Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address the House on private member's Bill C-224, an act to amend the Criminal Code with respect to the arrest without warrant provisions.
The hon. member has spoken, as is his wont to do, with quite a bit of passion about the bill. In reality his bill does two things, one of which was done a long time ago in the Criminal Code.
He is trying to set out in section 495 of the code the authority of a peace officer to arrest without warrant someone who on reasonable grounds is believed to have breached or who is about to breach a condition of probation. Second, he wants to amend the same provision to give new authority to the peace officer to arrest without warrant an offender who on reasonable grounds is believed to have breached or who is about to breach a condition of parole or unescorted temporary absence.
What is interesting about this is that while public protection from conditionally released offenders is a matter of very serious concern to the government, an area where we have already made several legislative and practical improvements, there are some misconceptions which have to be cleared up.
With respect to violation of probation conditions, I stress that section 740 of the Criminal Code, which the hon. member may not have directed his attention to, already authorizes a peace officer to arrest without warrant persons found to be breaching a condition of their probation. More specifically, his bill tries to put the same condition into another section, which is redundant. This provision defines breach of probation as a criminal offence, which is very important.
Pursuant to Section 495 of the code, is the focus of this private member's bill, police have the authority to arrest without warrant any person who is caught in the act of committing a criminal offence. A breach of probation is a criminal offence.
Nevertheless, this is an important public protection issue which the government has taken many steps to effectively address. I really would like to set the record straight on this.
With respect to breach of a probation order the government has tightened the provisions in the code to promote stricter compliance with these orders. Bill C-41, which was opposed because of the two little words sexual orientation by the member who proposes this bill, comes into force in the next few months, allowing a breach of probation to be prosecuted, not just summarily but also by indictment, which means much higher penalties.
This change means police will have the authority to arrest without warrant any person who on reasonable grounds is believed to have breached or is about to breach a condition of probation.
This fully addresses the first amendment proposed by the hon. member, and quite frankly makes clause 1(1) of his bill redundant.
Bill C-41 also increases the penalty for breach of probation on summary conviction to 18 months. The hon. member opposed that bill. In the case of an indictable conviction it increases it to two years. It actually goes much farther than Bill C-224 does.
With respect to breaches of parole and unescorted temporary absence conditions, the current legislation provides authority for the National Parole Board and Correctional Service Canada to issue a suspension warrant for the offender's arrest by police. This authority for a suspension warrant is provided under section 116 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act for unescorted temporary absences from an institution and under section 135 of the same act for breaches of parole.
Both the correctional service and the parole board have the authority to issue suspension warrants for an offender on an unescorted temporary absence where grounds for granting the absence have changed or no longer exist or when new information becomes available that would alter the original decision.
With respect to an offender on parole, Correctional Service Canada and the parole board can issue suspension warrants at any time when they believe it to be necessary and reasonable in order to protect society.
I agree that some may reasonably question why the police do not have the same direct authority to arrest parolees as they do for probationers. There is an answer to that. It lies in the fact that a condition of probation is set out in a court disposition. It is the breach of that order or the expected breach of that order which gives the officer the right to arrest without warrant.
A breach of probation becomes a criminal offence because it constitutes a violation of a court order or defiance of a court order. When a breach of probation occurs, police have the authority to arrest without warrant, as they would any other person committing a criminal offence.
Parole and temporary absences, on the other hand, are not court orders. They are conditional release terms granted by the parole board or Correctional Service Canada which are designed to facilitate the reintegration of offenders into the community of law-abiding citizens. These conditions place limits on the freedoms of parolees while they are out of the correctional facility. They could apply to a variety of matters, conditions such as the requirement to return to a halfway house at a specific time, curfews, restrictions placed on the offender that assist the parole supervisor in managing him or her. Their mobility may be limited to a certain part of the country, their freedom of association and many other factors.
Breaches of these conditions do not constitute criminal activity. Board members and Correctional Service Canada staff are people in a position to determine when they have to suspend.
The real question the hon. member's bill raises is whether current police powers and correctional practices are sufficient to enable police to respond promptly to situations involving conditionally released offenders.
There have been several initiatives to improve the flow of information from the correctional service and the parole board to police to allow the police to better manage conditionally released federal prisoners and to keep the parole board and the correctional service more efficiently informed in the event something like this does happen. These steps include a new correctional policy ensuring that the police are notified in advance about every offender who is being released. They include a requirement ensuring that police receive all relevant correctional information about any high risk offender being released at sentence expiry, and this is enshrined in law under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.
Also included are a computer link that gives police direct access to information on conditionally released offenders, including the conditions of their release, and a national network of correctional officers that police can contact 24 hours a day whenever they suspect a federal offender has breached a release condition.
Upon being advised by police of a breach or a potential breach of parole, the correctional officer can issue the suspension warrant on the spot to ensure the police can then respond as quickly as possible.
The act further authorizes the facsimile transmission of warrants, giving police officers the authority to arrest offenders without warrant on the knowledge that one has been issued. This is simply a case of the law catching up with technology but doing so for the protection of society.
There have been amendments to the code to enable police and courts to better intervene in situations in which a person's conduct may be potentially threatening. Section 161.1 allows a court to make an order prohibiting an offender who has been convicted of a sex offence involving a child from being in the vicinity of a school or playground. Section 264 addresses the new offence of criminal harassment to cover stalking.
Bill C-42 the government passed to make it easier for those who are victims of domestic abuse to seek conditions of a recognisance to keep the offender away.
Through these changes, policy improvements and information mechanisms police officers have sufficient authority and the means available to promptly intervene whenever they observe federal offenders in breach of the conditions of their release.
Although the hon. member suggests police are limited in the actions they can take or face unreasonable delays in taking that action, I emphasize he has brought no concrete evidence forward. In the absence of such evidence, giving police broader authority to
arrest without warrant for non-criminal conduct runs the risk of being defeated by a charter challenge.
The hon. member's bill draws attention to the important issue of better protection from conditionally released offenders. The government supports this objective fully and has moved on many fronts to ensure that police officers are well informed about the release of offenders and can intervene in a timely and effective manner whenever necessary.
In considering new legislative initiatives, however, we have to be mindful that they address real gaps and rectify real problems that cannot be dealt with by other mechanisms. There is simply no basis and no foundation for the amendments proposed in this private member's bill.
I will comment on the what the justice committee has done with respect to private member's bills and correct a couple of things the hon. member has said.
At the present time there are four proposed amendments to the Criminal Code in that committee, not all from the hon. member's party; one from an independent member, two from the Bloc and one from the Reform Party. The committee, because of the new freedom in terms of government members voting freely on private members' bills, has put in place with the consent and the approbation of the Reform Party and the Bloc a procedure so that these bills cannot get buried in committee, that they will be treated with the respect they deserve. This bill, however, simply misses the mark.