Mr. Speaker, as the seconder of Motion No. 265 I am very pleased to have the opportunity to rise and to lend my support to the motion.
Briefly, I would like to comment on the tone and the content of the debate in the House of Commons today. I would compliment all of the speakers for taking this issue in a very serious and respectful way.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice started her remarks by saying that this is an issue that the government is taking seriously and one in which it is interested. She herself has been seized of the issue for a good number of years, as has the current Minister of Justice.
The member for Yukon is to be doubly complimented for bringing this very timely issue forward now. From the debate we have heard in the House, there is a great level of interest. This is not something that came out of the blue or that stemmed out of one isolated incident in Yukon, although that is where the hon. member for Yukon started her remarks, speaking very passionately about the tragic death of a woman at the hands of her husband. We heard some of the detail. I am glad that we were spared some of the gruesome detail.
Too often in the House of Commons when we are dealing with tragic issues members fall into the sensationalism of the horrible deaths and other things which people went through. Surely the merits of the case can survive without dwelling on the gruesome and the gory.
The member from the Reform Party disappointed me, frankly. I was very surprised to hear the attitude of Reform members toward this motion. He prefaced his remarks by saying that gender should not be taken into consideration in this issue. He gave some statistics which indicated that in the tragic situation where a man killed a woman, 60% of the applications for taking this into consideration were rejected. Only 40% succeeded.
However, if it was the case of a woman killing a man and the lawyer for the defence wanted to use the defence of provocation, the numbers were reversed. The inverse was true. Forty per cent of the cases were rejected and 60% were accepted.
The member somehow used this as rationale or justification, suggesting that there is an imbalance and that women are treated more favourably in the application of the provocation rule than are men. I would like to take a moment to point out that it is the member from the Reform Party who fails to see the historic imbalance in the power relationship between men and women and who fails to recognize how such figures might come about, even given the fair application of the provocation rule.
Other members have spoken today of what a complex issue we are dealing with. It is true that lay people like me, frankly, have a hard time even getting our minds around when this rule should be used and when it should not. I do not envy the judges or whoever makes the determination as to whether a particular case should qualify under the provocation rule or whether it should be self-defence or spousal abuse syndrome arguments.
I can see this really getting to be a quagmire of minutia when someone is trying to determine when this works. The fact that it works at all and works even once in a rare blue moon is clearly too many. The member for Yukon made very good points indicating that this was an arcane leftover in our judicial laws. We do not need such a reference any more. It hearkens to a darker time when this kind of thing could be contemplated.
I do not like the idea that we can justify the use of violence in any situation, frankly, because it tends to condone it. Is it okay to lash out in the schoolyard if Joey pushes you down? We spend a long time teaching our children that is not okay. There are other ways of conflict resolution other than striking out. A black eye in the schoolyard was sort of a common incident when I was growing up certainly, but now hopefully we have moved beyond that and have matured.
In the same light and by the same token, why then do we accept that any level of violence is acceptable if one is insulted or provoked mercilessly to the point where one could not stand it any more? Really one is saying “I can't take it any more” and lashes out. This law deals with lashing out in the ultimate way, murder, killing someone.
In one of the cases cited by the member for Yukon, the B.C. case involving a man named Burt Stone, he stabbed his wife 47 times, put her body in a toolbox and then went to Mexico for a month. For this he got a sentence of four years in jail. He was able to prove that his wife had provoked his violent behaviour by verbal insults delivered over a four hour road trip. He had to suffer nagging, abuse or insults for a four hour period and the result was he stabbed her 47 times and stuffed her into a toolbox. The defence of provocation was allowed in this incident.
That one incident alone would motivate me to rise up and speak against ever allowing the defence of provocation to be used. I do not need other incidents, although, as I say, the reason the member for Yukon originally rose on this issue was to deal with the Klassen murder in Yukon.
One member spoke of the folly of letting special interest groups drive our legislative agenda when it comes to justice issues, as if to say that we cannot be so loose with our changing of laws that if we get 50,000 signatures and lobby the government aggressively it will have no choice but to chuck that section of the code. No one is advocating that. I do not think we could accuse the member for Yukon of acting in a frivolous way or asking government to act in a way that is not prudent.
There is a great history of the lobbying and studying that has gone on about this issue. The member walked us through some of the review and study by groups and by the Department of Justice, knowing full well that this set of rules and laws should be changed. It was reviewed by the Law Reform Commission of Canada in 1989. We had the report of the federal-provincial working group on homicide in 1991, the report of the bar association in 1992, a House of Commons subcommittee on the recodification of the Criminal Code in 1993, and on and on it has been reviewed. It is only fitting and only proper that we now have it where it should be, being debated in the House of Commons.
A member mentioned special interest groups. He tried to imply that this was somehow the women's movement or something. I do not know if that is what he was getting at, but to even say that is to trivialize the issue and not to show respect for the member for Yukon who clearly is following through on a progressive movement that has been going on for over a decade to try to have this aspect of the code altered and changed.
One murder which results in a charge of manslaughter as a result of the use of the provocation defence is too much. I take issue with one member who said earlier that one does not get acquitted, that one is reduced from murder to manslaughter and manslaughter can have a penalty of life.
That member failed to point out that manslaughter can also have no minimum sentence whatsoever. The person could in fact walk with a probation, without serving any jail time. It is a huge advantage if the lawyer manages to successful argue the provocation defence.