Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak on the motion put forth by my colleague from Surrey-White Rock-South Langley. It amends the Criminal Code to deal with those who are convicted of sexual offences, sexual assault, sexual assaults involving a child, and aggravated sexual assault. The motion calls for ensuring that the convicted individual be examined by two psychiatrists to determine whether they should have the designation of dangerous offender.
Why bring this motion forth in the first place? The reason is that the justice system has been unable or unwilling at times to protect innocent civilians against such individuals who pose a threat to society.
The designation is used but perhaps not often enough. The reason is that a bias exists within our justice system. The bias is in favour of the convicted criminal and not in favour of the innocent civilian. This started in the 1980s when the Liberal solicitor general of the day stated that from now on the justice department would focus on the rehabilitation of criminals instead of the protection of society. In our view that is not what the justice department is all about and my colleague's motion is aimed at reversing that in part.
We do not believe that locking up criminals is the answer. We do not believe that throwing away the key is the answer. Prevention certainly is. However there are individuals who have proven by their actions to be fundamentally violent sexual abusers and pose a continuing threat to society.
I have a real life example. When I worked in jails as a physician I was called upon during the weekend from time to time when an individual was about to be released but was violent. I went into a cell where a person went berserk and began beating up the individuals in the cell, including me and a number of guards. I had to commit the person who then had to be sent to a psychiatric institute. If I had not done that, the individual who had a conviction sheet as long as my arm, would have been released on the unsuspecting public only to commit another crime.
We should also look at this motion and apply it to those individuals who are about to be released at the end of their parole or when their warrant date is up. There are individuals who escape through the cracks. If they escape through the cracks and are let out into society, the only people who will be hurt are innocent civilians. We can also apply this designation to having two psychiatrists examine individuals who might pose a threat to society upon release.
It is important to say that the reason my colleague is putting this motion forth is fundamentally to protect innocent civilians. We
have seen a number of tragic cases such as the recent case of Melanie Carpenter. She was murdered by Fernand Auger, an individual who never ever should have been released from jail to walk the streets.
When this motion passes-which I hope it does and the Liberal members should be embarrassed if they do not support this motion-two other aspects have to be looked at. The first aspect is amending the charter of rights and freedoms so that designations of dangerous offender are not overturned using the charter. The second aspect is the division between criminal responsibilities which fall under the federal government and mental health responsibilities which fall under the provincial government. That is why the Minister of Justice must work with his counterparts, the provincial attorneys general, to try to work this out. It will be important for this motion to come into effect.
There are other strategies to deal with sexual violent offenders. There should be a national flagging system for violent sexual offenders and sexual offenders in general. This is long overdue. Now when sexual offenders move from one province to another, the police have no way of knowing who they are, where they are going and what their prior convictions are. It is important that we have a national flagging system to enable justice and law to take its course.
We need effective and consistent prosecution of sexual offenders. We also need better assessment before sentencing. This applies not only to dangerous sexual offenders but also to violent offenders in general. Right now because of the harried crown counsels and because of a lack of resources, we are unable to do that. We can change the way our spending takes place in order to ensure that this occurs for the protection of individuals. People, such as parole officers, who decide whether or not to deem a person a dangerous offender must be held accountable for their decisions.
Clearly we must also prevent the development of dangerous and sexual offenders from occurring. We are dealing appropriately with those individuals after they raise their heads. Many of these individuals have also been victims of terrible sexual abuse and violence themselves but it does not exonerate them from what they have done. It provides us with a window of opportunity in preventing these individuals from coming before our justice system.
We have to look at children who are at risk of violence, sexual abuse and neglect. We must identify those family units and children so that we can help them early on and prevent these things from occurring. We must identify families at risk and prevent these tragedies from taking place. For those tragic souls who do become victims of violence and sexual abuse, those children must be dealt with sensitively, compassionately and with the appropriate counselling, medical and psychological treatment they need.
We have to look at these individuals who become sexual violent offenders. They do not have the pillars of a normal psyche needless to say. Those pillars were destroyed, malformed or did not occur early on in their development. It is important to identify these individuals so that we bear upon them the appropriate treatment and counselling to ensure that they do have some semblance of normal development. That is the only way we are going to prevent these individuals from being terribly dysfunctional.
This not only needs to be applied to sexual or dangerous offenders but also to a number of other conduct disorders and criminal behaviour that occurs in our society. Many of these individuals also do not have the pillars of a normal psyche.
The parents must be brought into the early education system. Many of the parents of the family units where these children are abused do not know how to be good parents. It is not a federal responsibility but it is important to bring in the provincial ministers of education and the provincial attorneys general and their federal counterparts to deal with the situation nationally.
Unless we deal with the prevention of crime, we are not going to do what we want to do, which is to decrease the overall level of crime in this country.
In closing, much has been mentioned about the cost. The cost is important but the redistribution of the spending is important. First and fundamentally, to uphold the essence of the motion which is the protection of innocence in society, our justice department must move from protecting the convicted criminal to having as its primary focus the protection of innocent individuals. It is also important to focus on prevention. I remind the House that it is not only women who are victims of sexual abuse, but also men and young boys.
In closing, I hope the House is going to pass Motion No. 116 of my colleague for Surrey-White Rock-South Langley so that Canada will be a safer place.