Madam Speaker, I have listened with interest to the debate this morning. During the last Parliament, as I mentioned earlier, I put forward a bill which requested, consistent with Reform policy, a binding referendum on this issue. It requested a binding referendum of the public, which has in polls, as other members have mentioned, consistently voted 65% or higher for the past 30 years in favour of the death penalty being reinstated. That is one thing which has not changed with time.
An hon. member mentioned how times have changed and how issues have changed but the fact is that public opinion on this issue has not changed. What that tells us is that this place, where members have free votes and vote opposite the will of the people, is out of step with the people, or the people are out of step with Parliament. It is one of the two. We have to do something to bring those two positions more closely together.
One obvious way to do it is to involve the public in a referendum. There would be extensive public debate. Everybody would have the opportunity to put forward their point of view. In the end the community would make the decision about how it wants the country to run.
An hon. member grossly exaggerated about the way referenda work, saying we would be into referenda every year, that every five minutes there would be a referendum. That is a lot of rubbish. I would challenge that member to point to a place anywhere in the world where referenda are common and where that happens.
Even Switzerland which has numerous referenda per month in the cantons simply does not get into the silly nonsense which the member mentioned of constantly revisiting issues. Certainly they revisit issues but the timeframe tends to be a lot longer. Several years is not uncommon for a change in attitudes to alter something which needs to be brought forward in a referendum. The fact is that a referendum is a very good tool for getting public opinion. There is a decent length of time to discuss the issue.
At the moment it certainly looks as if the public would vote for the return of capital punishment. In discussions with my own constituents, because the majority of people in my riding favour its return, I have asked them what sort of checks and balances they would put in place if they were to vote to have capital punishment returned. What checks and balances would they have to avoid accidentally giving the death penalty to somebody who was innocent?
The most common suggestion I had is a good one. It is that the jury which listens to the murder case has the opportunity to weigh all the evidence, to hear all of the circumstances behind the murder. If the death penalty were to be returned the suggestion would be that the jury have the power to recommend to the judge the death penalty. It would not be automatic. It would be a recommendation of the jury. That overcomes one of the problems which was identified by one of the members where juries are afraid to convict people on that basis.
This suggestion was given to me by one of my constituents. If we are ever faced with this situation we may get into that dialogue. If a jury was to have the power to recommend that sort of thing, then the judge is the final check and balance in accepting or rejecting the recommendation.
I realize the bill before us today does not make provision for that. If we were into a referendum type situation a lot of these suggestions would come forward. It is important to remember that.
Another member mentioned that the trend was away from capital punishment. In the United States, which is our closest neighbour, more and more states have been reintroducing capital punishment. There is a growing desire for zero tolerance on crime in many of the United States. Crime authorities are coming down harder and harder on crime and it is working.
For example, in New York City the police commissioner, who is an elected official in the United States, some years ago decided he would take a zero tolerance policy with respect to youth crime and general crime in the subways. He ordered the police to arrest people even if they so much as spit on the sidewalk or put up a bit of graffiti. Within a very few months that zero tolerance sent a message to the drug dealers, the murderers, the rapists that crime would not be tolerated and crime dropped dramatically on the New York subways.
As a result that police commissioner was elected to become the mayor of the city. He introduced much tougher crime control and the murder rate dropped something like 35% in about six months. There was a program on television about this recently. A woman who lived in one of the black ghettos said that in her entire lifetime of 30 years she had never had a day when there were not gunshots fired until that mayor was elected and had a zero tolerance on crime and started to clean up the way society was operating.
There is a desire in society to get control of these criminal elements. I look at youth crime in my area where graffiti is rampant. I have been in Canada since 1979. In Vancouver graffiti was almost unknown then. When I came to Ottawa in 1993 there was hardly any graffiti. Now this whole town is covered in it. My riding is covered in it.
If we had the same zero tolerance approach to things like youth crime, we would be in a much better situation today than we are. This bill represents a desire by the public to see their government, which is us, recognize their concerns and get back to zero tolerance of these crimes. If we do not step down hard on things like graffiti, then we will naturally have to accept all sorts of serious crimes. We saw on the weekend in Victoria where a 14 year old girl was murdered by a group of her peers. We have to get the message across that we are not prepared to accept this type of crime.
Despite what some members have claimed there has been very consistent public opinion on the issue. They want to see us return capital punishment to the law books. The fact remains that this place is out of step with those people and that members who stand and arrogantly say they will defy the will of their constituents are doing them no service whatsoever.