Madam Speaker, I think we really need to look at some of the details of this bill. As my colleague said, maybe we are just tinkering with it.
One frustrating thing that the Canadian public feels is that there needs to be some large changes made, not just tinkering with any piece of legislation, whether it is financial, economic or criminal justice.
I want to respond to a Liberal member who just called across asking: "Why did you not support the gun control bill"? If I though that the gun bill would eliminate or reduce crime and violent offences in great measure, I would be willing to support the gun bill. I think Canadians across the country probably would.
What they see is a situation where the government is perhaps out of touch. The same member also is calling out right now. I do not know whether I could call this an assault, but I certainly do hear a lot of noise coming from that direction. The member says: "Don't you think we listen to the people?" Of course I do. I would not be arrogant enough to say that nobody in this House but Reformers listens to the people because that simply is not true.
I know there are members in this House, and you probably yourself, Madam Speaker, spent the summer at home and listened to what people had to say. The concerns are the same across the country. Let us face it, nobody on either side of the House wants Clifford Olson to be free and wandering around in the Canadian public any more.
What has happened is that the executive branch of the government says that it knows best. I know there are Liberal backbenchers here who are equally frustrated as we are. They have been home, and we have been home, for the summer and listened to what has gone on. People are hearing in their own constituencies that they want people to be accountable. They want government to be accountable. It is their cash that we are spending here. They want to make sure that murderers are accountable for their crimes as well. They feel a sense of frustration that Bill C-45 which is not completely repealing section 745 of the Criminal Code is going to do that job.
The private member's bill brought in by our colleague from York South-Weston was going to do exactly that. It was repealing section 745 so that we would not have this automatic kickback in place so that after 15 years a murderer could automatically apply for early parole.
We talk about justice and say that justice must be done. We could all debate in this House about how important it is for justice to be done and to be served. Let us remember that justice means justice. In a lot of our academic discussions we have probably forgotten what the word justice actually means.
Those people who think that they know the meaning of it, the academics, the lawyers, the judges, the media and so on, perhaps have lost the true meaning of what justice is. Ordinary Canadians have not and whether they live in Reform ridings or Liberals ridings is immaterial. Ordinary Canadians regardless of whom they are represented by in the House of Commons realize that the meaning of justice has been lost or certainly watered down.
I could give a definition of justice to mean acting in accordance with what is morally right or fair. We are afraid to walk the line to even talk about morals. Somewhere there is ultimate justice coming and those people who have taken a life, first degree murderers, who are applying for early parole now must realize that their victims are dead forever. When we hear on the news or see on television that someone has been brutally murdered by one of these violent offenders we feel that pain. We try to understand the grief that family is going through.
Yet a couple of years later, for instance in the Mahaffy and French cases, although I feel that pain, it is certainly not the way the family feels it. That is with them forever. The person who committed murders may feel somewhat repentant. I do not know how they feel in their hearts. I know that they are alive and they are doing whatever they can do. Clifford Olson is working on his appeal right now. He is not feeling the grief that the families are feeling. Many people who have had loved ones murdered are feeling that pain. Dead is dead forever.
When we think that justice means acting in accordance with what is morally right or fair, there are wrongs, there are rights, there are absolutes that it is wrong to take another life. We could just discuss it away in these hallowed halls all the time and say we think that this person needs special treatment or we think that this person deserves to get out of jail. There are people who genuinely do get rehabilitated but the frustrating part is that we just use all of them in a blanket statement.
The words bleeding heart were used here earlier by various people. We need to be sensitive, to make sure that people who are forever going through the pain of losing loved ones are not going
to be hoodwinked or going to be held to ransom by a body of legislators who think that they know best for everybody and that is by giving the criminals more attention than the victims.
Something we have to get to in our society, when we are talking about morals or what is absolutely right or wrong, is that when the rights of a victim and the rights of a criminal conflict we must always come down on the side of the victim. Yes, criminals need attention, rehabilitation, love and caring, but the victim was someone who was totally innocent and paid the price. As I mentioned earlier, those who have lost somebody have lost them forever.
I would just like to mention Clifford Olson for a couple of minutes because his name has come up over and over again. He has been the flashpoint of this section 745. Clifford Olson wreaked havoc on many people's lives and those lives are suffering just as much now, 15 or 16 years later, as they were when the act was committed.
I think Clifford Olson was arrested in August 1981. I was on a camping trip on the coast. I was camping in a tent on the sand at Long Beach on the west coast of Vancouver Island. I got up the next day and packed up my tent to drive across Vancouver Island to go over to Vancouver. I heard on the news that Clifford Olson had just been arrested around Ecluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island which was about two miles from where I was camped. A young woman, sleeping in a tent on the beach, I thought I was perfectly safe. I had no thought in the world that anything wrong or dangerous would happen to me.
Ironically, I found out he had just been arrested a couple of miles up the road. He had picked up a couple of girls and had not done anything to them yet. Fortunately they did not have to pay the price with their lives. However, he was out and about and free. Who knows, many other people could have been his victims.
He was arrested then and is now applying, 15 years later, for early parole. The sad and ironic twist about this thing, which was brought in by a Liberal government in 1978 by the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, I understand is that the time goes from the time of arrest which is 15 years ago. As one of my colleagues said, the moment one is arrested the time is added and therefore the 15 years are up.
I would like to ask how anyone of us would feel if we were one of the victims' families and heard that Clifford Olson was going to get his day in court. Can anyone imagine having to open that wound again and watch him get that opportunity in court? I cannot think of anything worse, more damaging, more dangerous, more frightening and more harmful than to give this guy another day in court so that he can go and bring up all this stuff again. I do not think the families of those victims need to see that again. I do not think he needs his day in court.
I do not know if you were one of the ones, Madam Speaker, whom he wrote a letter to recently in this Parliament, but the fact is Clifford Olson sent mail to many of the people in this Chamber and there was a condom stuck in that letter. I would like people to reflect on that for just a minute by asking if this is what we are allowing to happen. Do we want to give this guy his day in court? I think not. I do not think that anyone of us needs to be subjected to getting a condom from this character, I really do not.
However, we see a government which says: "Yes, we are going to bring this in because we need to be compassionate".
Let me finish by saying yes, we do need to be compassionate. By repealing section 745 all together does not mean that we are not being compassionate. What it means is that we will still allow a trigger to be in place because some murderers and violent offenders are curable. They are not all incorrigible. Some of them will be rehabilitated. Some will care and will have a genuine conversion experience in prison. They will want to make their lives better and pay back to society some of the terrible things they did by doing good work. Some of them will be allowed to be released. By eliminating section 745 all together does not mean we are just going to lock these guys up and throw away the key. However, there is such a thing as a pardon. I think that trigger could still be in place.
I wish the Minister of Justice and his colleagues would say: "We want to make sure that even though we do repeal section 745 there is still room for a pardon so that somebody can be released on that but it would be the exception rather than the rule". I think that is a far healthier way of going about it than the way the government is moving with not repealing section 745 and going ahead with Bill C-45 right now. I think it is wrong and I do not think it will solve the problems that we face in the country.