Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-45. Unfortunately, I am going to have to speak in opposition to this piece of legislation. Once again, as my hon. friend from Red Deer pointed out, the government has fallen well short of the mark. It has fallen well short of where Canadians want it to go.
It is the primary purpose of the justice system to ensure that justice is first applied and, second, that it is applied evenly. I want to talk about that aspect of this piece of legislation.
One of the strange anomalies of the bill is that it will grant those people already in prison, who were convicted of heinous crimes, the right to apply for early release. This is a continuation of the so-called faint hope clause.
People like Clifford Olson, Paul Bernardo, Daniel Gingras will have the option under this piece of legislation to continue to come before the public to make their case to be allowed out.
Have we, in this country, not learned that people like Clifford Olson crave that type of attention? What right do we as legislators have to allow these people to come forward and continue to wreak havoc in the lives of the victims?
When I talk about victims in the case of Clifford Olson, I am talking about the parents of the 11 children he murdered. Why do we as legislators have a right to allow him to come forward and say the sorts of things that he says in the media to really continue to perpetuate a crime in the lives of those parents? That is ridiculous.
What is the government thinking about when it allows that to happen? Obviously it has forgotten the purpose of the justice system. The justice system is not to serve the criminal, it is to serve the law-abiding citizens. It is to serve the rights of victims.
I have a friend here, the member for Fraser Valley East, who brought down a piece of private member's legislation that received wide support in the House. It called for a victims bill of rights.
That is the appropriate type of legislation to be bringing in. Why in the world are we bringing in what amounts to a criminals bill of rights? Why are we granting criminals more rights? It is absolutely contrary to everything Canadians are telling us. It is contrary to everything we know in our own hearts, yet the government continues to bring down flawed pieces of legislation like Bill C-45. It is absolutely ridiculous. It is counter-intuitive. I do not understand it at all.
To personalize this a little more, I must tell the story of how Daniel Gingras wreaked havoc in my riding several years ago. People may remember the case where he was out on a pass after having murdered a person. He murdered a fellow because he did not like the look of his face, according to his own testimony.
He murdered someone and was subsequently released on a day pass, because it was his birthday, in Edmonton. He overpowered the guard and eventually made his way to Medicine Hat, my riding. He took the shoe laces from a woman and strangled her with them because, according to his own testimony, she was crying like a cow.
These people are scarcely human. They are hubris as far as I am concerned. I do not understand how we can allow these people any rights at all. Yet the government has brought down a piece of legislation that will allow people like Daniel Gingras and others of his ilk to come before not only the courts, which is bad enough, but before the public and to again have their say. They will stir up many bad memories.
That is contrary to what just people in this country believe. It really makes me wonder what possibly goes on in the Department of Justice when they think up pieces of legislation like this.
People across the way will say we have to be compassionate. Compassionate should mean compassionate to everybody, not just to criminals. When people talk about letting loose one virtue like compassion without a counter-virtue like justice, then they will simply allow some of the worst things possible to go on. That is exactly what is happening with this piece of legislation.
What could have happened? I mentioned a minute ago my friend from Fraser Valley East bringing down victims rights legislation.
That is the sort of thing we should have in this country. A lot of people ask why life does not mean life in this country. Even a life sentence in this country usually only amounts to 25 years where there is eligibility for parole after that.
Many people in this country want to go further. They want life meaning life, but in the wake of the Bernardo trial there were many people, as there are still today, believing we need to have a plebiscite, a referendum on capital punishment.
Why is it that people such as Paul Bernardo, Daniel Gingras and Clifford Olson can murder perfectly innocent people, children in some cases, and be allowed to live out their lives when they know that their victims will never ever see another day? That is so wrong yet people across the way allow it to happen. People across the way, who I know in their own hearts do not believe in this legislation, will stand up and vote for it simply because it is the condition, the price that they pay if they want to stay in that party.
At some point principle should mean more than just sticking around in a party so that you can possibly get re-elected. If you believe in principle you should be willing to jettison all that party stuff and stand up for your constituents. That is what members across the way have to do.
I urge all people who are watching today, and I know there are many people watching out there, to let their local MPs know that Bill C-45 simply is not adequate. In fact, not only is it not adequate, it is actually dangerous. It allows all those people who have committed murder in the past to come back and wreak havoc in the future and I think that is wrong.
This legislation tells me the government has not yet gotten the message from the constituents and even from some of its own MPs. People out there want the problem of crime dealt with in a serious way and they want people to get their just deserts when they commit a crime. In some cases that means a life penalty and in other cases I would suggest it means the death penalty.
During the last election campaign I remember going door to door and probably every member in the House ran into this. If you were out after dark very often it was difficult to get women to come to the door.
I know members across the way will say: "Have you not heard the statistics that crime is going down?" I can tell you that people feel very threatened in their homes. I remember how difficult it was to get people to come to the door, especially women, and there is a good reason for that. Let us not cast aside their concerns and say that they just do not know what they are talking about. Let us start introducing some laws that have an effect not only in dealing with crime but in restoring the confidence of people who are afraid to go out on their own.
Nowadays there are bars on the windows of houses and businesses. But in some cases, like the women's prison in Edmonton, we do not even have bars on the jails any more. They are trying to rectify that now after there were some real problems which actually led to the death of an inmate. Certainly people should not feel they have to be prisoners in their own homes simply because we have a government that refuses to get tough with criminals.
Let us face it. There is not an MP in this House who has not heard over and over again from their constituents that people cannot understand why the government has not been tougher on crime. It is not just this government, it was the Tory government before. The Tories were the ones who brought in that ridiculous Young Offenders Act. That is another issue which we will save for another day. It is not just this government, it is several governments in succession.
I hope members across the way will find it in their hearts to stand up for the innocent victims and citizens out there instead of criminals in the next go round.