Madam Speaker, it has been a lively debate and time is drawing on.
It is very obvious that the Reform Party believes that all persons convicted of first degree murder should be imprisoned for life with no chance for parole or conditional release in any form for 25 years. Consequently, section 745 of the Criminal Code should be repealed.
I remind the hon. gentleman from Scarborough West that when a criminal or a murderer is before the justice system, he gets convicted or he gets released. If the sentence he gets is not to his liking, he can appeal the decision and he can keep appealing the decision until he reaches the Supreme Court. We have seen in the last decade or so that anyone convicted of murder receives the best judicial people in the world to defend them. If we have gone through the process and the person is given a life sentence, it should mean life.
It is only because some weak-kneed politicians have refrained from making decisions which would benefit this country that we are $600 billion in debt today which our future generations will probably never look after. Weak-kneed politicians, out of convenience, have said that punishment is not a deterrent. I would like anyone to prove to me that punishment is not a deterrent.
I wonder why the government is continually bringing forward bills which introduce severe punishment for society. The non-compliance bill is definitely one which tries to infer that stiffer punishments will deter violators. If it works in monetary bills and in other bills, why will it not work in the justice system?
The Reform Party mirrors very well Canadians' displeasure with the current weak justice system. Criminals are brazen and tough and do not respect the justice system.
During the weekend of September 16 in Winnipeg a senior of 75 years of age found herself with two intruders in her bedroom at night. What did these people do? They rolled her up in a blanket and made sure she could not move. They tried to take off her wedding ring. They said if they could not get the ring off they would cut it off. Finally they tore off the chain which was around her neck. They went through her premises, ravaged about and took what they wanted. Then they stabbed her in the neck and in the shoulders and left her for dead.
What happened? This lady managed to get to a telephone. She called the police to tell them what had happened to her. What happened within 15 or 20 minutes after the police arrived? The same criminals came back to the same house looking for more stuff to plunder. They thought they had probably killed the lady and she would not have been able to phone the police. They were brazen enough to take the chance to return to take more items.
I suggest to the House that these people probably felt that if they got caught they would be better off inside the prison system anyway, so why would they not go back to see if there were more things in the house? Is this the type of society we want to protect or that we want to encourage to develop in future generations?
What happens to the victims and their families? Fortunately, I have not had to stand at too many murder victims' graves. I have never seen any faint hope clause for them. There is not one single instance where those victims will take another breath of fresh air. Those people are put six feet under the ground and all the families have to remember of that person is a mound of dirt and a headstone.
I listened to the family who had their 16-year old daughter abducted in the middle of the afternoon. She was tied up, thrown into a storage shed and froze to death. After 15 years I have never heard those people say: "We don't wish that our daughter was back".
It appalls me when I hear some people in this House say that we have to rehabilitate these criminals. The person that committed that
crime was never found. These people have never had to think about how they would feel toward that criminal, but every time they talk to a community or share their experience, all they have left are the positive memories that child provided for them. This teenage girl had a tremendous influence on her class and on her community, and her life was snubbed out without any consideration.
Now they want to tell me it is some chemical imbalance that makes people do something like this. Never in my 60 years had I even thought of considering that. The people who commit some of these heinous crimes have never had any discipline. They have never had any punishment. They have always had their way and they only think of one thing: themselves. They would not hesitate to put a knife or a bullet into somebody else if they thought they could get some advantage from it.
I do not know what it will take for politicians to realize that in the past 25 years this country has become a worse place to live in, not a safer place. Twenty-five years ago we had been farming for about a dozen years and we never thought of locking the door. We never thought of locking our gas tanks. We never thought that we should stay at home at night because there could be somebody loose and on the prowl. My in-laws who lived in town never dreamt of locking their doors.
Today people dare not go away. If they do not get robbed or if their buildings are not ransacked, something is wrong. I wonder if this is the type of society we have come to appreciate and accept. As long as I am in this House I will speak against this type of society. I have been to countries and have seen what has become of societies that have to protect themselves from the criminal element. They put steel fences around their property and they keep the criminals out, not in.
If this government does not start to realize that is the direction we are going in, it will not be too many generations before we are doing the very same thing. We can see the start of it in some communities already. Rather than protecting their homes from criminals, they are protecting themselves so they cannot get out into society.
One Monday morning in early September I turned on the radio and heard of a young girl named Megan Ramsay. She was five years old. Her mother's common law husband smashed her head in with a baseball bat. A five-year old kid. How can a human being be so degrading that they can do that?
I had to put down animals when I farmed but I never had the heart to use a stick or a bat to kill them. I would go for some kind of instrument that put them away quickly. Here in a family situation a stepfather used a baseball bat. And when he was arrested he was charged with second degree murder. Tell me ladies and gentleman, how can we put second degree murder on somebody who uses a baseball bat to kill a five-year old girl?
That is how insensitive we have become to this type of conduct. We have come to the point where we know it is going to happen every day. If it has not happened to us personally, we say that we are lucky. But there is no place in this country where it is safe anymore. Twenty-five years ago I did not know what a drive-by shooting was. Today we see it in rural communities like Miami and Altona, Manitoba, areas where there was practically no crime 25 years ago. What has happened to this country? We have representatives in this House who really do not care in what direction we are going as long as it buys them a vote and they will be back here.
I hear members say that society has made these decisions. I have never seen a referendum on capital punishment. I have not seen a referendum on section 745 to circumvent the judgments the judicial system puts on the criminal or murderer.
If we are going to stand up in this House and use rhetoric that seems to suit our ears instead of addressing the issues, we will not make very many decisions to benefit this country.
Why am I so dead set against reversing sentences when they have been pronounced by our judicial system? If we circumvent one law we can do it in other laws.
There is a situation right now in my province where a farmer has gone to jail for selling his own grain for the best price he could. That is not the worst violation, but we also have a farmer who has been benefiting tremendously by keeping his mouth shut and not opening up to say what really happened. If this is justice we are going down the wrong track.
When we are going down the wrong track it is only a matter of time before we have a derailment. The derailment of the justice system over the last 25 or 30 years is something everybody saw coming as soon as capital punishment was done away with, without going to the people for their advice. It was politicians who thought they knew better. They knew what the country needed. Today I must say we have gone a long way toward that derailment and sooner or later the whole train will crash.
We have seen it in different countries where that has happened, Rwanda, Africa and other countries in Asia. We can name one after another.
We still have a democracy where we can change things, but if we are going to address our problems the way we have in the last couple of sessions, I do not have very much hope that we are going to avoid catastrophes.
Hon. members across the way know that when we came in here and said zero in three they threw up their hands and said "no way, we don't need to balance our budget". If they had done it three years ago as we asked them to do we would have money to spend
on rehabilitating some of these minor criminals, not the major criminals.