Mr. Speaker, when I came to the House I had strong hopes that I could support legislation that was moving in the right direction. Bill C-45, I admit, does just that.
I would like to be able to vote for the bill. I would like to be able to stand in the House and say the government is doing an excellent job with Bill C-45. However, like my colleague from Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, I look at the bill from a slightly different perspective.
I do not want to talk about myself, so let me talk about the hon. member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca. As was mentioned in his answer, he is an individual who has had experience in the prison system. He served for some seven years as an officer and dealt directly with criminals. He also has had occasion in his life to be on the receiving end of the results of violence. He has dealt with raped kids. He has dealt with lacerations. He has dealt with gunshot wounds. He has dealt with body bags. He has served in an emergency department of a very busy community hospital. He has consequently dealt more with victims than I think most individuals have. I am afraid he approaches this bill with that perspective: Does it go far enough for victims?
I do not think it does and I am going to reflect on a couple of very specific parts of the bill. The first part is how sexual offenders are treated under the bill. It attempts to improve the sentencing for
sexual offenders. It takes a child who has been sexually assaulted and gives the offender, because when it is a child harm does not have to be proven but presumed, the full sentence. I say great. How could a physician argue with a full sentence for a sexual assault on a child? Great.
However, it goes on to state that an adult who is sexually assaulted and has serious harm must prove the harm. That is wrong. There is no serious sexual assault committed on a man or a woman that does not have serious harm.
In my own practice I had a 47-year old woman who originally came from South Africa. She had problems in her life: depression, anxieties, suicidal impulses, a host of serious problems. She had unhappiness in her marriage and had actually attempted suicide at one point in her life. Over a fairly long period of counselling with this lovely, sweet woman, her story was told. It came out in a way that is difficult to describe publicly, but she told how how she had been sexually assaulted in her youth by a member of her family. She had been unable throughout her life to ever divulge that to anyone. With tears streaming down her cheeks, with anguish in her heart, shaking and miserable, she divulged that to me.
What had that done to her, that one single episode of sexual assault in her life? She had frigidity in her marriage. She was unable to respond properly to affection. She was distant to her male children. She could not get close to her boys. She was fine with her little girl who she gave love and affection, but she could never ever respond properly to her boys, the children she bore.
I mentioned the depression and the anxiety. The end result was a broken marriage. She never got over that assault. That proves to me that a sexual assault on a child is devastating.
I have also had the opportunity, over and over again, to deal with sexual assault on young women and young men. It is not commonly known that sexual assault takes place against young men as well. There is not one single instance in any of those assaults that the assaults were harmless.
To have to prove harm when sexually assaulted is wrong. There is no excuse and no reason to have to prove physical harm, none.
The second issue in this bill is the way drunken driving is handled. I am a teetotaller. I do not drink. I am a fellow who believes alcohol can have harmful effects. Many of my chums have a beer or two and do not have a problem. However, drunken driving is considered to be a very serious problem in our society. Damage to someone when drunk is treated with vigour.
This bill says that serious injury due to drunken driving demands the full sentence. It will come down hard on those individuals that drive when they are drunk and hurt someone. However, an adult woman hurt seriously by a pervert once again has to prove harm with no necessity of a full sentence. There is an inconsistency in this law in this regard.
On one hand we have a premeditated perverted act. On the other hand we have a disease. Surely we understand that alcohol and the problems with alcohol are treatable and can be righted. On the other hand, we have perversion that generally cannot be treated.
There is a medical treatment for sexual perverts which is very specific. However, in our society we do not contemplate castration for a sexual pervert. I also want to bring to the attention of members and those who are watching that even if an individual who has a sexual perversion decides he wants to be surgically or medically castrated, he cannot.
There was a recent case of a sexual criminal in Quebec. He said: "I know that I am going to reoffend". He requested of his physician to have those impulses taken away. He said: "I want to have my hormones changed so this will no longer be the case". Not a chance; it cannot be done. Human rights activists come along and say he cannot even make such a decision on his own.
I believe in our society. We have constantly talked about not having solutions for problems. I raise this specifically as a solution for certain sexual crimes for certain sexual criminals. It is quite possible to make a little incision and inject a tiny amount of medication repetitively in the arm of an individual who has these sexual problems and stop the perversion. Give protection to our children. Give protection to our mothers and yes, protection to our sons.
I have another specific solution. I have heard from a number of members opposite that Reformers would like to throw everybody in the clink and toss away the key. There are a number of young offenders that do not need incarceration of any kind.
In my own community I asked practical, solid citizens: "What would you do to prevent a youngster from recreating their criminal behaviour". I am going to propose an idea that has come to me from these sensible common folk. They do not want to give these young people a job that will take work out of the workforce. They want to give them a job that is hard physically but does not take work and money from somebody that has done nothing wrong. What sort of a job is there like that? The job they came up with is rock picking.
I live in an area where there has been a little glacial activity. Every time the farmers in my community plough up their fields they turn up a new bed of rocks. Young men and women that have done wrong should be rock pickers. They should go through the fields, pick the rocks, pile them on the side. Nice rocks might be usable by a mason for fireplaces. The next year the farmer ploughs the fields up again and guess what? More rocks appear. There are not too many people who want to pick rock. There are not too many people who need to pick rock. This is a project for youngsters to
teach them-a bit of the boot camp idea-hard work, discipline and a useful job.
In my part of the community we freeze in the winter and rock picking does not work well then. I have other ideas about what they could do in the winter but I will stop there.
There is one more solution for victims. Remember that I come down harsh on the criminal and really easy on the victim. This bill does not do that. Thirty per cent of a prisoner's income going to treatment of victims would do a lot for a women such as I described. She could not afford a psychologist. She could not afford to do anything but go to her family physician for counselling. Time and space are very limited for that. She could well have been helped by restitution from the person who harmed her. These solutions would improve the bill.
I have listened to members opposite say: "You do not like everything in the bill. It is going on the right direction. Support it". I ask members opposite, how did they vote when this exact same bill came before the last Parliament? The record shows they voted against the law and order bill that was presented by the Tories. Reformers are saying this is a bill moving in the right direction, some parts of it flawed, some parts fair.
We are saying to the Canadian public as plainly as we can, until the rights of the victims are placed well above the rights of the perverts and the criminals there will never be satisfaction with our justice system.