Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to talk a little about Bill C-55 today.
When I was on my feet about two days ago speaking on Bill C-45, I was talking about the member for Kingston and the Islands who was very worried about how he gets hoodwinked by the bills in this place. I think he will be hoodwinked again by this one. He has said publicly that he does not read all the bills but he really should read this one.
I think he is about to be hoodwinked not in the way the Canadian people are going to be hoodwinked by this, thinking that it is actually a good bill. He is going to be hoodwinked because he thinks we are getting too tough on criminals. He actually voted against Bill C-45 because he was worried we were getting too tough. It absolutely amazes me. It may be very disappointing for him that the Reform Party is having such an effect on the government side of the House that we are beginning to make some progress in the area of justice reforms.
Getting tough on criminals works. I know the member for Kingston and the Islands feels he gets hoodwinked by these things but getting tough on criminals really does work.
I used some statistics the other day which are worth repeating in connection with this bill. It reinforces the idea that if we get tough on these people they stop using the system. That is a very good argument also why we should not have this six-month window which is built into this bill for determining whether or not someone is a dangerous offender.
They are going to use that. They are going to use the system. They study the law books while they are locked up in the clink. They are going to look at the law books and say that they only have to be good for the six-month period and then all hell breaks loose but it is okay, because they got past that dangerous offender window.
I would like to present some statistics that support the view that getting tough on crime works very well. In 1989 the bureau for justice statistics issued some estimates of how many crimes were prevented in the United States while criminals were locked up rather than walking on the streets. This was studied between 1973 and 1989, a 16-year period which is an extensive study.
Analyst Patrick Langan of the bureau for justice statistics said that between 1973 and 1989 locking criminals up instead of allowing them to go free cut the number of rapes by 66,000, robberies by 323,000, assaults by 380,000, and burglaries by 3.3 million. The conclusion of the report was that imprisonment clearly contributes to major cuts in the number and cost of violent crimes. That does not take into account the physical cost in injury and the monetary cost that comes from having had these people out destroying people's property.
In 1995 another study was done at Princeton. Criminologists John DiIulio and Anne Morrison Piehl wrote a report. They estimated the actual cost savings to society when felons were locked in prison as opposed to walking the streets. They studied 100 convicted felons who offended at the median rate, that is, some of them reoffended when they were let out and some of them did not. They found that the average cost to society for a felon who was released was $4.6 million but the average cost of keeping them locked up was $2.5 million. It was half the cost to society in
monetary terms to keep these people locked up. As I mentioned earlier, that does not even take into account all the physical damage that is done which really destroys people's lives.
There is an additional study which was published on August 29, 1995 in the Investors' Business Daily . There was a full page of justice information headed: ``Does crime pay? Not if criminals do hard time''. Mr. Barnes wrote that in 1994, University of Arizona economist Michael Block and researcher Steven Twist compared crime victimization rates with imprisonment rates from 1960 to 1992. That is a 32-year study. They found that the 10 states which had the highest imprisonment rates experienced an 8 per cent drop in violent crime over the period, while the 10 states with the lowest imprisonment rates saw their violent crime rates jump by 51 per cent over the same period.
How much proof do we need to see that keeping these bad guys locked up actually saves damage, saves costs and it really helps society? Surely those on the other side of the House who are always arguing for women's rights, for rights for the less fortunate in society, should be interested in those statistics which indicated that 66,000 rapes and 323,000 assaults were prevented by having people locked up.
I do not have any statistics for Canada but it stands to reason that we could transpose them at least at a 10 per cent level. We would see the enormous amount of money, the enormous amount of physical damage, the enormous amount of suffering we would be saving if we had a get tough approach to crime.
As my colleagues have said, there are provisions in this bill that are a good step forward. We are very proud in the Reform Party that we have been able to push the justice minister this far. I really do wish that the bill also dealt with habitual repeat offenders who are only using our justice system for their own ends. I will give a couple of examples of the sorts of things I mean.
The headline of an article in yesterday's Vancouver Sun reads: Drug trafficker allowed to remain in Canada''. The piece reads:The federal court has stayed a deportation order for an Iranian convicted of cocaine trafficking and assault. The order for Abdul Nasser Taher Azar was put on hold Tuesday pending the outcome of further legal proceedings in his case. Taher Azar is fighting deportation claiming he could face a death sentence if sent back to Iran''.
I probably have the largest Iranian community in the whole of Canada in my riding. The first words that come out of the mouths of refugee claimants, usually bogus, who call my office for assistance are: "I'll be killed if I get sent back to Iran". It is the very first sentence.
So this guy claimed he would be killed if he were sent back to Iran. Immigration authorities consider him a risk to Canadian society. What happened? The federal court let him stay here.
He has a wife and three children who live in Victoria. He said that he has changed his habits and will become a productive member of Canadian society. I cannot say how many times I have heard that nonsense. It is absolute nonsense.
I could stand here the whole afternoon and give case after case in my riding of these people who use the system because they know how it works. They come in as bogus refugees, get married all of a sudden and have children. We know what that does. Then they can separate and spend years in court tying it up over custody battles while we pay them welfare to stay here and they keep saying that they are going to be killed if they get shipped out.
