Mr. Speaker, I am happy for the opportunity to participate in the debate today at report stage of Bill C-45.
My constituents expect me to speak on this very important matter. It is a matter which concerns them greatly; the fact that we have a bill that would tinker with section 745 of the Criminal Code, known to some as the faint hope clause.
Before I begin, I would like to note that it is very strange that there are no speakers from the government side debating this very important issue. I think it shows a contempt for this House and for the Canadian people that they would place a bill before Parliament and then would not use the opportunity to explain why they want the changes they do. The Canadian public should look very carefully at those reasons. They do not want to debate this bill and I think there are reasons why they do not.
The faint hope clause, section 745, which the government wants to amend, concerns me greatly. As has been mentioned several times in this House, it would apply to those who commit multiple murders but not those who commit a single murder. This has been explained very carefully by my colleague so I will not go into it. It is not retroactive. It does not apply to killers such as Clifford Olson, the very person we would want to control and not have come up for early parole. He is responsible for one of the most serious crimes that has ever been committed in this country and it would not apply to him.
The section needs to be thrown out completely. I agree with my colleague from York South-Weston who introduced a private member's bill to that extent, that it should be withdrawn.
In the very way we approach this there is a common theme that runs through this whole issue of criminal justice reform. It comes from the Liberal Party. George Orwell would recognize it very clearly. It is doublespeak. What does a life sentence mean in Canada? It was a Liberal government that threw out the death penalty in 1976 and gave us the current life sentence. Life sentence means murderers cannot apply for parole before 25 years. It does not mean life, it means the possibility of parole after 25 years.
Furthermore, the doublespeak continues. Section 745 is the faint hope clause which states that in certain circumstances murderers can apply for parole in 15 years. What does life mean? It does not mean life at all. Let us be clear about it. I think we are going back to George Orwell's old scenario in 1984 which the Liberals seem to have adopted.
The other thing has been running right through the theme of the Liberal Party and the Liberal government for the last 30 years which is that they are soft on crime. It is a well known fact that they are soft on criminals. After all, it was a Liberal government which scrapped the death penalty. We know that the Canadian public from the polls I have seen, and Liberals often like to quote polls, for the last 15 years have consistently suggested that the Canadian public would like to return to capital punishment for those who commit first degree murder. However, that bill was not introduced by this government. What we have instead is that in 1976 it scrapped that and gave us the current system.
It was at about that time as well that it was decided that the Juvenile Delinquents Act should be scrapped and we were given the Young Offenders Act. They have tinkered with that a little bit, but it just seems to be another example of how soft they are in the whole area of criminal justice. Soft on crime, soft on criminals.
Early parole, parole abuses, abuses by the parole board by not putting competent people in place are other examples.
I would like to relate a little story about my chance to go through the Edmonton maximum security prison about a year and a half ago. It was an eye opener. Anybody who has not toured one of these types of prisons certainly should.
The warden at the prison told me that about 80 per cent of the inmates had a substance abuse problem. Of course, I asked what they were doing to try to rehabilitate these people. These inmates
do have the right to earn their way out of prison after a period of time. We have medium and minimum security prisons. If they do try to upgrade their skills they have a chance to be rehabilitated.
The warden told me that they had psychiatrists, psychologists and various others working with these people to try and help them overcome their drug abuse problem. However, at the same time drugs are getting into our maximum security prisons. Drug use is a common practice among prisoners in our maximum security prisons and at the same time we are trying to rehabilitate them. What does that tell us? What is Corrections Canada's answer to this? It is not to stop the family visitations which are identified by the wardens as being the main source of drugs getting into the prisons, although I doubt that would be the only source. I think in some cases some staff are probably involved. That would seem to me to be a pipeline for drugs getting into the prisons.
What does Corrections Canada and the Department of Justice answer to this? Of course, not to stop the family visitations or get tough on screening of guards. No. It is to give prisoners new needles, give them bleach kits so that they do not contact AIDS in prison. What does that say about our criminal justice system? What does it say about the Liberal government? It says a lot. It says that the Liberals are soft on crime and continue to be.
Where are we currently? The Canadian public is very concerned and rightly so. Canadians are buying security systems at an alarming rate. They are trying to guard themselves against break and enter. They are trying to arm themselves. Canadians have rallied on Parliament Hill asking for reform of the criminal justice system.
My home in Alberta is in a very quiet farming community with a very stable population and basically no crime problems in terms of break and enter but this past year we caught up with the rest of the Canadian public. We now have joined the big leagues. We had a series of break and enters in broad daylight throughout our little farming community. Now people are saying: "Well, I guess we have to get a guard dog or a security system". That is the concern people have. They feel that they are under attack as never before. I know that MPs opposite must be getting the same kind of mail I am getting, especially members who represent rural ridings where people are asking what has happened to their communities.
I operate a grain farm. We used to be able to leave the keys in our equipment in the fields. I had a truck stolen off my farm two years ago. That is what is happening in our society. I have received mail stating that people want this situation cleaned up. They want the government to get tough on criminal justice. They want to scrap the current Young Offenders Act and start over. Even the term young offenders has become very offensive now. It has been identified as an act that simply cannot be reformed, that it should be scrapped and we should start over. Polls have indicated that Canadians want a return to the death penalty.
What Canadians get from the government and from the current justice minister is tinkering. Tinkering with section 745 and gun control which will not be the answer to solving our crime problem in Canada.
In fact, gun control and registration for long guns was modelled on our current handgun registration which has been in place since 1935. Our handgun registration has not worked. There are as many or more crimes being committed with handguns than ever before, yet we have a registration system which is supposed to control that. Now we have a long gun registration that is supposed to give us peace, it is supposed to return us to the times when we had low crime rates. It simply is not going to happen. The government is going after the wrong people. There is also tinkering with the Young Offenders Act.
This might play in downtown Toronto but I doubt it very much. It certainly does not play in my riding. People want this government to get tough on the crime problem in Canada. We know there is a crime problem.
I see some members shaking their heads opposite, some of the same members that probably have prisons in their riding, like the parliamentary secretary who is yakking over there. He has a prison in his Prince Albert-Churchill riding. Perhaps he should go through that prison and see what kind of problems there are at the Edmonton maximum security prison.
Canadians want us to get tough on this whole section of criminal justice. They want us to provide some assurances that their families can go out on the streets at eleven o'clock at night and feel safe. That simply is not the situation now. They want us to toughen up the criminal justice system so that they are not subject to break and enters in their homes which provide criminals an income for substance abuse. Canadians are not going to get it from this government obviously, but at some point they are going to get the kind of reform that is necessary to clean up Canada's crime problem.