Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to address the amendment in Group No. 3 to Bill C-3. At the outset I would like to state that this particular amendment addresses two real concerns that I hear constantly from Canadians as I travel across Canada and throughout my riding.
One is the whole issue of the privacy of the individual; the privacy of individual Canadian citizens. The second issue concerns sufficient deterrence to dissuade Canadians who might break the law in some fashion. In this particular case we are talking about those who might reveal information contained in DNA sampling. We want to make the threshold of the penalty sufficiently high enough to ensure that people will be dissuaded from releasing that type of information.
Very clearly, as my hon. colleague for Surrey North just noted, during testimony when the justice committee was reviewing Bill C-3 there were a number of concerns brought forward by witnesses dealing with these two fundamental issues. One concern is privacy. How will the DNA samples be protected to ensure they will not be used in a manner in which they are not intended to be used? We have seen cases in the past dealing with income tax and other issues whereby government agencies obtained certain information about Canadian citizens which was ultimately leaked into the public arena. A growing concern for Canadian citizens is their fundamental right to privacy. One of the major stumbling blocks in this DNA legislation is the need to convince Canadians that it will be used appropriately and properly and that the legislation is in place to protect the well-being of society, because there is an inherent distrust.
I would suggest that with the advent of things like Bill C-68, the gun registration, there is a growing inherent distrust of government on the part of the average Canadian citizen. There are some good reasons for that. Citizens have seen some of their fundamental rights continuously eroded, continuously chipped away by big government. Big government knows best. Big government is going to look after us from the cradle to the grave. We had some speeches on this very point in the preceding debate on Bill C-26.
We have to ensure that the concerns about the right to privacy are adequately addressed. How are we going to ensure that? Simply put, as my hon. colleague from Surrey North just said, deterrence has to be sufficient. Any individual who would break the law and reveal that information has to be dissuaded from doing it. We want to have the penalties sufficient to deter them from doing it. I often refer to the system not as a criminal justice system unfortunately but as a legal system. Too often we see in our criminal justice system that it is not meeting the needs of the average Canadian.
The system is failing. A large part of that is because there is inadequate punishment for crimes. We need some minimal sentences. We need some sentences that truly deter those who would break the law.
We have seen in the last couple of years farmers receive more punishment for trucking a load of grain across the U.S. border and selling their own product without getting the necessary Canadian Wheat Board permits than someone who commits rape, someone who preys on the most vulnerable in our society, the women and children. It is disgusting that people can get away with conditional sentencing. Those people are not deterred whatsoever from committing heinous crimes against the most vulnerable members of society.
This Liberal government continues to do nothing to address the issue of conditional sentencing and the need for minimal sentences to deter these individuals. This is absolutely appalling.
We have contained in Group No. 3 a proposal that deserves serious consideration. We want to increase this penalty from two years to five years to make it sufficient to hopefully deter anyone from doing such things and, perhaps more important, to ensure Canadians can have confidence that the government is serious about preventing this information from getting out.
These Group No. 3 amendments deserve serious consideration and I urge all members to do exactly that.