Debates of March 31st, 2003

Sex Offender Information Registration Act

[Jay Hill, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it has been quite an informative and interesting debate for the last hour or two with members of the Canadian Alliance exchanging views with the member for Mississauga South. Rather than him standing up and trying to blindly defend the indefensible, I wish he would take time to read the bill in its entirety. I see my hon. colleague from Elk Island crossing the Chamber floor to hopefully enlighten the hon. member for Mississauga South. Perhaps in the future his interventions will make a bit more sense.

I would like to start out by addressing some of the comments that the member for Mississauga South raised over the last hour or two, not only during his 20 minute speech but during his interventions when he was commenting on and questioning, not only members of the official opposition but other members of the Chamber. One comment from the member for Mississauga South that I found particularly offensive was his contention that Bill C-23 would somehow be fixed when it went to the Standing Committee on Justice.

I am deeply honoured and pleased to have the privilege of representing the good people of Prince George--Peace River in this Chamber. It is a very unique honour to be given the right to the best of my ability to represent my electoral constituency in this place. It has been my experience though, in the nine years I have been an MP, to see all too often bills not getting fixed at committee. I say that without any particular pride or joy. No one knows this better than the hon. member for Mississauga South. As a Liberal government backbencher, he has endeavoured on countless occasions in the period of time I have been here to bring forward amendments and improve government legislation only to have those amendments duly voted down.

People in the real world outside Ottawa are not aware that the very nature of the committee structure is partisan and that is unfortunate. When we have a majority government with the majority of members elected to the House of Commons, we end up with a situation where it has the majority of members sitting on all standing committees as well. When ministers bring forward legislation, they get the assistance of the government whip to ensure that the legislation goes through virtually unamended. He or she gets all members of the particular standing committee to vote down any amendments brought forward, unless they are amendments brought by the government department and put forward by Liberal members.

We have seen in past that bills were amended quite extensively but very seldom were they what I would call independent amendments, whether those amendments came from a government backbencher or from an opposition member from any one of the four opposition parties. All too often amendments are dismissed out of hand and voted down at committee. We have seen this happen time and time again with important legislation, and I could run down a very long list of legislation that has been treated in that manner.

I cannot believe, as I sat in the Chamber, that I repeatedly heard the member for Mississauga South say that we should get the bill through second reading, get it off to committee and it would fixed. That is complete nonsense.

I think not only parliamentarians or staff persons who have worked on Parliament Hill but also members of the general public, who follow with any degree of interest what goes on in this place, would know that is complete nonsense. All too often when legislation goes off to committee, unless the government, or the minister or the department says that a technical error was made, all other amendments are voted down.

I have seen bills, which were passed, come back to haunt the government down the road because Liberals do not do their homework and they turn a deaf ear to opposition members. For partisan reasons, they say that they will not even consider a particular amendment.

When it comes to Bill C-23, what could be more important than protecting the most vulnerable members of our society, women and children, boys and girls, from sexual predators? In the nine and a half years I have been here, I have heard over and over again the issue of the need to do a better job of protecting the most vulnerable members of our society.

My colleague from Elk Island pointed out, and elicited quite a round of debate from the member for Mississauga South, that under the section entitled “Purpose and Principles”, subclauses 2(2) (a) (b) and (c) did not talk about preventing these types of horrendous crimes. That was the issue he was getting at when the Liberal member for Mississauga South intervened and said that under particular clause “This Act shall be carried out in recognition of, and in accordance with, the following principles: (a) in the interest of protecting society”. He focussed on that and said that the bill really was about protecting society.

However when we read on further, that argument is nonsensical because there is no mention in any of those paragraphs of preventing sexual assault, sexual abuse and the likes of those despicable crimes. It is all about bringing forward a registry in the hopes of helping police solve crimes, which is an admirable goal in and of itself. There is no question of that. We want to assist police and the authorities in any way possible to catch the reprehensible individuals and put them away.

