Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the hon. member for Prince Albert-Churchill River's speech on Bill C-55. Let me say right off the bat that both his speech and Bill C-55 contain some things I like, other things I do not like at all, and yet other things that are in a grey area.
When the hon. member for Prince Albert-Churchill River talks about improving the law, about protecting society, in some regards I can only agree with his statements of principle. For example, the hon. government member who tabled this bill talks about convicted criminals, especially sexual offenders. The cases that are being raised the most often and that we find particularly troubling are obviously those associated with pedophilia and with sexual assaults against people.
Let us look more closely at the pedophilia cases. Incarceration does not cure pedophilia. Pedophiles are sexually attracted to children. Keeping a pedophile behind bars for five, six or seven years will not cure him. Society will be protected, but once the sentence has been served and the person released, he remains a high-risk offender. Unless we resort to extreme measures like chemical or surgical castration, there is no way to guarantee that he will not reoffend.
Under the new provisions in Bill C-55, after serving their sentences, convicted sexual offenders may be kept under supervision for up to 10 years. So by keeping them under supervision after their release, we can exert a measure of control. I think that is reasonable in a free and democratic society, where a happy medium must be found between individual rights and the right of the community to protection.
Incidents like those witnessed recently in Sherbrooke for instance are the kind of thing we must strive to prevent as much as possible by increasing the level of awareness of the decision makers, be it only regarding parole. If the provisions of the Parole Act had been enforced in Canada, we would not have cases like the one in Sherbrooke and the one involving young Isabelle Bolduc, because the offenders in these cases would not have been released when they were.
Bill C-55 also aims to make it easier for the crown to have a convicted offender found to be a dangerous offender or a long-term offender. This new terminology will have to be incorporated into our criminal law.
Basically, the crown will no longer be required by law to select one or the other immediately after the verdict is rendered and before sentencing. The crown will now have six months to make application for a court hearing to have a person who has been found guilty of a crime declared a dangerous offender or a long-term offender.
This six-month period sounds like a good thing to me in that it will give crown attorneys, who, in most judicial districts in Canada, are already overburdened, the time to assess the case properly, seeking the advice of social workers, police and the community involved on whether or not this person should be declared a dangerous offender or a long-term offender. This will make for a more considered decision.
There will be less chance of the crown's overlooking obvious cases or missing cases on which it should have acted because, at present, if the crown does not make its case immediately after conviction, which means before sentencing, it loses any right to do so. It sounds reasonable to me. I agree that it is an improvement over the existing legislation to give the crown another six months and to ease the crown's burden of proving, with the help of two psychiatrists, that an offender has to be declared a dangerous offender and now a long-term offender, according to the new terminology used in section 752.1 of the Code.
The aim of this bill is to have an individual considered to be a dangerous offender or a long-term offender given an indeterminate sentence. At present, in Canada, there are orders-not many admittedly-that set specific dates. In the future, the rule will be the same for everyone: indeterminate sentence. I think this shift will also foster a more uniform application of the law in Canada.
Finally, one last measure regarding dangerous offenders and long-term offenders. A person who has been declared a dangerous offender or a long-term offender will now have to wait not three years, but seven years to apply for parole to the National Parole Board. We can agree, in essence, with measures like these ones, given the rise in crime in society.
It is true that, in Canada, the trend generally is to say that crime is on the decrease. However, there is a rise in certain types of crimes we have not had to deal with in the past.
The proposed amendments are the new tools to deal with these different forms of crime. Traditionally, murders, theft or armed robberies accounted for some 80 per cent of the crimes brought before the courts.
In order to deal with specific crimes, we must give ourselves specific tools and modernize criminal law.
My comments apply to the bill generally. I also said at the beginning that I am not so happy about some provisions, while I truly dislike other ones, including section 810.2.
Should the bill be passed as it now stands, clause 810.2 and the ones that follow it would allow a judge, who has acquitted an individual, to impose measures to have the individual monitored. This contradicts traditional British criminal law, which is premised on the presumption of innocence and on the weight of an acquittal. How can we sentence someone who was acquitted? If one is guilty of a crime, he must pay for it by going to jail or, if the offence is minor, by paying a fine. However, a person who is acquitted can go home, unless he is being detained for another offence committed under other circumstances. A verdict of acquittal means the person is free to go. There is no grey area between the two possibilities.
The bill introduces the notion whereby someone can be acquitted but still be under probation. It basically says: "You are acquitted, but something about you makes me feel you are a risk to society. Therefore, for a period of some ten years, you will have to regularly report to police authorities, and you will have to stay home between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m.".
We cannot function with such rules in a society where the rule of law prevails. This is a debate that took place almost 320 years ago. In 1679, when the law of habeas corpus was passed under King Charles II, the issue was precisely that some people, whose face or behaviour the prince did not like, were detained in the Tower of London, by virtue of an order bearing the sovereign's seal. Parliament reacted by passing the law of habeas corpus , which gave people, and which still gives them, because it is enshrined in the Canadian Constitution, the right to petition a judge on any scrap of paper available-a piece of toilet paper was once used-to have the jailer bring them before the judge and justify the legality of their detention. That was what habeas corpus meant in 1679, and that is what it still means today. It is not often used in our country, precisely because it is there, a sword of Damocles preventing the violation of citizens' basic rights.
When a writ of habeas corpus is issued, prison authorities must explain why someone is being detained. One justification may be to show that there was a warrant of committal following sentencing by a judge at the conclusion of a duly held trial. But if there was an acquittal, the accused, who is no longer the accused, however, because he was acquitted and told: ``I acquit you'' is also told that now, for ten, three or five years, he will be the object of certain special measures.
