Mr. Speaker, I too wish to urge the voters in my riding of Beauharnois—Salaberry, which encompasses the two Quebec electoral districts of Beauharnois—Huntingdon and Salaberry—Soulanges, to exercise their right to vote. This is a great day for democracy in Quebec. It will no doubt be a great day for us. It is important that everyone exercise this right, as it is recognized as one of the most fundamental rights under our charters and major international conventions.
I therefore hope the Quebec premier's wish for record participation in this public consultation, which will decide what comes next in the history of Quebec and Canada, will come true. Like my colleague from Hochelaga—Maisonneuve and my other colleagues in this place, I am confident.
I would also like to thank the hon. member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve for getting me involved in the work of the justice and human rights committee and allowing me to participate in committee proceedings on Bill C-40 I am profoundly interested in. The bill concerns extradition, extradition treaties entered into by Canada and multilateral conventions allowing criminals to be extradited for the purpose of administering both national and international criminal law.
This has been a calm debate. Parliamentarians from other parties, as well as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and legal experts of some repute from the Department of Justice and the Department of Foreign Affairs, who were on occasion able to provide the members with some appropriate information.
I would like to express my respect and admiration for Yvan Roy, a senior counsel at Justice, whose most worthwhile commentaries provided us with answers to many of our questions.
Sometimes, however, no answers were forthcoming or there was no follow-up on our proposals, even when we felt they would improve the bill and ensure that it could not be amended subsequently as the result of legal challenges or an event such as the passing of a treaty of Rome creating an international criminal court, which should have moved the committee members to give preference, as my colleague from Hochelaga—Maisonneuve has suggested, to having two distinct approaches to extradition. That is my first comment on Bill C-40.
In our opinion, it would have been preferable to make the extradition system in keeping with multilateral or bilateral extradition treaties, to create a system specific to this area, and to differentiate it from cases not involving extradition per se, but rather the handing over of persons accused of international crimes to ad hoc tribunals such as the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia or for Rwanda.
Soon, I hope, after 60 states have ratified the treaty of Rome instituting an international criminal tribunal, that tribunal will have to be added to the list of tribunals to which individuals can be handed over when there is a desire to bring them to trial for international crimes.
It would have been desirable in my opinion, as it was in the opinion of a number of the lawyers and criminal lawyers who appeared before the committee, to establish a separate scheme. Despite the amendments sought by the Reformers, the government wanted to continue to permit ministerial discretion in this matter. Ministerial discretion should have been limited in the case of international criminal tribunals. Under the bill as it stands, the minister retains the same discretion as in the case of a foreign country requesting extradition.
In our opinion, the bill would have been improved had the government agreed to create two separate schemes. What concerns us is that, in the future, the government may have to return to parliament in order to set up a separate scheme, something that might have been prevented had the bill been amended as the Bloc Quebecois wished.
The second point I wish to raise regarding the bill concerns the treaties, their publication and their tabling. During the deliberations of the standing committee, we argued vigorously in favour of having extradition treaties—bilateral or multilateral—not only published, as the bill provides, but tabled in parliament.
This is all the more appropriate, in our opinion, because the bill that C-40 is intended to replace provided for the tabling of extradition treaties before both Houses of Parliament. This obligation is eliminated by C-40, thereby reducing the minimal transparency of the government in the area of international treaties.
Since the beginning of this parliament, every time they were given the opportunity, the members of the Bloc Quebecois—at least those who sit on the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade—have asked the government to be more transparent on this issue, by agreeing to table before parliament not only treaties like the ones dealing with extradition and social security, but all treaties.
The government remains reluctant to adopt an approach which, as it happens, is the one used today by the parliaments of other Commonwealth countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, and even the British parliament, all of which have agreed over the past few years to become more transparent by systematically tabling treaties before parliament.
The Bloc Quebecois is calling for this practice of tabling treaties before parliament to be reviewed and extended to all treaties. We would also like parliament to be involved in the conclusion of treaties and to approve such treaties before they are signed, so that the elected representatives of the people can have a say on the contents of treaties negotiated by the executive branch.
The reticence of the government and its Minister of Foreign Affairs in this matter is obvious; in debates on the implementation of international conventions like the convention on the elimination of antipersonnel mines or the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, they refused to promise that parliament would be consulted so it could approve such treaties before they are signed or ratified.