However, as my colleague from Elk Island so eloquently stated, the primary goal has to be to prevent it to begin with. We should try to utilize and put in place all the tools possible to prevent these types of crimes from ever occurring in the first place, especially when dealing with individuals who have shown statistically that the recidivism rate is of the nature of 40%. In other words, on average, four out of 10 sexual offenders that are currently incarcerated in Canada will reoffend again. We can count on it. We know it will happen. Yet the government draws up legislation in Bill C-23 and says that retroactivity is open for debate. It is concerned about it because it might not stand up under the provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Well, guess what? My constituents, and I hear this constantly, do not give a damn about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable people of our society. They do not care. They do not want that argument. They are sick and tired of hearing that argument because it focuses more on the rights of the criminal, of the predator, than it does on the rights of the victims.

My constituents want a government that will stand and say that it will go to any length to protect the most vulnerable people in our society. That is what they want from a government. They tell me over and over again. They do not want to hear the legal mumbo-jumbo, that we better make sure this law is right because it might end up before the Supreme Court of Canada and it will get struck down because it is offensive to the predators and goes against their rights.

As I said, my constituents do not care about the rights of the criminals. They want a government that is going to start focusing on the rights of the victims and do everything within its power to ensure that there are no more victims, or certainly that the number of victims is kept to a minimum.

My colleague from Battlefords--Lloydminster brought forward an amendment which states:

That the motion be amended by replacing all the words after the word “That” with

this House declines to give second reading to Bill C-23, An Act respecting the registration of information relating to sex offenders, to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, since the bill fails to require retroactive registration of sex offenders who have a 40% recidivism rate in order to avoid needing another offence before a repeat sex offender is added to the registry.

Again I do not take any pride or pleasure in this statement, but I think that is a very worthwhile amendment. My colleague from Battlefords--Lloydminster is well aware that if that amendment were accepted and passed, it would kill the bill. The point he is making, the point the Canadian Alliance as the official opposition is making is that this bill might as well be dead as to be the way it is. It is useless.

I said earlier during an intervention that I do not know whether other colleagues, especially government colleagues in the chamber, are getting tired of listening to me make these kinds of statements. I suspect they are. I know that I am getting tired of saying them. I am getting so frustrated with the government bringing forward these half-baked ideas and trying to sell them to the Canadian public as if it actually were addressing a serious issue. I am getting totally frustrated with it.

And it is not just me; it is not just the one member who happens to represent Prince George--Peace River. Members throughout the chamber and across party lines are reaching that same level of frustration. Society is crying out for a government to address these serious issues, especially the ones dealing with protection of children.

Another bill before the House, Bill C-20, deals with pornography and it also does not go far enough to protect children. It redrafts, rejumbles and rejigs the existing laws but we are still stuck with court interpretations that allow for a legal defence of child pornography based upon artistic merit. Whoever heard of such nonsense?

Members should go out into the real world outside the chamber, outside this Ottawa bubble of Parliament Hill and talk to people about protecting children. I can say that for the people of Prince George—Peace River it is not just their member of Parliament who is frustrated. The people from one end of my riding to the other are fed up with this nonsense where the government brings forward this type of legislation and tries to convince Canadians it is doing something to address a serious problem. It boggles my mind.

What will we have if Bill C-23 proceeds? And I suspect it will because the government has a majority. It will vote down the amendment by the member for Battlefords—Lloydminster and it will vote down any other amendments.

The House will ship Bill C-23 off to committee. This is something the Liberal backbencher from Mississauga South says is the answer, to send it off to committee and the bill will be fixed there. I wish I had just a pittance of his confidence that anything would be accomplished at committee, but I do not and I think that will be borne out.

I remember another law that was passed. Maybe my hon. colleague from Mississauga South can remember. It dealt with something called conditional sentencing. I fought against that law back in 1995. The Liberals forced it through and said not to worry about it, that it would be fine.

I think all the opposition parties said they did not have any problem with conditional sentencing if it was used for minor crimes, misdemeanours such as a young person caught for the first time on some minor charge, vandalism, property damage, shoplifting, that type of a crime. The young person would not be thrown in jail with hardened criminals but instead would get conditional sentencing.

Conditional sentencing is where a court will impose conditions rather than jail time. None of us have a problem with that.

