Madam Speaker, I want to say something about the consequences of our actions and the importance that we recognize consequences.
Consequences, as we would address them through our justice system, are at least in part meant to be a deterrent. A consequence to be a deterrent must be serious enough to provoke some thought. It surprises me today to hear that one could be imprisoned for life for a break and enter. I am one of those who did not know that.
I dare say the government of the day would never vote for life imprisonment for break and enter unless it had the full confidence that the likelihood of that happening was so very slim that it would never be the case. Therefore, it is not a serious enough threat to the offenders to even consider.
I will speak from the perspective of being a father of four children. When I came to the point of needing to discipline them, the consequences needed to be serious enough that they really considered them ahead of the offence. I wanted to make them think. Do members know what I did? I did exactly what the government pointed out it was doing. I had a son who was a repeat offender in my house. He knew I was not serious. I cannot say the number of times that I would say to him “Son, you are grounded for life”. I always paroled him before the week was over.
That is the kind of threat we are hearing from the government, that if offenders break and enter they will be liable to be put in jail for life. I hardly think so. The threat is not really serious and therefore is not a deterrent. A consequence to be a deterrent also needs to be not only serious but needs to be consistent enough to be taken seriously. Sometimes they do, sometimes they do not.
We know in our justice system today that there is a huge discrepancy between what judges do. On a bad day maybe they give a few more years. On a good day maybe they do not give more than a few minutes. I cannot believe that we would leave it totally to the discretion of the judge to determine from zero to life imprisonment and shirk our responsibility as legislators to give the judiciary some sort of guideline a little narrower than from zero to life imprisonment for break and enter. We need to be a little more consistent.
A consequence that will be a deterrent also needs to be fair. It needs to be fair as it relates to the offended and to the offender. This is hardly fair to the offended. In a sense it is not even fair to the offender because he did not really take it very seriously and offended again.
A consequence to be a deterrent comes from a respected, responsible authority. I worked hard at that as a father. I wanted to know that I had the respect of my children. To have that, I had to be serious, I had to be consistent and I had to be fair to have them really respect me and understand that I was being responsible.
I am disappointed that we as a parliament so often want to take the easy way out and not be responsible. It hardly seems harsh to me that we would consider a two year minimum sentence to give a little more direction for a repeat offence of break and enter. I support the bill wholeheartedly.