The Bloc Quebecois brought this issue up again and got some small consolation when the committee chair agreed to write to the chair of the standing committee on foreign affairs and to the minister, to ask that a debate take place on this issue. That sort of opened the door, albeit too narrowly, since it is an issue that deserves a comprehensive review, to make Canada's foreign policy more democratic, as the government pledged to do, and to involve parliament in the signing of treaties, which increasingly affect the daily lives of the citizens.
My third point regarding this bill has to do with the death penalty, since the bill includes a provision, namely clause 44(2), which provides that the minister may refuse to make a surrender order if the person is punishable by death in the other country. This should have been compulsory, since one should be consistent with one's convictions.
If Canada does not believe in the death penalty and feels it is a practice equivalent to torture or to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, it should make it compulsory for the minister not to extradite an individual if that person may be punishable by death in the country requesting his or her extradition.
Discretion is granted to the minister in clause 44(2), but we would have liked to add, in clause 40(3), another reference to the death penalty, since this is a clause dealing with the minister's power to seek assurances from the state requesting the extradition of a person. Surprisingly, the committee and its members, with the exception of one government member, supported us and agreed that reference be made to capital punishment in clause 40.
Even though this amendment is not included, it must be noted that, in certain extradition treaties, including the one between Canada and the United States, the minister is required to seek such assurances. This treaty, which is something of a model extradition treaty for Canada, should have been fully reflected in paragraph 3 of clause 40.
The member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve and myself cannot hide our disappointment that members voted against such an amendment, particularly as the Department of Justice officials and the parliamentary secretary seemed to have no objection to including such a reference to capital punishment in clause 40.
Fourth, I would point out, as did my colleague, the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, that we were glad to have taken the initiative in extending the application of paragraph 44.(1)( b ) of Bill C-40, which sets out the reasons for which the Minister of Justice may refuse to make a surrender order. The original such list in Bill C-40 was based on the list in the UN's model treaty, which states are urged to examine when drawing up their own extradition treaties.
The list in this model treaty that was originally included in the bill was very incomplete, in our view. We tried to incorporate the grounds found in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the even more complete list of grounds in section 10 of Quebec's charter of rights and freedoms.
As a result of our initiative, the list was expanded to include language, colour and sexual orientation, with the government adding mental disability. The provision as it now stands is definitely more consistent with Canada's international obligations, and we are pleased that certain grounds have been added and that Quebec's charter served as an inspiration to federal law makers, which includes us until there is evidence to the contrary, in improving this clause.
These are constructive amendments brought forward by the Bloc Quebecois to a bill that has the advantage of modernizing two long forgotten extradition laws, Canada having neglected to modernize its extradition legislation until now.
This bill would probably please a former supreme court justice, who recently retired, Mr. Justice La Forest, who wrote some great books on extradition law, which he wanted to make clearer and more simple. His wishes have been fulfilled to a certain extent in Bill C-40.
I will conclude by reminding members that Canada could use this bill, as well as the existing legislation, to request the extradition of a dictator who is now in the hands of the British justice system. As members know, I am referring to Augusto Pinochet, the former general, now a senator, a person who is still considered a dictator by many people, a person who is allegedly responsible for over 4,000 deaths and an even greater number of disappearances in Chile.
This bill, as well as the existing legislation, authorizes Canada to request the extradition of Mr. Pinochet to Canada, as was done recently by Spain, France, Switzerland and Belgium.
Like my colleagues—and I think they support me in this initiative—I believe we must insist even more strongly that the Minister of Justice follow the lead of her counterparts from European countries and request the extradition of General Pinochet from Great Britain. We must continue to put pressure on that country's government so that Mr. Pinochet cannot escape justice and can be brought before a national tribunal, whether it be in Spain, Belgium, France, Switzerland or even Canada, to answer for the crimes against humanity of which so many Chileans accuse him. Canada is in a position to do so.
I have already asked three questions in the House on this issue. I have yet to get an answer either from the Minister of Justice or from the Minister of Foreign Affairs. An answer would be nice and before the British Minister of the Interior makes his decision, it would be useful if the Government of Canada, through the minister, were to follow up on a request made by a Canadian woman from Montreal, who was tortured, in 1973, as many others were, and suffered physical injuries that she has described in an affidavit that proves the extent of the crimes that were committed and that cannot go unpunished.
We should see that the system meets its goal, which is to ensure that no crime, whether at the international or at the national level, go unpunished.