The opposition, at that time it was the Reform Party of Canada, pointed out repeatedly during debate and at the justice committee, ironically enough, that the bill could be abused by the court system. We could end up with a situation where violent criminals got off scot-free or they could have some condition imposed. If they had killed someone while driving while drunk perhaps they would not be able to drive for a while, maybe five or ten years, or sex offenders would end up not doing jail time.

There have actually been cases where people have been convicted of sexual crimes and have not served a day in jail because of conditional sentencing. This is something the government brought forward and said it was a good idea.

The government would not listen to the opposition when we said that it was not the right way to proceed, that we should define which crimes it could apply to and for which the judges could use this new form of sentencing. No, the government would not listen. We are still stuck with it however many years later it is now. I lose track after a while.

I certainly support the amendment by my colleague to not give second reading to the bill if we cannot make this retroactive, if we cannot send a signal to the courts, to the justice system and to the people back home in northeastern British Columbia. They always tell me there is no such thing as a justice system in Canada anymore. They say it is a legal system. It is a system designed by lawyers for lawyers. It is not a justice system. They would argue that there is not justice anymore in our legal system. Some days it is pretty hard to not agree with that argument.

There is no question it has to be retroactive. It is absolutely ridiculous to suggest bringing forward, as Bill C-23 does, legislation to enact a registry for sexual offenders and only have it from this day forward or from whatever day it is actually enacted into law, without placing on it the individuals who are already incarcerated, especially because of the high incidence of recidivism.

I think every member of the House could speak passionately to this issue for a long period of time, but unfortunately, my time is up. I have appreciated the opportunity to voice my concerns and the concerns of the constituents of Prince George--Peace River on Bill C-23.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member concluded by saying that he supported his colleague's motion not to pass the bill but basically to kill it at this stage. If I recall correctly what he said was that if we cannot make it retroactive, we should just kill it.

There is a step missing. The step missing is to take what steps are necessary to establish the retroactivity and to determine whether or not that can be achieved without running afoul of either justice practices or the charter challenges that may occur. We have the Ontario situation which is presently being reviewed.

The member has gone from if we cannot make it retroactive, let us kill it, but he has not gone to the point at which the bill goes to committee to determine whether retroactivity is there. The member will have the opportunity to kill the bill when the committee stage is finished and the bill comes back to the House at report stage and he is not satisfied.

My question has to do with the member's statement that he does not give a--expletive deleted--about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I cannot imagine any member of Parliament actually saying that in this place. I wonder if the member would confirm that is his position and the position of his party.

[Jay Hill, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will begin with the last point first. What I said, if my hon. colleague had not been running in and out of the chamber and would have actually been sitting in his seat paying attention to my remarks, was that my constituents are conveying to me repeatedly that when it comes to protecting children they do not give a damn about the charter. If the charter is the impediment to protecting children or the rights of the criminal, I can tell the hon. member which side my constituents come down on. I do not know what side he comes down on.

It seems to me, in the nine and a half years that I have been here, that the Liberals are more concerned about the rights of the criminals than they are about the rights of the victims. If that is not the case, then why in heaven's name does Bill C-23 even say that there is concern about the privacy of the sex offenders?

One of my colleagues, the member for Langley—Abbotsford, has been trying for nine and a half years, ever since he came to this place after the 1993 election, to have a victim's bill of rights passed by the chamber, but to no avail. If the member for Mississauga South cares so much about the rights of victims, children, women, and the most vulnerable members of our society, why has his party been holding up any drafting, and certainly any passage, of a victim's bill of rights? That is the first point that he made. So that it is clear where I stand on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, certainly I support it.

The other thing is that I have often heard it remarked that it was too bad that when Mr. Trudeau was designing his Charter of Rights and Freedoms he did not also design a charter of rights and responsibilities to go along with it. I hear that from people out in the real world all the time. Perhaps something the hon. member for Mississauga South would like to consider as well is that in addition to a victim's bill of rights, maybe we should start working on a charter of responsibilities to accompany the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The member said a number of times today that he was concerned that we could not include retroactivity without running afoul of the justice practices or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Let us try it. That is my point. Is the chamber not in the process of drafting law? Are we the lawmakers or have we, through the Liberal government, handed off that job to the courts? Increasingly, that is what my constituents are saying.