Then what happens at the end of it? Two people in my riding went back to Iran of their own accord after arguing for four years that they would be killed. It is the most ridiculous nonsense and it goes on and on in cases like this.
These are habitual repeat offenders, not dangerous offenders as dealt with in this bill. But I wish we had something in the bill to deal with the type of person who is really just using our system.
I have a case in my riding right now that is typical of this, which I have been trying to get the immigration minister to act on. This person first came to Canada in the late 1970s, in the days when we actually had teeth in some of our laws, when we treated criminals like criminals. Very quickly it was discovered that he was a criminal. So he was deported.
They actually deported people back then, but not today. We have 1,300 people in Vancouver alone awaiting deportation, 906 of whom are from mainland China.
So what did he do? The first chance he got after he was deported to Iran he raced over to Paris. Tell me how he could afford that when he claimed he had no money. A couple of years later he went to the Canadian embassy and applied again. Did he tell the officials that he had been previously deported from Canada? Not a chance. The next minute he was back here.
About four years went by and the police were tailing him because he was forging passports so that other criminal friends of his could come in from Iran. I got a call in my office from a lady in the community who said: "Everybody in Iran knew he was criminal. Why did you let him in?"
I contacted the police and discovered they were investigating him for passport fraud. They picked him up for passport forgery on the day he was sworn in as a Canadian citizen. The interesting part of this story is that he had sent someone else to stand in for him at
the swearing in ceremony. So it was not actually him who was sworn in. He only went to watch. It is amazing what these people do.
His case for the passport forgery was dragged out and went on for a year and a half before the judge finally sentenced him to three months at home on probation. I would think that passport forgery goes to the very heart of our being as Canadians. He helps criminals come here and what does he get? Three months at home. That is where he did his business. It was a home based business. He did not pay any taxes or GST and here he was working at home.
Then finally he was under another deportation order, so he appealed, if members can believe it, under the charter of rights. In the 1970s when he was first deported he did not have an interpreter present and therefore his human rights were infringed on.
Now that case is tied up in the courts. The first hearing is next March. I am willing to bet he will be here for another eight years before we finally get rid of him. And the time we are paying him welfare and he is driving brand new cars. Now how does he buy those on welfare? I would like a little investigation into the source of his income.
These are typical of the sorts of things that happen under our weak kneed, bleeding heart government. It will not see the problems. It continues on and on about the terrible childhood these people have had and that there is really no bad in the world at all. The only bad in the world is that we actually lock some people up occasionally. We really should not lock them up at all. We should just let them walk around, take them to counselling occasionally and they will completely mend their ways. And put a bracelet on them, as my colleague says.
I have been digressing a little from Bill C-55, but I think members get the point. This expands out to being more than just Bill C-55. It is an entire rot that goes right through the system.
One thing I did today in the House was to introduce during routine proceedings a new private member's bill which I hope eventually will be drawn from the barrel. We know it is a bit of lottery. There is a bit of a move afoot now to actually get some of these private members' bills votable. It would be wonderful if they all were. My submission to the commission, incidentally, is that all of these bills should be votable. I would like my bill to be votable because it deals with this very problem. If passed by the House it would actually allow provincial judges to deport criminals in lieu of sentence so that we could get rid of them right away. As soon as these bogus refugees commit a crime, let us get them right out of the country.
I know the minister of immigration has argued they really should serve their time here so it will be in Canada. However, that is just a crock. What happens is that they get out on parole and parole is considered to be part of the sentence. They are wandering around free in society and the immigration people cannot deport them.
The first thing they do when they are coming near the end of their parole and the immigration people are standing behind them with the bracelets ready to go is just grab a brick and toss it through the nearest jeweller's window or hit somebody in the mouth and that starts the case all over again. They can go back to jail for another little while and another probation.
I could give literally dozens of examples from my riding alone. When we think that there are 1,300 just in the Vancouver area, we do not have to work too hard to see how many there are in each riding. When we also work out that certain groups tend to use the system a little more, it does not take long to work out how bad the problem really is.
They are probably all asking for a free flag. It would not surprise me a bit if the thousand free flags in the Fraser Valley East riding were all ordered by these people so they can walk around waving them as if they were Canadians.
The only thing that bothered me during question period today was when the Deputy Prime Minister stood up and said that the member for Fraser Valley East had used taxpayer money to fax for some free flags. It is a shame he did not take a $10 bill out of his pocket and say: "Mr. Speaker, I will pay for the faxes if she will pay for the flags". That would have been justice.
I digress again, but it really is related to this whole problem of the justice issues in Canada. I think I will wind up here because I would like my colleagues to have an opportunity to also speak to this. However, I do want to mention a few kind words to members on the other side because I know they do not like to be spoken to harshly.
There are indeed some good provisions in this bill. They do not go quite far enough. I do not think we are going to stall the passage of the bill. We will work with the government, hopefully to try to improve it a little. I hope the people on the other side of the House, who cannot deny the phone calls and letters they have been getting from their constituents on a get tougher approach to crime, will get behind a few amendments to this bill to tighten it up a little.