Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to this particular motion on this opposition day. The topic is an important subject which Canadians want to talk about. There is a great deal of interest in the subject and it is very timely to be raising it at this particular juncture.
The YOA, victims' rights, the whole subject dealing with crime and urban safety is something that I am very well aware of and deal with every day. I live in an inner city riding, the city of Winnipeg, that is home to some of the worst street gang problems, breaking and entering, nuisance crimes and a lot of property crimes.
Next to health care, the number one issue that arises from the people in my riding is: Why are their streets not safer? Why can they not feel comfortable? They want to live the way we used to live in that community when I was growing up. My father would give me $5 to go to the store to buy a quart of milk when I was eight or nine years old. I would ride my bicycle to the store, buy the milk and return home.
Now a parent simply cannot do that. They would not be acting in a responsible way if they sent their kid to the store with a five dollar bill. It would not be smart. They would not be doing their child a favour.
It is the number one concern. It is a quality of life issue. People want it to be dealt with. They want it to be addressed. They have a right to be angry. Even a lot of the choleric language that I hear from members of the Reform Party I can frankly understand. I can relate to it. We all have a right to be angry when our streets are not safe and we do not feel that our families are safe.
I recently held a round table on this subject in my riding and two nuns who run a safe house for street kids in the inner city of Winnipeg came to that meeting. They told me some stories that might be useful for members of the House to hear.
First, to give an idea of the nature of the problem, in the area surrounding around the safe house people no longer sleep in the outside rooms of their homes. They sleep in the inner part of their homes, in a den or in a living room that is away from any outside wall because there is gunfire every night. Every night around Rossbrooke House in the inner city of Winnipeg people hear shots going off as gang members threaten each other with firearms. It is serious. It is not once in a blue moon, it is every single night and families will not sleep in their bedrooms because they are afraid of stray bullets coming in through the windows on the exterior walls. Those are urgent circumstances.
They also went on to talk about some of the services they provide in this safe house. They provide a refuge for the 9, 10 and 11 year old children who are being harassed and threatened into joining these street gangs. The older gang members, when they approach these 10 and 11 year olds, whom they want to perform certain crimes for them because they are under a certain age, do not taking no for an answer. In fact, they do not threaten the little children with beating them up. They say “If you don't come and join the gang and do what we want you to we are going to beat up your mother or your sister or some family member”.
We should try to put ourselves in the position of a 10 year old child who has an 18 year old thug telling him “If you don't do this tonight I'm going to your mother's house to beat her up”. It takes a lot of courage for some of these children to say no to the gangs in my neighbourhood.
That is why the house that Sister Eileen and Sister Bernadette run is so critical. They offer a refuge where these courageous children can go to feel comfortable and safe for a little while.
The other thing they pointed out is that it is difficult for the criminal justice system to deal with some of the young street gang members. They are almost getting to the point where they are hyper acute. They are difficult to deal with because there is no place they feel safe or comfortable. They are always on edge like a caged animal. They are always restless. Their heads are always spinning around because they are not safe on the street and often they are not safe in their homes. At home they often face a violent situation. All the predictable consequences of a poor family upbringing are very prevalent. So it is very hard to reason with them. Using reason and logic does not work when somebody is frightened and not thinking rationally. It is very hard to negotiate with them, even in the safe environment of Rossbrooke House.
I wanted to preface my remarks with some of that background of what it is like in the inner city of Winnipeg where I live currently, which has the gang problem, and why this particular issue is so important to me and to the people I represent.
However, I do not believe this argument is going to be fruitful or beneficial because of the sentiment, the tone and the content of the remarks that I have heard from the opposition, at least so far today, and I am sure there will be much more to come as the day goes on.
A lot of us are victims in the inner city of Winnipeg. I have had my home broken into many times. I have actually caught kids breaking into my home. While I was holding them for the police one of them kidnapped my four year old son to use as a trade-off. It was a blackmail situation. It turned into a horrible mess. Ultimately the kids did not get charged, but I got charged with assaulting the kids who broke into my house. It took me six months to clear up that mess. So I have been there. I have been a victim.
We have a right to be angry, but there are different ways of dealing with it. If we are serious about implementing change we have to go beyond revenge. We have to go beyond the hang 'em high mentality that I have been hearing here too much.
Members of the Reform Party have indicated that victims are victimized twice in the system, once when a criminal does something to them and once by the criminal justice system. I would argue that there is a third time the victims are victimized in this country. They are victimized a third time by the exploitation that takes place in this House of Commons when their personal issues, when the crime that they just went through, is dragged before the House of Commons for cheap theatrical purposes to try to fan the flames of some kind of discontent around our criminal justice system. That I have seen time and time again. I think it is really shameful.
In the recent tragic case of the death of Reena Virk, the very next day members of the Reform Party were jumping up out of their seats saying “These kids are going to have to be punished. We are going to sentence them like they are adults”. Those kids were not even charged yet, never mind convicted. What about the presumption of innocence? Yes, perhaps there was a group of kids involved, but all the information we had was from a radio story that indicated that a young girl had been beaten up by other young people. Yet members of the Reform Party were on their feet virtually calling for the gallows for these kids.
Fortunately the justice critic for the NDP challenged them and said “If you are so anxious to hang these kids, build the gallows right here in the House of Commons. Build it the right number of feet high and bring these 14 and 15 year old kids in here and hang them. You guys do it yourselves because we are not going to be a party to it”.
It was a pathetic thing to witness and listen to people drag out the worst possible aspect and dig deep for that most base sort of thing that all people have in them, hatred and intolerance. Reformers are capitalizing on that. In fact they are marketing the malice which some people have inside them. Reformers seem to be experts at digging down and finding the worst in the Canadian public, pulling it out and slapping it on the table.
I have heard graphic details about sexual assaults and pedophiles coming from those members. Every time they stand up they seem to have some new horrific case, and the bloodier and gorier the better. They recite them in great detail in the House of Commons, not because they are trying to do anything constructive in protecting Canadian people, but because they want the cheap populism that comes with being associated with that kind of enforcement.
It is sick. There is a morbid fascination that Reform members seem to have with dragging these issues before the House of Commons.
The extreme right wing in every country has always been heavy handed in terms of criminal justice. Let us face it. The extreme right wingers, and we can go all the way through history, will avoid the obvious comparison which we are getting tired of using. Not only in Europe but in any right wing, fascist dictatorship we see a very heavy hand in terms of criminal justice issues, often extending beyond human and civil rights.
These things seem to get mixed up and confused in the rather simplistic world view of the Reform Party. Reformers get the issues of individual rights, collective rights and human rights jammed into some unworkable, unmanageable ball. I do not think they have thought it all through.
We are critical of certain aspects of the criminal justice system. However, I do not share the opening remarks of the member who put this motion forward as they were full of a lot of sensational terms—