Why is it that we are so afraid of being overruled by the Supreme Court of Canada that we will not draft and introduce legislation that people are calling upon us to draft, introduce and pass? We seem to be afraid that the Supreme of Court will overrule it or interpret it some other way than what we intended. Why is that? I do not understand it and people in my riding do not understand it. We should be the lawmakers. We should not be saying that we would like to include retroactivity, but perhaps it would run afoul of the justice practices or the charter.

First of all, we should decide if it is the right thing to do. Then we should do it and use all the powers of the Parliament of Canada to ensure that if we do believe it is the right thing that it stands up. If it does not stand up, then we should fix the problem. We should be in control, not the Supreme Court of Canada.

[Jim Gouk, Canadian Alliance, Kootenay—Boundary—Okanagan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of points that perhaps my colleague could comment on.

The hon. member across the way in his questions and comments said we must give a chance for amendments because that this is how the system works and it is good. He had over 50 amendments to Bill C-13 and I do not think any of them were passed, so I do not know how he can stand and say that we should go the amendment route.

The other point is the question of retroactivity. We are saying it is okay to do this in the future. We are not worried about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of someone in the future. The only thing we are saying is that if the people who had raped and molested young children or attacked women in the past had only known that their names were going to be written in a book, perhaps they would never have done it.

It is not fair to now come along and say that after everything else that was done to them, their name is now going to be written in a book. They would say that is not fair because if they had known that, they would never have done these things. Does the member think that is even remotely possible? Even if it is, does that not suggest that it is a deterrent, not that I believe that it is the case, but it should not stop it from being put in?

What the government is using as an excuse is an absolute absurdity. It is time we started coming up with solid laws to protect law-abiding citizens in the country instead of being bleeding hearts about the rights of criminals.

[Jay Hill, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more with my colleague on this particular issue. It strikes me as totally ludicrous. We just came off a two week break from Parliament and the vast majority of members of Parliament did as I did, which was to go back to our constituencies and do tours of the ridings.

I had an opportunity to visit the majority of the communities in my large rural riding and speak with the people. This is one of the issues that I spoke to them about along with Bill C-20, the child pornography law.

My constituents are clear on this. If there is a choice between running a risk, as the member for Mississauga South said, of running afoul of the justice practices or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, or upholding the protection of society and the most vulnerable members, my constituents, first, come down solidly on the side of upholding the protection of the citizens of the country and second, worry about protecting the rights of the criminals.

However, it seems to me the Liberals always have this backassward. They look at the wrong situation and look at the rights of criminals rather than the rights of victims.

To sum up, 4 out of 10 criminals incarcerated at present for sexual offences will reoffend. For us to say retroactivity does not matter is burying our heads in the sand and it is ensuring that there will be a lot more victims of these people once they are released from prison.

[Bob Mills, Canadian Alliance, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I was not going to speak to this bill today, but listening to what has been going on and listening to some of the questions that some of the members across have been asking, I realize that they just do not get it. They do not understand what a sex registry is all about or why we might want one. Let me take some time to explain to them with some examples of what it would mean to have a sex registry.

I wish to pay tribute to our member for Langley--Abbotsford, who from day one started talking about this issue. It has been front and centre for him. He thought he had a victory when the House voted in favour of having the sex registry. He thought that maybe the government finally got it, that it finally understood what this was all about in protecting those victims.

We are talking primarily about victims, many of whom cannot defend themselves against this sort of crime and we are talking about people on the criminal side of things who are quite often sick. They have mental problems and for whatever reasons they have become sex offenders.

I want to take this opportunity to explain to the members across what it means to real people out on the street to have sex offenders that are not registered running around with police officers admitting that they often lose track of where they are. They come out of prison and often change their names. That is one of the first things they do. At Bowden prison in my riding many sex offenders change their names before they leave prison. They then hope to disappear into society and no one will know who they are. Some of them become truck drivers and drive across the country so they can carry on their sexual deviant activities wherever they happen to be. Some of them move back to the communities where they came from. However, many of them do not want to be identified.

