I am coming to that, gentlemen, if you would just wait a minute.
My concern with this legislation has to do with electronic monitoring provision. Ironically I find myself in agreement with some of the observations of the member for Fraser Valley East.
Last night I took time at home in my apartment to read George Orwell's famous novel 1984 . George Orwell, if members recall, made famous the expression ``big brother''. The novel was written in 1949 just after the world had experienced the tyranny of Hitler and had just entered into the deepest phase of the cold war when red army troops had seized eastern Europe. Most of the former democracies and countries of eastern Europe had fallen under the totalitarian sway of Stalin. Orwell's book is a depiction of the ultimate totalitarian state in which big brother, the state, controls every aspect of human behaviour. Orwell creates a picture of this man-his name is Winston-in which Winston's only problem is that he wants to express a certain amount of individuality. He wants to be a human being, if you will.
However, the state has prescribed the type of behaviour it wants from its citizens and has set up an elaborate means of monitoring their actions. Ultimately the state's purpose, big brother in George Orwell's novel, is to put shackles on the freedom of movement of people in society so that they always have to act according to what the state prescribes as the correct behaviour.
Orwell in writing this novel created the ultimate nightmare. It led to a series of other books and popular culture stories that involved the state control of individual behaviour by electronic means, by implanting devices that controlled individuals and restrained them. You can see the parallels that come out of 1984 which in that period was regarded as the ultimate horror for society, state control.
Then I read in the proposed legislation that the government is now considering electronic monitoring. These monitors are intended to be a sort of bracelet. People are ordered to wear these bracelets to restrain certain forms of behaviour. The bracelet can be used to keep track of their whereabouts. If the judge wants to prevent a person coming near some home because it has been decided that the person is a threat to someone, this bracelet would electronically monitor the whereabouts of the person.
Once we enter into this whole business of an electronic shackle, and that is what it is, an electronic shackle, an electronic ball and chain, all kinds of opportunities present themselves in the George Orwellian model. We can have a bracelet that remotely inflicts pain on an individual wearing this bracelet should that individual be about to engage in behaviour that the state wants to prevent.
As the bill is currently constituted, it basically addresses people who have the potential of committing violent offences. It could also be used on, say, a heroin addict. With a smart chip in the electronic bracelet if the addict approached a drug dealer the chip could scent the heroin and could immediately administer an electric shock to the individual to prevent this behaviour. And so it goes. The possibilities with a smart chip in this kind of bracelet are endless. We could restrain all kinds of behaviour remotely.
According to this legislation it is proposed that this is going to be aimed at only a certain type of offender. The problem is that when we get into this kind of thing, we are addressing very fundamental liberties. We are going right to the bottom of our basic freedoms. It is the same thing as our freedom of speech and the constant struggle there is between how to put limits on pornography while still maintaining freedom of speech.
An electronic shackle is the ultimate limitation on liberty. It allows the individual some movement in society, but in fact it is the same type of shackle that the Romans used and that was used in the slave trade.
I will explain what a shackle is as opposed to a rope or a prison cell. A shackle is restraint. We have used the nice words judicial restraint. In fact a shackle is something that limits behaviour.
Let me give an classic example. When slaves used to work in the fields picking cotton or sugar cane, they were shackled with an iron bar, the idea being that if the slave attempted to escape through the fields the shackle would get caught in the underbrush restraining their movements so that they could not get away. The ball and chain held the same idea. The ball was a weight that they had to drag and they could only get so far before they became exhausted. These were the means used by overseers to restrain their slaves in the field for work and not actually have to keep them in prisons. It was an economic tool that was very useful in the days of the slave trade.
To me there is not a great distinction between this electronic shackle and the old ball and chain. Let me just finish a point here. As proposed, this electronic shackle is only going to apply to certain types of individuals who pose certain types of risks.
One of the things I have learned in my three years in the House of Commons is that the great danger when we pass legislation that contains a subsection of a subsection that actually impinges on basic liberties is that while in this particular legislation it may be restricted to one group of individuals, at a later time legislation may come along that will pass in this House that will extend the application of the provision.
