Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak this bill. To put the chair of the justice
committee at ease, I anticipate that I will be supporting this bill when it comes to a vote. This bill, which deals with the production of records in sexual offence proceedings, attempts to find a compromise between conflicting interests on an important topic. Although, I would argue with the chair of the justice committee that this is hardly the kind of stuff that will make women, children and families feel more secure in their homes tonight. I do not know that is going to happen, but it is a bill we will be able to support because it deals with the very important matter of records in sexual offence proceedings.
There is no doubt that of all the crimes committed in Canada, and there are many of them and none very nice, the one that does strike fear in most people more than any other is sexual crime. It is no accident that around the world when an invading army comes into another land it will plunder, steal and burn the houses, but when it wants to degrade people and treat them as less than human it will often commit sexual crimes against that population. We have seen that recently over in Europe. Certainly in Africa and other places it is common to wars. Part of what makes it a war against humanity is the degrading nature of sexual crimes.
This bill attempts to find that balance between the right of a person who has been accused of a crime to have the right to cross-examine the accuser. On the other hand, in times past the lawyers have often gone on a fishing expedition. Rather than seek information that is germane to the topic and the case, they end up with a fishing expedition that asks for everything. It asks for diaries and letters. It goes into a person's past which sometimes has nothing to do with the case and is totally irrelevant except that it strikes fear into the heart of the person being cross-examined.
This bill tries to find the balance between when the accuser needs some protection from that fishing expedition and when the person being accused has the right to say "hold on, I am innocent and I need the right to cross-examine". This bill attempts to find that balance. There are competing interests.
Persons have been wrongfully accused of sexual crimes in this country and in others. It is only right that they be allowed to defend themselves and use all the systems they can, all the cross-examination that is necessary in order to bring our the truth, because the truth is what a court case should get to. This bill does seem to find that balance. Like all bills, it is not perfect but perfection eludes most of us so there is enough good in this bill that it should be supported.
I will point out a few concerns in terms of records that I hope the minister will monitor in his regulations and in the administration of this act. In September 1996, I wrote to the minister about this bill. I told him about a constituent of mine who came to my office because of what they call memory retrieval technique. It has been used by some psychiatrists and therapists to try to get to old memories that have been buried deep in the subconscious and to try to bring them up to see if they need to be examined in the light of current facts.
They brought up the case of a child of theirs who claimed that 30 or 40 years previously had been sexually assaulted. They had no memory of it but a therapist had convinced them that it must have happened and therefore they needed to bring charges against the father in this case.
The Canadian Psychiatric Association has cautioned that this can be, in the production of records, a real problem in a criminal case. There is quite a bit of documentation suggesting that these kinds of memories are often a fabrication of a so-called victim. There is no defence for the accused.
Sometimes there will be no other witnesses. There is 30 or 40 years of silence between the supposed infraction and the current date of someone suddenly remembering something. It is no wonder that some of these people, like the father sitting in my office, who ask, "what is my recourse? How can I defend myself when an accusation is made right out of the blue?" I have asked the minister to respond to these concerns as it applies to Bill C-46 and to so-called retrieved memories.
The sixth recommendation of the Canadian Psychiatric Association suggests that the reports of recovered memories which incriminate others should be handled with particular care. I have yet to have a response from the minister on exactly how he is going to handle that part of the records "with particular care". I hope that he will respond before this bill becomes law. Six or eight months have gone by and he has not responded to this.
I am told that he has a nine month waiting list with respect to answering his letters. Now we are being asked to vote on these bills some six or eight months after I have asked some pretty important questions and I have as yet to see the answers. I hope he is going to respond quickly.
The next thing involves records of sexual predators. I have brought forward a private member's bill in response to some 33,000 names on a petition that I have been presenting over the last couple of months. It is with regard to the preservation of records of those who have committed sexual crimes.
Right now those records go into what is called CPIC and become part of an accessible file for day care workers or people working with children who might want to have access to it to see if the person applying for a job has a criminal record.
The problem in the private member's bill I brought forward is that those people who are pardoned from their sexual crimes have their records removed from the CPIC computer record system. I
would ask the minister if that is wise. I suggest that someone who has committed a sexual crime, especially against children, even if later pardoned, should have a record of their crime somewhere in the system.
The record does not necessarily have to be common knowledge but surely there must be some way of maintaining it so that if something comes up later and that person is again accused of a crime, there is some way of making sure that person's record is not just wiped clean. There is a price to pay when you are convicted of a crime and part of that conviction I believe should be that your record stays in the computer and is there for concerned parties to access.
I mentioned earlier that sexual crimes are the most odious of crimes because they treat someone as less than human. They treat them as an object and as a way of degrading someone. They are often hurtful physically. The emotional damage affects not only the victim but also the victim's families and co-workers. As was the case in my town of Abbotsford, when the so-called Abbotsford killer was on the prowl and had assaulted and killed one woman and left another for dead, the entire town was affected by it. It got so bad that no one would attend sporting events for fear of their lives. Even high school students were told not to go out in public unless they were in large groups and stuck together. It can terrorize an entire town.