That would be fine if they would not re-offend, but the record for sex offenders is that at least 40%, and some would say even 50%, will re-offend. That is the problem. Psychologists, prison wardens, and the police will tell us about the records. We can check them but that is exactly what happens.

What we are saying is that when sex offences are committed, the names of the individuals should be put into a record and that record should be kept current. The offenders should be forced, when they move to some other place, to take those records with them. If they do not re-offend after a point in time, 10 years or whatever the number, they are removed from that record. That is for the ones who do not re-offend. However, if they re-offend that record continues.

Let me make it even more real. Let me talk about the sex offender that was in my riding. It was one of the first serious cases that I became involved with.

When we all saw this bill, we thought the member for Langley--Abbotsford had finally won something here. He had the sex offender registry. As we read the first few clauses we thought the government had got it, but then we saw that it would not be retroactive. Therefore all of the federal and provincial sex offenders would not exist. Only the new sex offenders would be included in the registry.

Then we saw the final clause of the bill which said that offenders could apply to not be on the sex registry because it might affect their chances of getting a job or moving into a community or going back home to live with mommy. We would not want to do anything that might affect this criminal who has been charged with a sex offence.

When I saw that I could not believe it. I have been around politics long enough to see the game plan. Canadian Alliance will vote against it, so it does not really want a registry. Yes we do, but we want one that will work.

The registry will not work if it is not retroactive and it will not work if someone can opt out of it. This is the same as criminals who own long guns. They will not register them. Bank robbers will not tell the police to fingerprint them before they rob a bank, as I heard some other member mention today.

Let me give the House an example. A 38 year old man who was a nine time sex offender was about to be released into my community. He was going home to live with his mother who lived across from an elementary school. This was in a section of our city called Oriole Park. When I received this information I felt it was my duty to inform the people in the community. With the help of the RCMP, his name and picture were released. A meeting was held in the school gymnasium across from where he was living and 200 parents of young children attended. Our guest speakers were the prison warden, the chief of the RCMP, a psychologist from the prison and an independent psychologist. Each one of those individuals indicated that the person had refused to take treatment, refused any help while in prison, had served his full term but that they felt he had a 75% chance of reoffending. That was the message given to the parents of young children about this sex offender.

At that point in time I came to the House and asked the then justice minister what I should tell the parents if that individual were to reoffend. What would I tell them the justice system did for them? I was told that he probably would not reoffend and that because I was a Reform Party member I was jumping to conclusions and saw the legal system as not working, et cetera.

That person was released. The parents and the police were very alert to the situation. In the year after his release he was arrested once and it happened at my office. A fireman and one of my staff members caught him painting swastikas on my door and they chased him down the back lane. The judge refused to hear any of the reasons that he was doing that. The judged fined him $50 and told him not to do it again.

The man then proceeded to stalk me for a few months but the police could do nothing because he was not harming me. He was just following me around. I must say that it was not very pleasant for my family.

When I was at home on a Saturday afternoon in June, I received a call from the RCMP in Black Falls, about 15 kilometres away from where I live. At the same time, I received a call on my cell phone from one of the parents in Black Falls. Two five year old girls had been taken out of their backyard by that criminal. One of the fathers, fortunately, saw something strange and with another father tracked down the car. As the criminal was preparing to photograph these young girls the two fathers accosted him. They accidentally pulled down his pants and inside were pictures of naked little girls. We know what he had in mind. These young girls were his tenth and eleventh victims.

The man will be released in June. This is how our justice system works. Everybody knew the man would reoffend. The psychologists, the prison warden and the RCMP are now saying that he will reoffend again.

What will we tell the next set of parents? Will we tell them that we did not bother to do any DNA recording? Will we tell them that we did not bother to have a sex registry that would work? Will we tell them that we did not bother to worry about the victims, that we only worried about the guy getting out of prison and not being harassed by anybody?

That guy will reoffend again and we will do nothing about it. Maybe he will move to another community but does that matter? He likes five year old girls. The scary part of this whole thing is that the psychologist said that the offender will likely get more violent in future offences.