I will give an example. Right now the legislation applies to individuals who pose a threat of inflicting bodily harm. I think it is directed primarily toward sexual offenders. However, drunk drivers are a threat to society. Drunk drivers are capable of inflicting physical injury and death. Why not some day have this bracelet imposed on people who have two or more convictions for impaired driving? As members can see, it is so easy to take it to the next step and the next step and the next step until we have an Orwellian state in which any form of dissent or some form of dissent results in an electronic shackle. We can do all kinds of things with that. We can prevent all forms of behaviour remotely.
Where does this concept come from? I suggest the concept comes once again from our neighbour to the south which is confronted with a major crime problem. It is an epidemic problem in the United States. The Americans are building prisons faster than any country in the world and they are actually experiencing economic difficulties because of the difficulty they have in providing enough prison spaces for the number of people they are incarcerating.
One of their reactions to crime, which has been a subject of much debate in this House, has been unlimited acquisition of firearms. Canada has reacted in quite a Canadian way to this issue. We have had a very aggressive debate in the House about the whole question of firearms. Regardless of what side we are all on in the House, we all agree that Canadians do not want to see the weapons possession that exists in the United States. The government has gone to great lengths with the gun control bill to create a different answer to violence that does not involve the availability of guns for protection. Therefore, Canadians have found an alternate solution to what the Americans have found with respect to arming themselves against the criminal menace.
The other side of the coin is that the Americans have come out with this electronic shackling as an economic measure. They are building so many prisons and it is costing them so much that it is cheaper and more economically feasible, instead of putting people in jail, to apply electronic shackles. I am not saying they have gone that far yet, but the opportunity is there. We can see in American society the advantages of using electronic shackles to prevent people from committing armed robberies. They could be used in the drug trade. If these things could be put on people, crime could be limited in certain areas.
The difficulty is that in the United States, crime is centred upon one group in society. The Americans collect statistics based on race. I hate to bring this issue up, but we must talk about the Americans. They feel they have demonstrated to their satisfaction that blacks in particular have a higher proportion of incarceration than other categories in their society.
That is a frightening statistic. I am pleased this is not the kind of statistic which is collected by Canada. Nevertheless, because the Americans are very conscious of this, if electronic shackling is pursued to its ultimate end, then we will see the re-enslavement of a people in the United States. Instead of being shackled to the ball and chain of the overseer on the cotton plantation, they will be shackled by an electronic device which will be more common in one racial group than in any other. This has the appalling potential of returning to the 19th century to an era which we must leave behind.
We as Canadians, on all sides of the House representing all points of view, must not be driven by the type of social forces and dilemmas the Americans are confronting, be it the question of the availability of firearms or the question of the availability of an electronic shackle, an electronic ball and chain. I am very concerned that my government has brought forward the suggestion of the electronic shackle.
I agree with my colleague from Fraser Valley East that it is particularly dangerous because it is not intended to apply simply to people who are convicted of crimes, it is also designed to apply to people who may be perceived as potential criminals. Before the suspect has actually committed the crime, they may be shackled. That is a huge step. I would say it is a dangerous and a frightening step.
There is an easy solution to the problem. We can have this type of restraint if we write into the legislation that it is voluntary. The person to whom the order is to be applied would have the option of electing whether they will go to jail or some other option instead of accepting the electronic shackle.
In some instances I would think that people would voluntarily accept the electronic shackle. If a heroin addict wants to shake his habit, or if a person is a pedophile and cannot control his or her impulses but wants to control them, they might want to have a shackle. Then it becomes a positive thing because we are respecting human will.
I hope the members of the justice committee will read my words and the words of others who have been worried about this one provision. I hope they will think very carefully about the option of making it a voluntary provision.
I will make another analogy. Anyone who is a farmer will recognize what is called a cattle grate. When a farmer has cattle in the field and he wants to go back and forth with his tractor and he does not want to go to the trouble of opening the gate every time he goes through, he takes the gate off and he puts in what is called a cattle grate. It consists of a few bars of a certain spacing and is about a foot deep. The cattle can never cross. When they approach, they see the grate. They know that if they try to cross they could get caught in the grates and could break their legs. The animals recognize this and consequently they are restrained in the field pen.
The grate works very well for all hoofed animals. It is very very good for cattle. It works for pigs, it works for horses and it works for sheep. One thing we do not want to do in any legislation we pass in this House is to reduce our allowance for human will. We are human beings with some freedom of will, some ability to decide between right and wrong. When we reduce human beings by a shackle or by any kind of restraint to the level of animals, I think we are creating a very sad and despairing problem.