Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak on Bill C-79, an act respecting victims of crime.
It is quite amusing that we should be debating a bill that was supposed to be a priority not only to the present Minister of Justice but to the previous Minister of Justice.
In 1996 the former Minister of Justice promised that specific victim legislation would be presented by the fall. Here we are, three years later and two justice ministers later, debating a bill that, according to the present justice minister in June 1997, listed victims rights as one of her top three priorities. It is two years later and we are debating this top priority of the Minister of Justice.
This is one area in which the Reform Party has played a very important role. Three years ago, a supply day motion was presented by the Reform Party, and supported by the House, which put a victims rights bill into the system and before a committee. The justice committee was instructed to come up with legislation that would be reported back to the House. I guess three years late is better than not at all.
I have several concerns with the legislation. Nowhere is the definition of a victim clearly spelled out. As many of us in the House know from visitations from constituents, a victim is not necessarily the person who received the abuse, the attempted murder, the rape or whatever. A victim can be family members; sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, siblings. In many cases there can be lots of victims when these kinds of criminal actions take place.
I would have thought the government would have been a little clearer in the parameters of who it considered to be victims and who it considered should fall under the Criminal Code in reference to the rights given to victims.
The other concern I have is that the committee, in recommending that the legislation be presented to the House, also recommended that there be amendments to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act which would support what this victims rights bill is attempting to do. It is difficult to deal with one and not deal with the other at the same time.
We are faced with dealing with part of an answer to a problem, rather than the entire answer which was recommended by the committee, which was to make amendments to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and to install victims rights legislation.
Until we deal with the Corrections and Conditional Release Act we will not know whether we have resolved some of the issues because we will be dealing with them in isolation. This should be going hand in glove to make sure that what the government is attempting to do is in fact what the committee suggested the government do in order to deal with the issue.
Another concern I have, and I would be the first to recognize the difficulty with this given my responsibility, is that the federal government is responsible for the Criminal Code. The federal government is responsible for the legislation which sets the parameters of criminal activity, what the penalties will be, how they will be treated and the like. However, the provincial governments are responsible for the administration of the Criminal Code through their judicial processes.
I am a little concerned that there needs to be a closer working relationship between the provinces and the federal government to make sure that the changes in the Criminal Code are changes that the provincial governments can accept and enact. I believe that the committee which will be established might help with this, that it will attempt to work with the provinces in the enacting or the ability of the provinces to implement the legislation, but I really feel from my experience that there needs to be far more open communication between the provincial jurisdiction and the federal jurisdiction before things are set in stone.
I would like to believe that the committee which will be established will have the ability to work with the provinces, and to get the provinces to work together, but I would have liked to have seen a little more indication that the federal government had already gone through that process in a much more meaningful way before it produced legislation.
This legislation has been introduced into the House of Commons. The process will allow the government to once again hear from victims and from provinces as to whether they feel this particular drafting of the legislation really deals with the issue. I hope the government, through the committee, will be open to hearing what the victims and their families, support groups and community groups have to say. I hope they will listen to what the provincial governments have to say with respect to the administration of the legislation and that if there are problems, if there are ways of amending the legislation so that it will work better, then I hope the government will be open to bringing those kinds of amendments and changes to the legislation so that we end up with a statute that has meaningful application in today's world.
Those are some of the difficulties that I have with this legislation, but I would like to give credit where credit is due.
The committee which dealt with this issue did a good job, I believe, in making recommendations to the government. The committee went out of its way to listen to victims rights groups and other advocates to try to bring together in its recommendations meaningful changes and meaningful recommendations for legislation that the government could use to address the problem.
What the committee has recommended and what the government has included in Bill C-79 is that the victims are to be informed of their right to prepare a victim impact statement at the time of sentencing. One would think that is pretty common and that it is already done. Surprisingly, it is not already done.
Yes, a victim impact statement can be presented in writing, but there has never been an opportunity for the victim or the victim's family to relate to a court the impact of the criminal activity on themselves. To me it seems almost ridiculous that it has taken so long in the development of our criminal system, our court system and our judicial system for victims to be given this right to express the result of the action. It is far past the time that this recognition be granted. The government is to be commended that it has finally seen the opportunity to make this happen.
The government has given victims a choice. They can read the victim impact statement in court. As I said, this was never a choice which they had before.
It has also given victims of sexual assault or violent crime up to the age of 18 years the right to be protected. They can be protected from cross-examination by the offender. In other words, an offender who is representing himself would not have the right to attack and victimize, if you will, the victim for a second time.
We might feel that does not happen very often, but I think we might be surprised at how often it does happen. I was absolutely appalled when there was a chance that Clifford Olson, whom we all know about, might have an opportunity to cross-examine family members on a section 745 hearing. It was mind-boggling that somebody like that would even have the right to have personal contact to cross-examine a victim.