As a parent in any community in Canada we should think about that for a minute. Is the House doing the right thing by not making the bill retroactive so that the guy will be on the list and will not be allowed to go before a court and say that he does not want to be on a list? Are we doing our job here by not having those two things on the sex registry? I do not think so. I could not defend that in front of any young parents. I could not defend that in front of anybody, old or young, who had been sexually assaulted.

Before I finish I want to be sure to mention another case in which I have been involved and one with which the House is very familiar, the case of Lisa and Lisa's two little girls.

Again, it comes back to the victim part of things. On April 17, in Abbotsford, there will be a hearing. The hearing has to do with whether a person should be allowed out into society again. He pretty much has everyone convinced that he is a really good guy. Well, this really good guy raped a 17 year old patient and his 11 year old daughter. He then got a court order forcing his five and six year old daughters to visit him in prison.

Let me tell members about that May afternoon when I accompanied Lisa and her two girls, five and six years old, into a prison on a forced visit with a sex offender, a guy who had raped their eleven year old sister and another patient. He had deceived the RCMP for seven years. Yet we are worried about this guy having access to his kids. Something is wrong here. This guy will probably get out of prison on April 17 but no one will know where he is because he will change his name and we will not have it registered. We will not keep track of this person. This person will use someone else's blood. He has already deceived the RCMP and has raped at least two people.

I will never forget the look of terror in the eyes of the two year old and the six year old little girls as they were forced into that prison. As the psychologist said, “This is just too traumatic for these little kids. This will affect them the rest of their lives psychologically.”

The sad part about all this is that after doing talk shows across the country, I have heard about 83 similar cases to Lisa's. No one can tell me that one judge just happened to foul up in Saskatchewan. There are 83 other judges who fouled up somewhere else, and those are just the ones who called and said that they did not want to involve their kids in the publicity. It is a very brave thing that Lisa has done, to put her kids out like this, but she is doing it for the other 83 people. Those are just the ones who have called my office in the course of the two years that I have been involved in this, doing these talk shows and trying to get this into a law.

I have been working with the justice committee and I have to say that it has been very helpful. I hope we will get this into legislation some day, that this type of thing is not forced any more, because those are the victims out there.

Child molesters are sick. They need help. What they do not need is to be released so that they reoffend, go back into prison, refuse treatment, get out again and reoffend. We just keep creating more victims.

Our job here has to be to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Whether they are women, children or whoever it is who is being sexually assaulted, and that can just as easily be little boys as it is little girls, we have to protect them. That is our job here.

We all know how we would feel if it were our kids or our grandchildren who were being attacked by these predators. We need to know where they are and we need to identify them. We need to let parents and other innocent people know where these animals are. Child molesters are sick and they need help. We do not need to release them into society and, if we do release them into society, we need to protect the public by keeping track of them. We need to help our police to know where they are so that when there is a case the registry would immediately show them which offender was in a certain area. They probably could prevent move victims just by that simple thing.

To say that we cannot make it retroactive and to say that we can let people who have been convicted go before a judge and convince a judge that they should not be on this registry, let me tell the House about the guy whose hearing I plan to attend on April 17. The guy is a good talker. He could pretty much convince anyone that the sun is shining at midnight. He could sell refrigerators to anybody. He is a real salesman. He could easily convince any court of anything. However we cannot let that happen.

There are many other cases. I could talk about the young lady in Toronto who was forced by a judge to visit the father who had raped her. When she returned home she attempted to take her life by slitting her wrists. Her mother, fortunately, was keeping a close eye on her. She phoned for an ambulance and saved her life. She is a victim, which is what victims are like.

I know some members do not like to hear about those things, but those are the people who are shouting out for help. They want us to help them and I do not believe we are doing that.

I also do not believe that this legislation is anything more than just paper. It is worth nothing. It will not protect anyone. It will not register the many sex offenders in the country. It will not register the pedophiles. It will be a political piece of paper that we can say that party was in favour and this party was opposed. This should not be a partisan issue. It should be our job to protect the victims. All of us should want to do that and we should want to make the legislation the best that it can be.

