Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to address the House on this very important issue at third reading stage.
To approach the issue I will take a little walk through history and have a look at where this section came from, how it came about, why there is a problem and what the Liberal government proposes to do about it. I support the legislation and I will explain why. I will try to indicate why I do not think the criticisms that have been levelled against the legislation really stand up to logic.
Let us go back to 1976 when Parliament abolished capital punishment. There was a huge debate. The representatives of the people in this House decided for whatever reasons that capital punishment was going to be abolished.
Once we abolish capital punishment for high treason and for first degree murder, what are we going to do with people who have committed high treason or first degree murder? We have to do something with them. There are really only two things we can do. We can either put them in jail and throw away the key and never look at them again, which is life in prison, period, full stop, or we can put them in prison for life with an opportunity to apply for parole at some point in time if they have demonstrated a number of things, including that they will not reoffend and that they have been rehabilitated.
If society opts for life in prison, full stop, that is it, there is no need to discuss when these people might get parole because they are not going to get parole. Back in 1976 our society decided not to take that approach. That is a fact. That is a 20 year fact. So we are dealing with facts, not how we would like things to have been in 1976, but how they are in 1996. We have to deal with what has happened over the last 20 years.
What did Parliament decide? Parliament decided not to go with life in prison, period, full stop. It decided to go with life in prison with a chance of being considered for parole after 25 years. Some might argue that should have been where it stopped. But there were people who were concerned back in 1976, as there are people today-and we just heard one of them speak-that this is an awfully long time and that people do change, that they do rehabilitate, that they do become different people and that the quality of mercy we should extend to them.
Those people said there might be circumstances where a person has committed a first degree murder for one reason or another and has served 15, 16 or 17 years, and maybe there will be cases where that person deserves to be allowed to apply for parole.
So a line was drawn by the parliamentarians of that day in 1976, and that line said if you commit first degree murder, you will be sentenced to life in prison. You will have the opportunity to apply for parole after you have served 25 years. By the way, you do have a faint hope of applying for parole before 25 years if you take the section 745 route.
What is the section 745 route? Murderers have to serve at least 15 years. Once they have served their 15 years they then apply to
have a jury consider what, whether they deserve a retrial, are not guilty or are a different person? No. It is for a jury to decide whether the person should be allowed to apply to the parole board at any time between 15 and 25 years. That is what the jury is deciding in that case.
The person goes before a jury of his peers, ordinary citizens of the community who have been brought in under the juries acts of the various provinces, and the community thereby is consulted, which is exactly what the Reform Party wants. It wants the community consulted. What better consultation is there than members of a jury from everyday Canada listening to the application of a convicted murderer?
Let us not forget we are not talking about refugees here. We are talking about convicted first degree murderers, people who have killed people, people who have done the worst thing that we can think of in society, which is why they must spend the rest of their lives in jail unless they are paroled. That is the reality. They must spend the rest of their lives in jail unless they are paroled, which is the worst sentence we can give short of hanging in this country.
One could make much of the fact that it is a 25 year sentence, but that is not true. It is a life sentence. We should deal with reality, not rhetoric.
The murderer goes before a jury. We know this is happening but why is it coming up? Finally since 1976 more than 15 years have passed and these first degree murderers are starting to make their applications. Without quibbling about the numbers, the numbers I have show that out of 2,085 murderers currently in the prison population as of December 1995, 574 of them are first degree murderers. I am concentrating my remarks on first degree murderers. Of those 574, 175 have already become eligible to apply under section 745 as it currently exists. Out of those, a whopping percentage, one might say, has been successful in getting some reduction. That is the problem because this gets people all upset.
We have people who have killed police, children, mothers, fathers, some of them are killing their own children, name the horrendous crimes, and some of them are being allowed by a jury of ordinary Canadians to what, get out of jail? No. They are being allowed to apply to the parole board to demonstrate why they should be allowed out on parole.
Some would have the section abolished. I was one of those who supported at second reading the bill from the hon. member for York South-Weston that would have abolished section 745. I want to address this because the Reform Party has made a lot about all these people who supported that bill and who are now supporting this bill. Let me tell members why.
At the time the hon. member's bill was brought forward this bill was not here. Section 745 as it is written is no good, plain and simple. Therefore if we do not fix it we have to get rid of it. There was nothing by way of fixing on the agenda. I do not want it in the Criminal Code as it currently exists, which I will explain in a moment. In the absence of a suggestion to make it better, stronger, to tighten it up and look after some of the loopholes that I think are there, there was no alternative but to vote in favour of a bill that would call for its scrapping, which is exactly what I did.
Now in response to the obvious desire of the House of Commons to do something about section 745, the Minister of Justice has come up with this bill. Let us look at it. What was one of the problems with section 745? Personally I have a problem with the fact that only eight out of twelve jurors can make the decision to allow for a reduced period of time before applying for parole. The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands does not agree with me. It should be unanimous. The hon. member who just spoke from the Bloc Quebecois does not agree with me. He does not think it should be unanimous. It should be.