In the provinces where it is possible, he could even be electronically monitored. He is told: "You will be required to wear a small bracelet and stay near a telephone line, and when the signal is interrupted or cut off, will come to your home to see if you are there", well, the accused, it would seem to me, is justified, under the Canadian Charter, under the rules of habeas corpus , in saying: ``I require you to justify the legality of my detention''.
This is a 300 year step back in the history of criminal law. Under no circumstances can we support provisions creating sentences for individuals who have been acquitted.
However, we can quite happily support more stringent, more appropriate measures for those found guilty who are at risk of reoffending. That is one thing, and Bill C-55 deals with that problem, but it is another thing to sentence, in a roundabout way, those who have already been acquitted. This is not a concept that belongs in our criminal law.
I taught criminal law for twenty some years and at the end of each session in various groups I invariably put the following question, or something along these lines: "What should be the sentence for someone who has just been acquitted for the third time of murder in the first degree?" I underlined the words "murder in the first degree". Invariably, two thirds of the class would tell me: life imprisonment. In the next class, I always got a kick out of telling them that we were lucky to live in a country where there were no sentences for people who had been acquitted.
If I go back to teaching law, I will have to revise my thinking. I will have to tell my students: now, because of Bill C-55, a person acquitted in our country can be sentenced. There is something fundamentally wrong with this.
Canadians know the rules of criminal law. We are all familiar with the concept of presumption of innocence. We all know that the crown is bound to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. I think people are most familiar with this aspect of the law because it is so often applied by the average person. The jury rule, which essentially goes back to 1215 and the Magna Carta, is a concept that has forged our legal thinking, even that of the average citizen.
When we talk to constituents in our ridings, they are often more familiar with the rules of criminal law than civil law. These are not complicated rules. They are simple rules based on logic and common sense. In this case, the government is no longer using common sense, and when concepts get confused, citizens get confused as well.
I hope, and the hon. member for Prince Albert-Churchill River might discuss this with his minister, that the idea of giving a sentence to a person who has been found not guilty will be dropped when the bill is considered in committee.
It is not our intention to vote against the bill at the second reading stage. We want this bill to be studied in committee. However, we do not want a replay of what happened in the case of Bill C-45 last June, when the government wanted Parliament to pass all stages of the bill in a matter of days. There should be a thorough study of the bill.
And should the government ever decide to maintain the provisions in section 810.2-a government that is so fond of making references to the Supreme Court-I think that before issuing an order in council for the coming into force of this bill, the bill should be referred to the Supreme Court for an opinion on the constitutionality of section 810.2 and following, in the light of our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and, more specifically, sections 11(d) and 11( h ) of the Charter.
I will read these two sections. We read the following:
- Any person charged with an offence has the right: d ) to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal; h ) if finally acquitted of the offence, not to be tried for it again and, if finally found guilty and punished for the offence, not to be tried or punished for it again;
This principle is clear in the Charter. It is wrong to say that the law is contrary to the Charter. If it is, it is because the Charter recognizes certain fundamental values with which Canadians identify. These fundamental values have been evolved for centuries. The book is red, but when Mr. Trudeau had the Charter adopted in 1982, it did not drop out of the clear blue sky. It is a codification of what has been built up over the centuries in the United Kingdom, here and in other countries with a system based on British criminal law and where there were also comparable civil liberties. Before moving away from that, or running the risk of doing so, a detailed examination needs to be carried out.
I believe that the government is taking considerable risk, perhaps unawares. If it has not seen that risk, probably the questions we are raising today will prompt it to take a second look, or, to use the oft-repeated expression, to go back to the drawing board. No one will hold it against the government if it has to improve its own bill when it comes to the committee stage, after redoing its homework.
If the government is aware, and is doing this knowingly, one may well wonder what its purpose is. Does it really want to change the Criminal Code in order to improve the application and administration of justice, or does it want to make a political statement? Is it courting a certain segment of the electorate who would be delighted to see the innocent detained?
The other day I heard the hon. member for Crowfoot defending some positions similar to mine. In appearing before a parliamentary committee discussing a bill, he said that it is one thing to punish a person who has been found guilty, but it is quite another thing to take away the freedom or fundamental rights of a person who is presumed innocent, or worse yet who has been found innocent of the crime of which he was accused. This is a serious reservation.
If the same bill were to come back to us at third reading with no guarantee of the rights of those who have been acquitted, potentially anyone of us in this House, you, me, anyone, could be the target of section 810.2, where there is a return to guilt by association, guilt by suspicion, like there was under the Mussolini regime in the 1930s. Then anyone could be found guilty on legitimate suspicion.
In Canada, we operate on the principle that proof must be established beyond a reasonable doubt. Other jurisdictions in other countries say that there must be sufficiently convincing proof. Italy in the 30's established the criterion of legitimate suspicion. Why? Among other things, in order to fight organized crime. This did not work, because it constantly lowered the degree of evidence a judge needed to find someone guilty.
What is legitimate suspicion? This can expand to crimes that may be committed, thought crimes, any kind of crime. It is a criterion which does not go into sufficient depth. With section 810.2, the government is going back to the Mussolini laws of 1930, which allowed people to be found guilty based on legitimate suspicion.
On the one hand, using the criterion of proof beyond reasonable doubt, someone is acquitted. On the other hand, using the criterion of legitimate suspicion, someone is acquitted, but subject to certain measures, to supervision for a given number of years. There is something wrong with this.
I believe that, the further this bill moves along in the House and in committee, the more it will be realized that these clauses are privative and need to be taken out of the bill. On these grounds, the official opposition will support second reading of this bill, but will take steps to see that section 810.2 and all those clauses which, to all intents and purposes, are intended to sentence an acquitted person, are deleted.