I have often said that I do not really like the party system very much because it results in party politics. This kind of thing should not be party politics. This kind of thing should be the meeting of the minds, putting the best ideas together to come up with legislation that will really protect potential victims.

I am very pleased to speak today because I wanted to bring this to the ground level, to the real people and to where it is really at. By doing that hopefully the members across the way will understand what we should be doing. We should be making it retroactive and thereby including all sex offenders. Hopefully they can get off the registry by never reoffending again.

However they should not be given the option of being on or off. They should be on once they are convicted of a sex offence. That is what a sex offender registry is all about. It would work, it would help the police, it would help the parents and it would prevent future victims.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's comments when he talked about the issue of partisanship when it comes to something as important as this.

I would have been very supportive of him if I had not been in the House last week and heard some other comments that were extremely partisan. However I hope we can come together on bills as important as this and work through them together.

When the member talked about the issue of retroactivity, I think we all agree that it would be wonderful to bring that in but how do we do that? The member knows as well as I do how the law works. We cannot bring in a law that is retroactive. Therefore if you want to bring in something that will stay and will be supported--

[The Deputy Speaker]

Order, please. I just want to remind members to make their interventions through the Chair and not directly across the floor to one another. Sometimes it may not be necessary, but sometimes it is really helpful, so I think it is a good practice to maintain.

Has the question or comment concluded?

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Yes, Mr. Speaker.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. member for Red Deer.

[Bob Mills, Canadian Alliance, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her comments and the sincerity with which she brings forward the argument that it should be something that will really work. This is about kids and about people who are victims out there and unfortunately there are so many of them.

It is good that I am not a lawyer. I guess I am just a little too practical for that. I have a little too much common sense. There are those who always hide behind the law and say “We cannot do this because of the law”. For those 83 victims out there, it was the law that made them go to those prisons. Fix the law. There has to be a way to do that. There has to be some way when we are talking about this issue if for no other reason than that psychologists say that 40% will reoffend. If 40% will reoffend, that means that 40% will not be on that list. That is about 4,000 people, as I understand it, so of the 10,000 sex offenders in Canada, about 4,000 are going to reoffend--

[An hon. member]

And at least 4,000 more victims.

[Bob Mills, Canadian Alliance, Red Deer, AB]

And 4,000 more victims. Surely there must be a way to get those people on that list. I am sorry that I cannot give a legal answer because I do not know one, but common sense says that we have to find a way.

[Gerry Ritz, Canadian Alliance, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from across the way said that we cannot make laws that are retroactive, so I would like my colleague on this side to rationalize how the government can make Bill C-68 retroactive. Licensing and privacy and everything else aside, it can make that retroactive. Why can it not make a sex offender registry retroactive? It seems like a double standard.

[Bob Mills, Canadian Alliance, Red Deer, AB]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, I got 13,000 letters from people in my riding about Bill C-68 when it came through. There are an awful lot of those long guns that came from great-grandpa yet they are retroactively covered under this law and they have to be registered.

The most interesting part of this, which does not really fit the answer but I want to tell members anyway, is that I know one fellow who has 12 registration certificates. What those registration certificates say is: make of gun, unknown; length of barrel, unknown; serial number, unknown. So he has the registration for his guns and members can tell me how that is going to stop anybody from committing a crime with those guns. The make is unknown, the length is unknown and the registration numbers are unknown. The only thing that is known is the owner of the unknown gun--

[An hon. member]

It's retroactive.

[Bob Mills, Canadian Alliance, Red Deer, AB]

And it's retroactive. It was probably great-grandpa's and did not have a serial number.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's participation in the debate. It has been helpful. I have a comment and then a question.

The member for Prince George--Peace River indicated that we should go forward with retroactivity built in because we do not care about what the Supreme Court says. I would only suggest that were we to create laws that clearly were going to butt up against and hit a charter challenge or an appeal to the Supreme Court, the time involved for that process to take place would be so long that it would be defeating the whole purpose of the legislation. I think the legislation has to work forward in an orderly fashion, in accordance with judicial practice and with due consideration of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I cannot agree with his assessment that different people have different rights under the charter, regardless of one's status.

