Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to the motion presented by the hon. member, my colleague from Okanagan-Shuswap. I will read the motion again so that we know what we are debating today.
This is a motion that is meant to be a guideline for future legislation. We are not debating legislation now. The motion reads:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should consider the advisability of amending section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, according to the amending formula provided for in section 38 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which amendment would read as follows: "Every citizen of Canada, except one who is (a) confined in a penitentiary, a prison, or a psychiatric institution, or (b) at large from a place referred to in paragraph (a), with or without a lawful excuse, has the right to vote in an election of Members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein".
I would like to touch on three areas related to this motion. First, I would like to talk a little about how we got to where we are, how we got to be in the House debating whether or not prisoners should be allowed to vote. It seems absolutely incredible that things have slipped far and we have to be here debating this motion today.
Second, I want to talk a little about what my constituents said when a court decided that prisoners should have the right to vote.
Third, I would like to discuss briefly the issue of people who have committed so-called less serious crimes and whether they should be allowed to vote.
What was the direct cause for the debate today was the decision in Sauvé v. the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada. There are many other things behind that and I will talk a little about a few of them.
Prior to this decision, persons imprisoned in a correctional institute who were sentenced for two years or more could not vote in federal elections. In Sauvé, the court declared this law to be invalid because it violated the prisoners' right to vote under the charter and because there was no compelling justification for violating this right.
I would like to touch briefly on the purpose for removing the right to vote in the first place. Some of the reasons given was the enhancement of civic responsibility, the respect for the rule of law and the imposition of an additional sanction on persons committing serious anti-social acts.
The hon. member for Okanagan-Shuswap covered very well why prisoners should not be given the right to vote so I will not get into any more discussion on that. The question I have to ask is: Are these not far more important to society than the rights of individual prisoners? In other words, are these reasons given that disallow prisoners from voting not more important than the rights of the individual prisoner? I will talk a little bit more about that later.
The Sauvé decision concludes that disenfranchising prisoners would make prisoners feel isolated from the community, would impede the subsequent reintegration of prisoners into the community and would prevent prisoners from experiencing any of the rehabilitative effects which flow from political participation. These are the main reasons given by Sauvé in his decision.
Again, by removing the franchise from prisoners, Judge Sauvé reasoned that this could make prisoners feel isolated from the community. Well, prisoners are isolated from the community. The intent is for prisoners to be isolated from the community. That is part of the punishment and part of the deterrent for criminals to discourage them from committing crimes. The other reasons given by Judge Sauvé really do not make any more sense than that.
When my constituents heard that the supreme court had ruled that all prisoners, including people like Clifford Olson, would have the right to vote, they could not believe it. Few issues had sparked this kind of reaction from my constituents as this issue had. People just could not believe it had happened. They asked me how we had come to this. They wanted to know how this kind of thing would happen and how we had arrived at this. They also wanted to know how the court in Canada was making the law. They asked me whether it was not my job as a member of Parliament and the job of the House of Commons to make the law.
Those were some of the feelings, some of the questions and some of the reactions of my constituents to this decision. I wonder whether the constituents of the members across the floor, who are heckling and speaking out against the motion presented by my hon. colleague, reacted any differently. I doubt very much that they did. In fact, they have acknowledged that their constituents reacted in exactly the same way which does not surprise me.
How have we arrived at this point? If we could pick a pivotal time in history, we would have to go back to 1972. It was a Liberal government. I have seen the quote in Hansard where Solicitor General Goyer said that the Government of Canada should change the main focus and the priorities of the justice system so that no longer was the protection of the citizenry the most important focus and the top priority. He said that we should change that focus so that the rights and rehabilitation of the criminal were top priority and only secondary were the rights of citizens to be safe and to feel safe in their homes. It is unbelievable. That is not a direct quote; it is a paraphrase but it is accurate.
It was a Liberal solicitor general and the present Liberals have no different view from that. They still believe that the rights and rehabilitation of the criminal should be top priority. They are wrong and Canadians say they are wrong. The top priority should be the protection of our citizens in all cases.
Some people would argue that criminals who have committed so-called petty crimes should be given the right to vote while those who have committed more serious crimes should not have the right to vote.
I want to refer to something that happened in New York City a few years back. William J. Bratton was a former police officer who became head of security for the New York subway system. Bratton enforced this kind of environment in the subway system. He said all criminals, including those who commit the crime of writing graffiti on walls or panhandling, should be treated as serious offenders. He cracked down on this so-called petty crime.
By cracking down on petty crime Mr. Bratton lowered the serious crime as well in a dramatic way. When he later became the police commissioner of New York City he engaged the same policy to take petty crime seriously. When he did that the crime rate in New York City dropped dramatically.
When considering this motion it is important that people who commit petty crimes know that even a petty crime is serious and is a good enough reason to lose the right to vote.