Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise in support of Bill C-45, at the same time to ask the House to reject the six amendments that have been proposed.
I would like to take this opportunity to signal the sensitiveness of the government to debate in this House. It is worth recording in respect to two private members' measures that came before us which touched, somewhat peripherally in one case but nevertheless in the spirit, on the bill now before the House. The member for York South, if members remember, had his own private member's bill in relation to section 745 of the Criminal Code.
I and government members supported this private members' bill as a vehicle for conveying to the government the feeling that in striking the balance among conflicting interests, the balance had shifted perhaps a little too far away from the protection of the community, and that it was time to make a correction.
We have all moved a long way, of course, from those antique conceptions of the 19th century when the only aim of criminal law was to punish the offender. It was not a very effective measure of social control and we have moved to other methods that more closely study society.
In this sense the government has recognized that in spite of the statistics showing crime is on the decrease, there has been an increase in the intensity of certain types of crime; mass crime, serial crimes and that a tightening of community controls is warranted here. This explains the elaborate screening devices that have been set up here. It is a response to the sentiment that this House expressed.
By the same token, the member for Saint-Hubert brought forward an excellent private members' bill in the spring which I and other government members supported. It was addressed, really, to the issue of protection of witnesses or victims in criminal trials.
It has been noted that many of the accused took the opportunity of further harassing their victims by vicious forms of cross examination. I would have thought, as a jurist, that could have been corrected by judicial action. A judge, after all, is there to protect the community, which includes the victims. Nevertheless, the bill meets this problem.
I am interested to note the debate in Great Britain in the last week on a very similar problem with exaggerated circumstances. Here, in this bill, it is certainly a design of the government to prevent persons who have been convicted and who are using the system under section 745 as an extra form of harassing victims' families.
There have been such cases noted and it is good that the government has tried to close the door on that type of situation. It does represent a response to the spirit the member for Saint-Hubert brought forward in her excellent private member's bill.
In another way also, we have responded to the situation of victims of crimes. This is not the 19th century. It is certainly not the earlier pre-common law period in the history of our law in which vengeance was the motive of the criminal law and the victims had the right of exacting sanctions. Not at all. It is a recognition that the viewpoint of the victims is a legitimate factor in considering the issue of sentencing, that it is a legitimate factor in considering the aspect of parole.
I am reminded that years before I entered this Chamber as a lawyer, as a sometime juris-counsel, I was approached by the family of one of the victims of a mass murderer in the Vancouver area, the Rosenfeldt family, the husband, the wife and their lawyer. They raised the agonizing tribulations they had been through while their child's fate was unknown. They have devoted a life since to attention to criminal law and attention to protecting society and at the same time ensuring that victims' views are properly presented in a way compatible with our legal traditions and our legal spirit.
I notice here that in a very proper and balanced way, the attitudes of victims' families can be presented in the government's bill.
There is a response by the government to a feeling as expressed in this House on both sides, that the shifting balance in criminal law needs correcting in terms of a stronger protection of society based on the increase in intensity of crimes, if not in the actual percentage of crimes. I think this is recognized in the structured
system that introduces the judge, the jury determination and the insistence, which is the history of the common law, of unanimous jury decisions before a parole board can operate. This is a good response again to the sentiment expressed in this House.
As for the point I have made again that the parole application should not be used by a vicious criminal without repentance as a method of further harassing victims' families, this is contained and overcome by the structured system of preventing purely frivolous applications for parole. Finally allowing the victims in a way that is sensitive to the duties of all us to society to express their opinions on criminality on the particular case before the court, I think this is reflected in the bill.
For these reasons I suggest with respect to those members who have taken the care to offer these amendments that the amendments be rejected and the bill as presented be adopted.