Although this bill when it comes to sexual records will be relatively easy to support, there is much left to be done by the government when it comes to the protection and enhancement of victims' rights.
The government for some reason seems to be reluctant to deal harshly with the most hideous of crimes. I do not know why but it does not elevate it to the level it should be elevated to which is to treat the perpetrators of these crimes like the animals they are. If they need to be locked up for some time then we have to lock them up. Often they cannot be treated. They are habitual criminals. They are sometimes only caught after they have assaulted many victims and many families are ruined. In my opinion, the government does not seem to take that seriously enough.
I will bring this case forward again because it happened in my area. A fellow by the name of Darren Ursel confined a lady from my area in a car and sexually assaulted her for 90 minutes using the handle of a racquetball racket. He terrorized this woman for 90 minutes. One can only imagine the terror, the physical damage and the awfulness of that crime.
They caught Darren Ursel and at his trial the judge, Judge Harry Boyle, said that because Mr. Ursel did not have a criminal record and that he showed apparent remorse for what he had done that a conditional sentence would be passed and he would not have to serve time. He was back on the streets that very same day.
What am I supposed to tell this lady after the hideousness of that crime when it is reported in the paper that the judge felt that Ursel seemed to be sorry and if someone is sorry it is good enough and they can go back on the street again the very same day? What am I supposed to tell this woman who comes to see me or when people who know her come to see me?
I will tell the House what is happening. In my area there is another woman I know who has started a petition drive to remove that judge from the bench. She is so outraged, as are the people in Abbotsford and Chilliwack, that they believe that judge does not deserve to sit on the bench any more. How can anyone say that if the guy feels sorry that it is okay and that is the end of the issue? What does it take to get time in jail for one of these perverts?
As I mentioned, this is the worst of crimes. That person may never recover psychologically. Her family may be destroyed. Who knows what the effect will be on loved ones and relatives around her? An entire community again puts another lock on the door and bars on the window because that person gets out on the street the next day. What does it take to have something treated as a serious crime in this country? What could be worse than that? Short of killing somebody, what can be worse than that? I do not know what the government expects. What does the government want before it starts to treat it as a serious crime?
That is where I have trouble. The bill is a small thing. It is easy to support. Let us get it over with and we will do it. But when we have cases like this, where we see many lives being ruined, I see no support from the minister. As a matter of fact his bill allowed for the conditional release sentence to be issued for this guy. I see no compassion in that. I see no empathy for the victim. In fact I am outraged that the judge said: "If you feel sorry, no time in jail".
A colleague from Prince George-Prince River told me of a case where someone was released from jail for a particular crime, drove 400 miles through the night, got back to where his estranged wife was in a house somewhere, broke down the door, sexually assaulted her and left her for dead on the kitchen floor. The judge decided that it would be too disruptive on the family to put that guy in jail because he would not be able to make his alimony payments. The judge turned him loose.
What kind of a message does that send? To me, it sends a message that a sexual crime is not all that serious. What the heck, if the person does not have a previous record the first one is free. The first one does not count. If you get caught after that you had better be careful because you have a record. But the first one does not really count. Even if a person uses a racquetball handle on the victim it does not matter. That is okay. That is the message that is being sent.
It says that as a victim your life is destroyed likely. You will probably go through life needing counselling help, but that is okay because you are just a victim and the first one does not matter, so you just have to roll with it and get on with life. That is a sick attitude. It is a sick response to a victim who has been trivialized by the current justice system.
Most victims of sexual crimes are female, but not all. As we see on the news all too often, many young boys are also assaulted. It sends a message to people who are often not physically strong enough to fight back. I will put it that way. I think that is a safe thing to say. They cannot outrun, they cannot out wrestle, they cannot get away from the perpetrators of these crimes. Often they are people who abuse a position of authority in order to force somebody to do something sexually that they do not want to do.
What does it say to people the way the current law is? It says sexual assaults are not that serious. You just have to shrug your shoulders and accept them as something that happens in society and if you happen to be the poor unlucky person who is assaulted, these things happen. We just have to be understanding toward that guy because as long as he is sorry, we will turn him loose. That is not acceptable.
In my riding the difference between four years ago when I first started campaigning and today is that almost every door that I knock on has a sign saying: "This place is patrolled by a private security agency. This place is protected by an alarm system". The doors are always locked. People often will not come to the door any more. That is all in a short three or four years.
They can say on the Liberal side that crime is in decline. That is just not true. The rise in violent crime between 1960 and 1995 went from 200 incidences per 100,000 to 1,000 incidences. Worse than that is the many that do not get reported. People say: "If the guy who so badly abused that woman gets nothing, if he gets turned back on the street the next day, then if I go in with just a simple abuse case," if I can call it that, "what are they going to do? Laugh me out of the police station".
Serious crime needs to be treated seriously. Under the current set of laws it is not. It needs to be changed. The Reform Party will put the rights of the victim first. It is high time the Liberal government did so. Bill C-46 is easy to support, but let us get serious about serious crime.