what the motion is talking about. It wants a mandatory review of its decisions. I am for the termination of employment of those people when they make such drastic decisions. What we are
asking for seems realistic. It seems the Liberal government should agree that there be a mandatory review.
Let us talk a bit about parole for a moment. Most of us are aware that we have a legal system and not a justice system in Canada. It is fraught with lawyers who have made it so convoluted, so difficult to understand and so complex that the average person has lost his or her way throughout the system.
Since 1975, 240 murders have been committed by parolees. They say 70 per cent of those on full parole are successful, but it is the 30 per cent who are the problem.
Not too long ago I received a call from a parole board member who was upset at my making these kinds of comments. He said that in his region there was an 87 per cent success rate. I said: "While that is nice, I wonder if the victims take much consolation in the 13 per cent failure rate". We cannot tell Corrine and Ron that everything should be a bit better for them because we have an 87 per cent success rate. They are a part of the 13 per cent failure rate, and that is what we have to concentrate on.
In 1977, 85 per cent of parole board members had experience in the justice system; in 1988, just 10 years later, 53 per cent. It went down. Why did it go down? It was because that party and the other party from Jurassic Park started appointing their friends to parole board positions. How do I know? In 1993, 16 of 22 full or part time members were either defeated or failed politicians.
What kind of decisions do we get from them? They are their friends. They are party hacks. They collected money for your campaigns. The cost of doing that business results in people like Angela Richards being stabbed 22 times and murdered unnecessarily. This is not much consolation for Corrine and Ron, or Mrs. Richards.
Do we have any solutions? What do we do when they let these people out and they ruin the lives of thousands of people? There is no question that parole board members need more training. If the Liberals are going to run this country by a majority and they are going to put all their friends into these important jobs, then they should at least have the courtesy to the rest of us to train them.
I was in a parole board hearing not too long ago and received some information from an administrator who said that the psychologists' reports, which are relied upon for decisions by parole boards, are going to be given to them in a précis. That is just a short capsulation by a civil servant who makes a judgment as to what a psychologist says on five or six pages.
I can say that when people like Wayne Perkin go up before a parole board I would really like them to have a full psychologist's assessment and not a précis. Listen to what we are saying. The safety of the public is the number one concern.
While the heads are down and they are all quiet over there I cannot understand why they would oppose a mandatory review. Just exactly what is wrong with a mandatory review of a parole board and its members for making bad decisions?
It is understandable why we stand here in frustration and say this is absolute common sense. What is the problem? Who are you not listening to?
I would like to give some recommendations from another group.