Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak today on Bill C-437, which creates the new category of child predator, and restricts release on parole for offenders in this category.
An examination of this child predator act, which the member is asking us to support, might lead one to conclude that there is not, at the present time, any legislative instrument to deal with this category of offenders, and this is not the case.
Contrary to what some might suggest, I am not against this bill today because of any softness of attitude toward those who commit sexual offences on children. The truth is that I cannot see the point of creating a new category of offender. The deviant behaviour involved is already, by definition, addressed by the criminal code provisions on dangerous offenders. Dangerous offenders, the large majority of whom are in fact sexual offenders, can already have sentences of indeterminate length imposed upon them.
A dangerous offender is a dangerous offender. Calling one a child predator will change nothing.
If an offender cannot be classified as dangerous under the present criteria, there is still the possibility of declaring him a long term offender, and thus subject to the addition of a maximum of ten years monitoring at the end of his sentence. This category was created specifically for sex offenders for whom it is advisable to add a long period of monitoring once they are back in the community in order to reduce the risk of repeat offences.
These provisions, which exist only in Canada—I repeat, only in Canada—have been held up as examples by experts in other countries, who saw them as an excellent means of closely monitoring high risk offenders within the limits imposed by our charter of rights and freedoms. Too often we try to adopt new solutions that are copied from what is done in other countries, where there are not the same wise measures as there are here.
I would point out in particular that this bill is particularly off track when it proposes restriction of gradual release or parole for this category of sex offenders, which is in my opinion contrary to its avowed objective of protecting Canadians.
This bill starts from the premise that public security is less threatened by an offender who serves his entire sentence, and then is required to report to the police once a month once set free. My colleague may not know this, but an offender under conditional release is subject to much stricter conditions than that, and can be sent back behind bars if he is deemed likely to reoffend. Once the sentence has been served, the police cannot act on a mere hunch.
Whether on day parole, full parole, or statutory release, the offender must report to a parole officer. The offender must abide by the conditions established by the National Parole Board, or risk having his parole suspended by his parole officer and being sent back to jail. Also, the parole officer can discuss the offender's behaviour with his entourage, such as his family or his employer, which makes it possible to detect any increase in the likelihood of reoffending. The police certainly do not have the time to monitor all sexual offenders this closely.
The other premise of this bill is that longer sentences constitute the best guarantee of public safety, which is not true.
According to research dating from May 2002, the longer a person is incarcerated, the greater that person's chances of reoffending upon release. This study was based on 111 studies, involving more than 442,000 offenders. I think that conclusions based on this amount of supporting data deserve to be taken into consideration. The conclusions stated specifically that a longer prison sentence was associated with a slight increase in the chances of reoffending, the repeat rate of approximately 3% rose to 7% when the sentence was longer than two years. So it is not by locking criminals up for longer that we will protect the public over the long term.
Even if this bill were passed, most offenders would return to the community one day. Experience has taught us that the best way to reintegrate offenders is to give them gradual freedom, and to monitor and supervise them properly to help them live their lives in abidance of the law.
The fact that the parole program begins with short escorted absences is not a coincidence. These are followed by unescorted temporary absences designed to evaluate the offender's ability to adjust to life in society. Day parole is a less restrictive form of freedom, but it does involve significant monitoring and controlling, since the offender must go back to a halfway house every evening. Full parole brings the offender closer to full release, but the parole officer can follow up on that person and take action if he deems that the situation is deteriorating.
Taking action does not necessarily mean putting the offender back in jail immediately. It may mean to make him go for counselling, impose stricter parole conditions, or require the offender to see his parole officer more often. It may also mean sending the offender back in jail if there is a serious risk that he may reoffend.
We must also not put all sexual offenders in the same boat. The risk of reoffending varies from one individual to another. Our system is based on that reality. We can evaluate the risk posed by an individual but not an homogeneous group and, depending on the seriousness of this risk and our ability to monitor it in the community, decide when the individual should be freed. If the offender is automatically released, something which is often criticized, he will be monitored until the end of his sentence. However, if he remains incarcerated until the end of his sentence, we no longer have the right to monitor his activities once he is released.
As I mentioned earlier, when an offender requires long term monitoring, we have two options. A dangerous offender is necessarily imposed an indeterminate sentence and remains under the surveillance of the parole board for the rest of his days, even if he is released.
If an individual is deemed to be a long term offender—and this is an option that already exists—he may be under surveillance for a maximum of ten years after the end of his sentence.
Finally, these figures show how important it is to ensure that offenders remain in the community without reoffending. An excellent way to help them achieve this is precisely to monitor them through a parole program.
In conclusion, it is not at all necessary to create new categories and to eliminate the discretionary power in the whole system. What we must do is to make educated choices based on current knowledge, so as to truly help increase public safety. This is a very important issue. It is unfortunate that there is not more time to debate it, but that is the way things are.