Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to have the opportunity to talk about a criminal justice bill. It is not something I do very often, but certainly the constituents of my riding have indicated very clearly that this is a major concern of theirs. It does not matter at what level you talk or to whom you speak, very clearly they state that they are concerned about this issue.
Therefore I am pleased to have the opportunity to go into this in a little bit of detail at least, again not as an expert but certainly as a concerned citizen, representing my constituents.
The public are disgusted with the criminal justice system. They feel that too many Liberal governments, whether they are called Liberal or not does not seem to matter, but it seems that once Ottawa fever sets into people when they come down here that all of a sudden they start thinking about the criminal. They very quickly lose sight of who we should really be concerned about and that is the victims of these crimes. Certainly the opinion is that our justice minister is very soft on crime. He is so liberal that he is more liberal than all the other Liberals who have been responsible for our criminal justice system.
It does not matter what area we talk about, the concerns are over the whole range. Let us start off with the Young Offenders Act. Everybody is upset about that. I have had the opportunity to speak to people across the country. Not once did I go into a presentation and question period when someone did not ask about the Young Offenders Act. It might be senior citizen who is now afraid to go
out because of the young hoodlums they perceive to be out there and who may be a threat to them.
It could be a handicapped person in my riding, which I think is pretty peaceful. It is certainly a riding I am proud of. I have lived there a number of years. In a period of one week two handicapped people were attacked by young offenders and sent to hospital. One severely handicapped lady received a broken arm by these young offenders.
The police will say that when there are break and enters they do not bother going anymore because they just cannot handle them all. This is a major issue. It is part of the whole problem with the criminal justice system.
We can talk about the parole system and sex offenders who are put back out on the streets. Some sex offenders do not even have to take treatment. We are told they cannot be cured and yet they are put out on the streets. Again the Liberal policy is "well, let us hope they do not reoffend".
I have a letter from a constituent: "It has come to my attention that prisoners are being released on parole based on their behaviour inside an institution, not on the crime they committed. This is a grave miscarriage of justice when the crimes committed are of a sexual nature. How many inmates have daily access to sexually assault children? I hope none. If released on to our streets, the pedophile has unlimited access to our children. We should not be required to lock our children away to keep them safe from sex offenders". This is just another cry for help to change the system.
Our parole boards are made up of political hacks with high salaries. They are not professional people. They are not there to try to provide treatment, to provide protection for citizens. They certainly are not interested in the victims.
In Bill C-45 we have even created categories. If a person kills once, premeditated murder, it is one thing. He or she would be eligible for parole. If a person kills more than once, then he or she is a little more serious criminal. The victims did not have that choice. The victims were not given a choice of how serious a murder was. Murder is murder is murder. First degree murder is planned, premeditated murder.
There is no standard for sentencing. Often the punishment does not fit the crime. I read an interesting article from the Innisfail paper two weeks ago when I was at home. There had been a break-in at an auction mart. The person was caught and the owner of the auction mart wrote a letter to the paper and said: "I have no confidence in the criminal justice system that the fine or the minimum sentence this person will receive will in any way stop him from additional crime". His suggestion in the article was that the true way to deal with this person would to be to have him come to work at the auction mart for three months. His job would be to clean out cattle liners that arrive day after day. He said that after three months of cleaning cattle liners he doubted very much that this person would break in to an auction mart again.
We have to look at things like this. We have to look at punishment that fits the crime. For first degree murder what should the punishment be? Is 15 years the price we put on a life? Is that what we say is enough? It is premeditated. I have heard so many speeches in the House about this subject. They talk about murders. They say that someone who was in a traffic accident should get parole. We are talking about premeditated first degree murder.
The fact that they should not have a faint hope is by far and away the majority point of view in the country. This law does not go far enough. It is middle of the road liberalism. It is liberalism at its very worst. We are talking about first degree premeditated murder. Bill C-45 is soft.
We have to get back to the punishment fitting the crime. We have to get back to thinking about the victims. We have to think about the victims who are going to have to relive the crime in just 15 years. We must think about the victims.
I am sure I am not unique in the amount of mail I receive on the criminal justice system. This is a letter that I received, not from a constituent, but from someone in B.C.:
You as our government have seen fit to enact a faint hope clause which gives convicted murderers the opportunity to be released and kill again. It is my opinion that you as our government should remove this faint hope clause for all serial killers and all murderers that torture, mutilate or sexually assault their victims, as parole boards are releasing all murderers that apply for early release under this clause.
We have been told that up to 80 per cent of the applications are successful.
The letter continues:
It is also my opinion that Clifford Olson should never have the faint hope of being released on to our streets. That individual, in my opinion, should be given a lethal injection. I would not have any objection to doing that job myself.
That is a pretty strong statement, but that is what Canadians are saying out there about first degree premeditated murder. That is what we are talking about.
We should look at the Liberal record. What we will find is a great deal of underachievement. There is a great deal of deceit and deception being practised, of saying one thing and meaning something quite different, of not really doing what they say they will do.
In the criminal justice system we might talk to the justice ministers of Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories and Yukon and all of them will say they were not consulted by the justice minister.
Mr. Scott Newark, director of the Canadian Police Association, openly said he has not been consulted and neither has his membership. There is a total lack of consultation.
I could go on to talk about the broken promises of the GST and no tax increases. There have been $26 billion in increased taxes. We can talk about the threats to health care and the threats to pensions. Those are all coming from the deceit and lies of the Liberal government. That is exactly where they are coming from.
We can look at committees. Just this morning I sat in a committee and watched the member for Edmonton North vote for a Bloc member to be the vice-chair of the committee because he had to.
This is a government made up of underachievers who do not listen to the people.