Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand here this evening and speak in the final hour of debate on the private member's bill put forward by my colleague from Calgary Centre. It is of profound importance for the health and well-being of our most important resource in Canada, our children.
Governments at all levels often say that they recognize the importance of children's welfare for the future of the country, but they often have a strange way of showing it. Our income tax structure encourages two income families and common law relationships, although there is overwhelming empirical evidence that both these situations are among the least desirable for the healthy development of children.
Many members of this House have probably bought into United Nations documents that are supposed to protect the rights of the child. Because of manipulation by special interest groups, many subsidized by the Canadian taxpayer, these charters actually seem to undermine the ability of and the responsibility for parents to guide and nurture their children.
In a recent news article the Secretary of State for Children and Youth said “We feel our activities are child centred. Our main concern is what happens to children, and the issue of parents is very, very, I would say, controversial”. If the concern really was for the child, then the well-being of parents and their families would be front and centre, not considered an annoyance by this government.
The term “child centred” also appears in education literature that was popular a few years ago. The philosophy that letting kids decide what they wanted to learn, when they felt like learning it, was somehow going to lead to happier, well adjusted students. The result, as we now know, is that a lack in direction and in an appreciation of the responsibilities that adults were supposed to provide them, many children felt no obligation to learn at all. Many jurisdictions across Canada are retreating from the failed experiment of trying to turn innocent children into miniature adults.
I am not claiming that there is a direct connection, but the policy of absolving adults of their responsibilities to behave properly seems to be the other side of the coin. We seem to have forgotten the social impact of giving individuals a free ride when it comes to the consequences of their actions. We often seem so concerned about the rights of the convict that we completely ignore the loss of dignity, privacy and the enjoyment of life that these criminals visit upon their victims and families.
Members on this side of the House recognize that all legislation must be concerned with balance.
The administration of justice requires not only a presumption of innocence for the individual charged with a crime, but that any punishment that results from a rightful conviction must fit the crime.
There is a process in place for dealing with criminal activity that has to include mitigating circumstances. We may stop a lot of thieves by ordering their hands to be cut off, but our society has decided that sort of punishment is too extreme.
We believe in mercy and we believe that people should get a chance to atone for their transgressions at a later date. At one time these were a couple of elements among many in our justice system, but these days many Canadians feel that they have become the driving force.
Many Canadians feel that the balance has been upset and now the justice system assumes that criminals are always remorseful and will automatically respond to things like day parole and psychiatric counselling. Far from it.
Rightly or wrongly, the perception has been created that the justice system has been skewed to give every consideration to the criminal and little is being done to heal the wounds of the victims.
Many Canadians have expressed the desire to see more done on the side of prevention. They want more police officers on the street, more direct and immediate consequences for all criminal acts, more onus being placed on parents for the actions of minors, a greater emphasis on making criminals pay the full price for their crimes and less of a push to get them back on the street.
While opposing sides may argue about the efficiency of incarcerating versus rehabilitating criminals, police are aware that a rash of property crimes, for example, usually points to the recent release of a criminal who favours that sort of action. It is a fact of life.
There is no end of statistics to show the tendency of various criminals to reoffend and these are often used by people to prove their pet theories about justice.
I do not want to get into a numbers game, nor do I want to argue whether criminals need more or less jail or whether one kind of punishment is more effective than another. That is not what Bill C-284 is all about. It is not about tormenting a particular type of criminal for the rest of their life or imposing more jail time on someone who has supposedly served their time and is now trying to make a life for themselves.
It is true that Bill C-284 does target a particular kind of criminal and seeks to put at public disposal an item of personal information that our system has a method of keeping from the public under ordinary circumstances.
Some may interpret this as being unnecessarily intrusive, but this bill seeks to safeguard a particular kind of victim and is an attempt to bring balance to the system on that victim's behalf.
We recognize that criminals have certain rights and that the criminals who have served time for their crimes may have earned a certain relief from further punishment. However, the victims who we are concerned with here, like many victims who survived the violation against them, often serve a lifetime sentence themselves. They carry those emotional scars for life.
The victims who this bill concerns itself with are usually helpless, vulnerable and find it difficult to comprehend or deal with what is done to them. These victims are our children and our families.
The perpetrators of this most hideous crime are known as pedophiles or sex offenders. Despite what our deepest revulsion urges us to do to these people, we try to remember that we must have balance.
The members of this House should understand that Bill C-284 is not about the punishment of that individual based on suspicion or prejudice, it is about directing convicted criminals away from situations in which they have proven they cannot be trusted.
We are not asking that pardoned sex offenders be barred from society, but that people in positions of responsibility over children be given the opportunity to discover the true history of the potential employees they are looking at hiring.
This bill does not call for the public broadcast of anyone's criminal history. It merely allows for responsible parties to find out if an individual had ever been pardoned for a sexual offence, and then only if that individual actually applies for a job working with children.
When we consider the words of Correctional Services Canada that there is evidence of a substantial increase in the risk for sexual re-offending for that group of offenders with a prior history, and when we discover that the National Parole Board does not even keep track of the more than 16,000 pardons it hands out by type of crime, then we can say that there is a very small price to pay in terms of curtailing the freedoms of this group.
I would like to close by saying that the solicitor general already has the legal authority to override a pardon if it is in the interest of the administration of justice.
I believe it is only just that we work to prevent the tragedy of child victimization any way that we can, and this bill gives us one more tool to accomplish that end. I urge everyone in this House to support the bill.