I think we would be surprised at how often a victim is forced to present themselves in our judicial system before their attacker and be faced with feeling very intimidated and very vulnerable for a second time.
It is interesting that this legislation brings up the issue of police officers and judges considering the victim's safety in bail decisions. How can it possibly be that this was not a consideration before? How can it possibly be that the safety of the victim was never a consideration? Once again I have to commend the government for at least acknowledging that something which seems so common sense finally sees the light of day in legislation.
Another issue it presents is that judges are required to inform the public of the possibility of a section 745 application for early parole for those people who have received life sentences. For those viewers who may not know what a section 745 application is, it is when a convicted first degree murderer who has been given a life sentence without eligibility for parole for 25 years can apply for an early parole release after 15 years. It is interesting that finally there is something in legislation which says it has to be made public when somebody is making that application.
That brings me to the issue of why it should be made public. In many cases a victim wants to make a statement during these hearings. We have these people whose crimes were considered to be violent, a crime of intent or a murder of intent. That is what a first degree murder charge or conviction is. They want to be let out after 15 years instead of facing at least 25 years. It seems to me that one would assume that in a first degree murder charge the families of the murdered individual would have an opportunity to express to the court, in making the decision of whether this individual should have early release, the hardship which that criminal activity caused them. They have never had that opportunity. Finally the victims will have an opportunity to present victim impact statements at section 745 hearings.
That is important to an individual who has been confronted with this kind of situation, who feels they can never leave behind the criminal activity which destroyed their lives because somebody is constantly appearing before a parole board looking for relief. They were never given an opportunity to express their concern or how their life changed because of the criminal act or murder. Finally these individuals will be given that opportunity.
Then there is the protection of victims by the banning of the publication of court transcriptions. That is a given. If a victim has survived and wants to put it behind them, the last thing they want is for the whole world to know what they suffered and to have to relive it over and over.
There are some very valid and very good things that the government has brought to this bill and has addressed through this bill. However, it is sad that it did not go the full nine yards by taking all of the recommendations of the committee, that it did not provide a better definition of victim and that it did not bring in amendments to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act at the same time so we could deal with it in its entirety.
I want to share with the House an individual's story. It is from the local newspaper and is entitled “The Life Destroyed”.
A women is scooped off the street, shovelled into the cab of a pickup truck, raped repeatedly by the passenger while the driver taunts her to “make it good for my friend”.
Twenty minutes later, the vehicle stops. The woman is pushed out, then tossed like a sack of potatoes onto the tailgate, where the driver rapes her. The passenger plunges the knife into her back, twists it, then pulls it out. Then he kicks her body down a bank. At the bottom the body rolls into the cold water of the river.
How could there be anything more horrible, more appalling?
“There is”, said the woman, “the Canadian justice system”.
That is a sorry statement that we should even have to address in the House, but that is what this victim, who suffered what no one of us could possibly imagine living through, who did not think she would live through, had to address.
As appalling, odious and painful the crime, there was worse to come.
The Canadian justice system.
“I was on the witness stand for seven hours. That was longer than the rapes themselves. The court experience was the worst experience I have ever had to go through in my life”.
Here is a young woman whose life was destroyed. She was 18 at the time. She had a child. The child later went with the father because mentally and physically she could not deal with the situation. She is now a bi-polar depressant person. She has to be on medication. She needs counselling. This is six, seven or eight years later.
She goes on to say about one of the rapists:
I am angry because he is getting full parole. He gets to choose what he gets and I have had to suffer for the past eight years.
She does not understand why Lee has had the chance to get out of jail. “I felt that he would be there for the full 12 years. I hate Lee and Bennett”, the two individuals who raped her. “They destroyed my life. I became a terrible mother and I was a good mother before”.
This is an individual whose total life has been destroyed. One of the individuals got 12 years and I believe the other got 18 years. Both of them are out on parole.
For every parole hearing she has to prepare herself mentally and physically to once again address the issue and make statements, to make sure these individuals have to remain accountable for their actions. She is going through this time and time again. While these two individuals get counselling and all the necessities of life in prison, not necessarily the worst of the lot, this individual is struggling to put her life back together with little assistance from the government.
Her medication bills are $165 a month. She cannot afford to go to counselling anymore because it is $80 an hour. Even though this is making a terrible state of her life she has had to drop the counselling. She says that on $10 an hour she just cannot afford it anymore.
Another insult the justice system has hurled at her is that it requires her, the victim of a crime, to undergo a criminal record check before she is allowed in the room where Lee's hearing is to take place.
One really has to wonder when it is the victim who is always victimized again and again by our justice system. It is time to let victims have closure, to move on and to restore the lives that have been destroyed.