Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak against Bill C-45.
I think it is clear in Canadian law what the juries and judges decide when a person comes to trial. When this government changed the rules to not allow capital punishment it gave a trade-off to the Canadian people who felt that was still an important part of the judicial system.
The trade-off was that if a person is convicted of first degree murder they would be given a life sentence without eligibility for parole for 25 years.
If there is any concern whether or not they can prove this individual committed first degree murder, premeditated murder with intent, then they are not convicted. They reduce the conviction to second degree murder. That is not the issue here.
The issue here is that the trade-off for getting rid of capital punishment was life without eligibility for parole for 25 years. That is what Canadians thought they were getting. Nobody advertised that what they were getting was a faint hope clause added to that at a later date that says after 15 years they can apply to be eligible for parole. That was not the understanding when Canadians accepted reluctantly the removal of capital punishment.
If the courts are not convinced without any doubt at all that a person is guilty of premeditated murder, then they do not convict them of first degree murder. We are talking about only those individuals who are given this sentence when there is no doubt they committed the crime.
It is not that everybody who murders will end up with life without eligibility for 25 years. It is only those few individuals convicted of premeditated murder. The others are either convicted of second degree murder or of manslaughter if their crimes are considered to be unintended in the first place.
Having given Canadians this assurance that somebody who took a life, who intended to take a life, who planned on taking a life, would get a life sentence, we are now faced with a justice minister who is talking about making a difference between those who planned and intended on taking one life from somebody who planned and intended on taking more than one life. That is irrelevant. Those are the kinds of decisions juries and judges make at the time.
I find it abhorrent that we feel the decision made by a jury of peers and by a judge, people who heard all the current evidence of the day and made a decision, can be overturned at the whim of somebody else who was not there to hear the testimony.
That in essence is what we are deciding when we deal with this bill, and what the individuals decided when they brought in the faint hope clause, to totally disregard a decision that was made in our judicial system which we uphold and which the justice minister and his colleagues say is a great system that does not need to be changed that much because it works really well.
That is the system that decided whether these individuals would be tried and convicted of first degree murder, and that is the system that decided whether they would get life in prison without eligibil-
ity of parole for 25 years. Why is that system not being regarded? Why is their decision being put aside after 15 years? I and a lot of Canadians feel that is not right.
Instead of the government talking about looking at that challenge to a decision made in a court of law by a judge and jury, instead of asking if it is right to have that decision challenged 15 years later, maybe we should remove this clause that questions the judgment of those people, the minister will tamper with it. He will decide and have judges and juries decide whether a person is a serious killer or not, whether he is a bad killer or a good killer.
That decision was made years 15 years before, when the jury and the judge decided that person should be charged and convicted of first degree murder. When that judge handed down the sentence of no eligibility for parole for 25 years, that decision had already been made. Who are we to say they were wrong when they made that decision after they heard all the evidence?
I suggest to the justice minister that he take the tactic Reform Party members of Parliament are taking and prevent these things from even occurring. I introduced a private member's bill which deals with dangerous offenders and which tries to keep people who are likely to kill off the street so we are not faced with making decisions about how we are to handle them after they have killed.
We are trying to bring in legislation to keep those kinds of individuals who are likely to reoffend, likely to commit serious harm to other people or likely to kill other people off the streets of Canada. I suggest that is a much more efficient way and a much better way to deal with this issue.
Let us not talk about how we are to deal with these people who have been convicted and sentenced for first degree murder. Let us try to keep them from committing murder. Let us try to prevent more victims.
We are doing that. My hon. colleague talked about his private member's bill. I have my private member's bill that deals with dangerous offenders and I have a private member's motion that talks about people who show the propensity of doing these horrendous crimes. It says they be assessed by psychiatrists and if it is felt they are likely to kill somebody, it proposes the system deal with them before the event happens.
This is the way it should be handled, not by tinkering with a part of the Criminal Code that should not be there in the first place.