It is the crown representing the people that must convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, all 12 of them, that the person is guilty. That is a very onerous burden. The crown must convince a unanimous jury that this person, beyond a reasonable doubt, is a murderer, has done the most heinous thing that this country knows about, that is kill, take another life. That is a very high burden.
Once the crown has met that burden and has demonstrated to a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, unanimously, that the person is a murderer, it is not too much to ask that the murderer demonstrate to a unanimous jury on a lesser burden, balance of probabilities, that the murderer deserves to have an opportunity to apply for parole before serving 25 years.
Why should it be that it is only the crown who must convince a jury unanimously? Why should the convicted murder, who in effect is seeking clemency, not be required to show a unanimous jury that he should be entitled to clemency, that he should be entitled to that which he is not entitled to by law because he must serve 25 years.
That is why there is a real problem. It is not fair that the convicted murderer has a lesser burden than we in society who are trying to be protected from that person. That person lost his rights, as far as I am concerned, when he took another human life.
He has to serve the penalty imposed by society unless society decides to give him a second chance. How does society decide? The section 745 process. It is society by way of a jury. It is not some judge. It is not the Minister of Justice. It is not the House of Commons. It is a jury of peers.
A person must wonder, if you are in the Reform Party, with the greatest respect, how it is that 80 per cent of applications have been allowed by juries, not by judges, but by ordinary Canadians. Eighty per cent of them have been allowed. These people are insurance brokers, neighbours, in the lawn bowling league, grocers, clerks and car salesmen in your community sitting on a community jury making the decision. It may have been only eight out of twelve. Four did not want it and fought really hard. Eight out of twelve was good enough. How wrong have the juries been? Anybody can fool around with statistics.
We have already heard that of the people who have been granted parole by a jury, by the community, one has reoffended. Out of 50, one has reoffended so far. One is too much. That person was sentenced for armed robbery. As far as I am concerned, one chance and you are gone, buddy. You had your chance. You were sentenced to life. You have committed armed robbery. I will never see you again. Take care. Enjoy Kingston prison. One out of 50 is as close to perfect as we can get without being perfect, in terms of whether or not they have convicted another crime.
There is another aspect to it and that is denunciation. That is a fair question and is a reasonable thing to ask about. What is a human life worth? Is it worth killing the killer? Some would say yes. Is it worth locking the killer away and letting him or her rot in prison? Some would say yes.
How far do you go? Why not just give them bread and water, hard labour, or put them into a military camp? Why not send them up to the Arctic? There are all kinds of approaches that people can take but society as a whole has decided that short of hanging, murderers are going to spend the rest of their natural lives in prison, in reasonably human conditions, with food, water and amenities unless they can demonstrate why they should get out.
In my opinion this bill plugs the loophole of requiring unanimity. That reflects the same considerations that the community gave in convicting the person of the crime in whether or not they should receive clemency. That is really what we are talking about under a different word, clemency.
Are we going to make murderers sit in prison for the rest of their lives, or at least 25 years of it, or are we going to give them an opportunity to try to demonstrate to the parole board prior to 25 years that they should be let out? Remember the parole board has the legislative ability to decide whether people should be let out or not. If a person is in prison for life the parole board can only let that person out as the legislation states.
The first thing that is good about this bill is that unanimity is required. It is going to tighten up applications and fewer people are going to get out. That is exactly how it should be because this is a faint hope clause. In my opinion, it should be the exception who has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, at least to a jury, that he deserves the clemency of society notwithstanding that he took a human life. This person has spent a period of time in prison and as a result has learned a lesson and will never commit this crime again. There are a whole series of reasons why this is done.
One hon. member was quite right in saying that no matter how long a person serves in prison, the victim's family will never feel better. That is true. The victim is dead but that is a circular argument. Except with money crimes a person can never put anybody back in a situation that that person was in before a crime was committed.
If you are assaulted, Madam Speaker, and somebody gets two years in jail, I am sure if somebody asked you if you would prefer never to have been assaulted and had your nose broken and your eyesight destroyed or whatever the case may have been, or should the guy have gotten five years, you would say you would never have had the crime in the first place.
Obviously we are reacting as a society to things that people would rather not have had happen. People kill people so we have to deal with them. Being human beings there are a variety of reasons for this.
The first thing to do is to tighten section 745. We live in a political world, a political place and we have to recognize when something is or is not doable. For a variety of political reasons at this point in the history of this country abolishing section 745 is not doable. Members can rant and rave all they want, it is not doable.
If that is recognized as the case then the next best thing is to make the best of what is offered. Everybody in the House except for a few hon. members would argue that there is something wrong with section 745. Some would say get rid of it, others would say tighten it and then there are various planes in between. Very few would say that it is perfect the way it is although some would.
In a real world if you are not going to get what you want you go for second best. Second best to abolishing is fixing. To say that I did not get abolition therefore I am going to oppose it under all costs is shortsighted.
In my opinion what should be done is to make suggestions for betterment. That was my suggestion before the justice committee a year and a half ago. It was roundly dismissed by the justice minister. A year and a half later there it is in the legislation. So you can do that.
The screening process, unanimity of the jury and nobody who is a multiple murderer will ever have an opportunity to apply for parole are enough for me to support this bill.