The hon. member opposite does not want to listen to this. I recognize that facts are always troublesome to members of the Reform Party.
It was a government bill but the basic outline of the bill had been designed by a committee. No matter what the hon. member for Fraser Valley East has said, there had been a previous court decision on this very issue. The law as it existed before Bill C-114 was passed provided that no person incarcerated in a prison had the right to vote. There had already been a decision, I believe by the Supreme Court of Canada, although my recollection is hazy. It has been some years since I have looked at this problem and I did not plan on speaking today, but hearing so many inaccuracies I thought I should try to correct the record.
There had been a court decision concerning the previous law. It was for that reason that when Bill C-114 came along, the committee considered the issue of the right of inmates to vote and came to a decision.
There was a referendum in Canada prior to the passage of Bill C-114. In that referendum because of the court decision throwing out the provision in the electoral law that prohibited all persons in prisons from voting, all federal inmates in Canada had the right to vote in that referendum. Some did exercise their franchise and voted in the referendum. If we listened to members of the Reform Party we would think the sky had fallen in but it did not. The referendum took place and those persons exercised certain voting rights.
Then the committee studied the whole issue and decided to recommend there be a limited right to vote for persons incarcerated in prisons. My recollection of the committee report is hazy. I will tell the member that I am accurate within two years. I am surprised he has not looked at this because it might have been relevant to his speech, but as I say, facts are troublesome to members of the Reform Party. The fact is the committee recommended that all inmates who were serving a sentence of seven years or more be permitted to vote. In my recollection that was a unanimous recommendation from the committee.
The Conservative government, notwithstanding the fact that it had a majority on the committee which agreed to that recommendation, decided that was too generous and so it opted for a two-year term. That is, every person serving a sentence of two years or more would be disqualified from voting. It meant that all federal inmates were automatically disqualified because by definition persons serving prison sentences in a federal institution must have been sentenced to two years or more.
I recall very well the day the bill was debated because I was the electoral reform critic for the Liberal Party. I moved amendments to this section because I said at the time, and it is on the record, that this section would be thrown out by the courts as being too restrictive.
Seven years was chosen based on the legal advice that the committee received at the time. We had to have something reasonable in terms of length in order to justify it under the charter of rights and freedoms. It was the committee's unanimous view that seven years was a reasonable time and could be defended before a court. It also constituted a reasonable restriction on the right to vote given in the charter which granted to every Canadian citizen the right to vote.
The members of the Reform Party want to take that right away from citizens that they consider unworthy of the right. Once you start inching away at who is unworthy you can start to whittle away other rights.
I know there will be some members in the House who might want to take away rights of members of the Bloc Quebecois to vote. I know there are some who would like to take away the right of members of the Reform Party to vote. I am not one of them. I am a firm believer in the principle that citizens should have the right to
vote. That principle is stated in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which I fully support.
I moved amendments that would have taken away any restriction. I moved a seven-year amendment. I believe I moved a five-year amendment in an effort to get a compromise that I thought could be supported before the courts and that would win the support of members of the House. The Conservative House leader at the time, the Hon. Harvie Andre, would hear none of it. He was insisting on the two-year rule and it was that or nothing. Because the bill had a lot of other amendments in it besides this one item, we agreed to pass the bill.
I remember the day we did it because some fancy agreements were made between the parties to get the bill through. I think it was a Friday afternoon before Easter or something like that. It was certainly a time before the House was to break for a period of at least a week.
I remember the day. This particular clause caused great difficulty because in my view it was unconstitutional and would be found to be so by a court. And it was. The surprising thing is that the government is bothering to appeal this. In my view it is a waste of money. This clause is contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.