Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to stand in the House of Commons to speak to Bill C-17. I echo some of the comments made by previous speakers who decry the system of having an omnibus bill that covers a whole bunch of things. It always reminds me of being offered a bowl of pudding that has a little gravel in it. It is nice eating the pudding, but when one chews on a piece of gravel it hurts.
There are a number of things in Bill C-17 that quite obviously need substantial change, substantial improvement. In the end, as is the process in this parliament and by this Liberal government, we will have the task of voting yes or no on a bill containing a number of things. It will then be thrown back at us in a very negative way, because we voted against the bill for a completely different reason.
With an election coming up, one cannot help but think the worst twist will be put on some of the things people do in the House in order to try to discredit them. That is very unfortunate. The Canadian public, the people who vote for us, should certainly have the right to know about these issues and should know our stand on them. We should not have accusations thrown at us. If I vote against the bill for such-and-such a reason, it is not fair of my critics to turn around and say “Well, here is a person who voted against this” and then name one of the really good things in the bill.
For example, I do not think one should normally be opposed to provisions that prevent a peace officer from having his firearm taken from him or her. If, in doing his or her job in maintaining the peace, a policeman or policewoman gets into a scuffle with and is disarmed by an individual who is committing an offensive act, the particular individual should be eligible for a charge of disarming a police officer. Yet if I vote against the bill because of other offensive clauses then in the next election campaign probably one of my critics will say the RCMP should not vote for those guys because they do not support their keeping their firearms. That really clouds the issue and unfortunately does not serve the Canadian public well. Nor does it serve parliament well.
I wish that we could have a greater clarity, or at least that the government would have some openness to accepting some amendments to fix things up. It is our party's intention to propose a number of amendments to the bill in order to correct some of the anomalies in it.
By the way, speaking of firearms and officers being deprived of them, I wonder whether the federal government would be guilty of a crime if the bill is passed. The bill says it will be unlawful to separate a police officer from the weapon the police officer has in order to do his or her job of protecting the peace and maybe arresting a person. It just so happens that the attorney general's department is already disarming these people.
It happens that very close to my riding, just about a mile or so outside the boundary of my riding, is a federal institution, the Edmonton institution. I have had some representation from people who work as guards at the Edmonton institution. They are being disarmed while they take dangerous offenders out on day parole. They are not permitted to take their arms with them while they are trying to protect the public from harm by a dangerous offender. The offence an ordinary citizen could be found guilty of with this law, which we support, is an offence that is already being committed by the attorney general's department in our maximum security prisons. That is just not acceptable. We would all agree that our peace officers should be allowed to use arms in their work, especially if they are trying to control a convicted offender who is dangerous to the public. To say that somehow the public safety is increased by disarming the police officer just does not make sense to me at all. The bill does not address that question. I am just using it as an example.
In the bill there is a very great curiosity with respect to cruelty to animals. There are already provisions with respect to wilful cruelty to animals, but the bill proposes to move the section that covers cruelty to animals to the same section of the criminal code that deals with sexual offences, public morals and disorderly conduct.
It just so happens that nowadays sexual offences, public morals, and disorderly conduct are areas in which, statistically speaking, it is easier to make charges stick than it is in some of the other areas. There is a concern that by just having this in this section perhaps Canadians who are charged under these offences would have greater difficulty defending against unfair charges.
The objective in our justice system should be, but I am not sure that it is under this government, to make sure that those who are in fact guilty of a crime are so found and that an adequate deterrent punishment is meted out to them. If a person is not guilty of the crime with which he or she is charged, if our justice system is working correctly the charges should be dropped or the person should be found not guilty. Hopefully that person could go on with his or her life, having established his or her innocence. That would be the objective in an ideal world.
We all know that in the give and take in a court trial sometimes the truth is actually somewhat muddied in order to make a point as, I might venture to say, is sometimes done in the House.
It is interesting that a word is being taken out, a very important word. Words are so important in giving definitions. In the old code one would be guilty if one wilfully caused cruelty to animals. The word wilfully is being withdrawn. That raises many questions that we need to have answers to.
It is one thing for an Archie Bunker type of guy to come into the house and kick his dog as he opens the door. That is wilful. However, what happens if he walks in and does not see the dog and accidentally hits it? Is he still charged with having kicked the dog? No longer was it wilful according to the act, but he did kick the dog. That is true. He cannot say truthfully “No, I did not kick the dog”, but the fact of the matter is, he did not see the dog so it was an accident. I know that should be a valid defence and hopefully it would be kicked out. The fact of the matter is that with the word wilful having been removed all of that is put into doubt.
I do not think we should go down that road. It is a dangerous road because it makes it more difficult for an innocent person to defend himself or herself against a charge for an act that in fact was accidental.
It is interesting also that other definitions are changed in subtle ways. It used to be that persons could be held responsible if they owned an animal or if they had charge of it, as in when they were transporting it. It seems to me that according to the bill it could apply now to any animal at all that crossed a person's path.
I had a very interesting occurrence in my riding earlier this spring. I was driving along a major highway and there was a big truck behind me. It was not a semi; I think it was probably a farm truck. As I was driving along, lo and behold I saw ahead of me a mother duck with six or eight of her little ducklings start to cross the road. I faced a real dilemma right there, because I am one who would not in any way wilfully harm any animal. Of course these little ducklings were so cute besides. It is always difficult when one looks at a mother and her little children. I faced a dilemma. Do I jam on the brakes and risk having the truck run into the back of me, or do I just carry on and run over this mother duck and her little ducklings?
The story has a happy ending. I was able to slow down. I flashed my lights so that the truck behind me had fair warning. I gauged it so that I would not slow down so rapidly that the truck behind me had no capability of stopping before he was into my back end. I just judged it as well as I could and slowed down as much as I could, giving the trucker as much warning and as much distance as possible. Fortunately mother duck, seeing us bearing down on her and her family—