Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-40 which we will be opposing. The reason is, as the member previously said, that it does not go far enough.
Before I get into some of the details on Bill C-40 I want to talk a bit about my concerns about the government and its legislation dealing with the criminal justice system in itself, which encompasses Bill C-40.
I was dismayed to learn in my riding that there was another attempt to rob the store of a very good friend of mine, Brian Lee who owns Lee's Fine Jewellery. This time it worked. Bandits came into his very fine jewellery store, stuck a gun in the face of one of his employees and walked off with about $100,000 worth of jewellery. To somebody like Brian that is not only devastating but its hurts the store's income. It hurts the confidence of the people in our community.
When I stand here to express my dismay about situations like this one, I go back once again to legislation brought up in the House pertaining to criminal justice. One of them was the gun law. We supposedly have a gun law to do deal with the crime problem. Since the government has brought in the gun law, for instance, at least five people have been murdered by guns in my riding. Brian's store was held up by someone with a gun in hand.
For five years I have stood in the House time after time to talk about criminal justice matters. Time after time the same things recur and recur again.
Here we are on Bill C-40 dealing with extradition and I want to talk a bit about some of the comments in the press release put out by the government in this regard. It says fighting global crime is high on Canada's agenda and Canada needs modern legislation to succeed. I could not agree more with that statement. However, when we look at the legislation tabled in the House we wonder how it fits with the PR exercise the government goes through after it tables something in the House.
In another press release the government said that Canadians have expressed concerns about Canada's extradition laws; they want to prevent their country from becoming a safe haven for fugitives. Yes, we do. I am not a lawyer but I have fought enough criminal refugee and immigration cases in the last five years, in fact more than anybody in the House. These comments do not fit.
The fact of the matter is that this is a safe haven. It has been a safe haven internationally for criminals. It will continue to be a safe haven internationally for criminals. It is not just extradition as the NDP member previously said. It has to do with deportation although there are differences.
The previous member who spoke about deportation indicated that it was a little easier to deport than it was to extradite. I assure the House that is not the case. I have been there and I have been through those battles.
In my riding I have been in and out of refugee hearings and deportation hearings so often that I just shake my head when I go in because I know what I am going to be dealing with. Now I have managed to have four or five people deported from the country. It is a monumental exercise. I do not think the government appreciates what we are dealing with in criminal matters.
Boujam Aai Inthavong, an individual in my riding, helped murder a young man in my community who was 17 years old. He beat him with a bat in front of witnesses. The guy with Inthavong shot him in front of approximately 100 people. Inthavong ended up in prison for three years. While in prison he applied for refugee status and got it inside of 50 minutes. It took me and people in my community a year and half to try to get it overturned. We had to get a ministerial permit. We had to get the minister to declare him a danger to the public. We forced that on him. We went through appeal after appeal after appeal, fight after fight after fight.
We had to open up diplomatic relations with Laos because nobody had ever deported somebody from this country to Laos. After all that was done, almost two years later he was finally deported. The costs involved in that were through legal aid paid for by taxpayers. At one point he had two lawyers fighting me, not a lawyer but just an average citizen, all at public cost.
The government has the unmitigated gall to issue press releases like this one stating that it wants to prevent our country from becoming a safe haven for fugitives. I have news for the government. This country is a safe haven for fugitives and it is this government's fault.
There is little point in trying to impress people by mediocre changes in legislation and then hitting the streets with news releases. It does not wash where the problems are, which is in the communities.
Jose Mendoza, a young man from El Salvador, came to my community. This is not an extradition case but I am trying to explain that extradition and deportation are really quite similar and the problems are the same. Jose could have been extradited because in one of his hearings he said he was wanted in El Salvador. He used that excuse. He had 12 criminal convictions as a young man between the ages of 17 and 22, including what they call today sexual assault but I call rape.
Then, after all of that, he was back out on the streets at age 22 and raped Tasha, a girl in my community. The battle started for Jose. I wanted him out of the country. They agreed and Jose Mendoza agreed. His legal aid lawyer said “If you stay the charges Jose will accept deportation”. Everything is a-okay. Tasha said that at least we were rid of him and he would not remain in Canada.
We shipped him out escorted to El Salvador where he hitch-hiked through Guatemala, Mexico, the United States and showed up at the Douglas border crossing where he said that he was a refugee. They agreed that he was a refugee according to the rules, that he was entitled to make a claim as a refugee, and he was in. After all that he was in, so we started the fight.
We are very close to beating the refugee claim, with no help whatsoever from the government. We can imagine how Tasha felt. The reason we found out that he was back in Canada was that Tasha met him at a gas station about eight months later.
I have to ask sane people listening to these kinds of stories if they really think the government is dealing with these kinds of issues. Do they really think that half-baked legislation on extradition is working? Do they really think that appeal after appeal after appeal under legal aid is helping our system? Do they really think our deportation rules are helping us? I do not.
I got involved in the refugee claim with Jose Mendoza and tried to table his 12 prior convictions including one rape but not including Tasha's. The refugee board says that it does not consider that. What it considers is the effect the deportation will have on this individual if he goes back to El Salvador a second time. I really do not give two hoots about that.
I do care about the law-abiding Canadian citizen. I do care about the 12 prior convictions. That is what I care about and that is what the people in my community care about. But try to convince the group on the other side here and it does not work.