My question for the member has to do with the retroactivity principle. One of the principles here is the “grossly disproportionate” test provided under section 487.05 of the Criminal Code, which is a discretionary consideration for a judge who may be considering an order under the bill, as the member knows. I wonder if the member could explain to the House whether or not he feels the grossly disproportionate provision is a reasonable provision to apply in terms of the test of retroactivity.

[Bob Mills, Canadian Alliance, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think I got through to the member about common sense. That sort of answer would be great in a courtroom. Because we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms and because we have a Supreme Court appointed by the Prime Minister, people of his choosing and his political belief, we opt for mediocrity. We are just going to put through a weak piece of legislation that is not going to have much of a challenge and really will not do much.

That is exactly what has brought us to the problems we have. That is why there are those victims out there. We opted for mediocrity and said we could not change anything. The status quo prevails. Damn it anyway, we can change things. We have to change things. We need to have a Supreme Court that is chosen by the people, whether it is the Senate or the House of Commons. It has to be one that represents the views and beliefs of the people of Canada. And the views and beliefs of the people of Canada are that sex offenders should be registered, that we should keep track of them, and that if they reoffend we should get them back in jail right away and make the penalties harsher. That is what the Canadian people want and that is where it has to come from.

Let us talk about common sense. Let us not talk about mediocrity and say that we cannot change it and we have to go with the way it is. The status quo is not good enough and the House has to recognize that.

[Jay Hill, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have just a slight intervention here. I know that time is just about up for questions and comments and I want to allow my hon. colleague from Red Deer at least some time to respond.

He did mention during his speech the concern that we hear expressed about the potential for persecution in the sense of there being widespread disclosure of the registry. I know that this is a concern. Nobody wants to see any individuals persecuted and their picture on every lamppost no matter what crimes they have been convicted of, and supposedly they have paid their debt to society, and I use that term loosely, by serving time in jail. Nobody wants to see those individuals persecuted and their picture on every lamppost, but I think there is a need for retroactivity.

There was a lot of discussion about this. The case has been made for it and for that information to be available to the local authorities, the school districts, child care organizations and so on, not so that it may be made public but so that it may be made available to those authorities to protect society and hopefully to prevent crimes against children in particular.

[Bob Mills, Canadian Alliance, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, again we have heard common sense. That is exactly what we have to do. We have to protect against having future victims. That is what it is all about. That is the bottom line and that is why it has to be retroactive. We do not want to see people persecuted. There does not have to be a picture on every fence post, but we have to protect those future potential victims. As the member says, it has to be just in the school system and in the police system so they know where to go when someone reoffends or there is an offender from that list.

[Ted White, Canadian Alliance, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there is that old saying that if something is worth doing it is worth doing well. I think Bill C-23 is probably a very good example of how that particular saying does not apply at all.

For all of the reasons that have just been discussed by my colleagues here, the government has decided that it is not going to do this well. It has decided that for reasons of legality it is not going to attempt to make a meaningful sex registry. It is going to capitulate before it even begins. It will capitulate and say, “We can never make this effective, so we won't even try”.

It is not good enough, Mr. Speaker, and I will tell you why: because we have a state of desperation among our police forces out there as they try to enforce the laws that are ineffective. They are trying to put these offenders behind bars and they cannot achieve it.

I will give members an example from just this week in Vancouver. A repeat sex offender was released back onto the street by a judge when he was in the process of being charged and appearing before the court for charges to be laid. The judge released him back onto the street again, even though the police pleaded with the judge to put him in custody. He was a repeat offender; he had gone back to exactly the same place he had been arrested at before. The police said to the judge, “He is going to go back there. He has done it before. Please keep him in custody”.

The judge released him. The police were so frustrated they went on television on the six o'clock news on BCTV in Vancouver and publicized the guy's name. They said they had no other option but to warn the public that this man was out there, and they gave the name of the park he frequented. He had done it at least twice before. The police had arrested this man and even had him in jail for a short time. He had been released and went right back to the same place.

There is one of two things happening here. Either the man is very ill and he needs a lot of treatment, and for goodness' sake we need to recognize that and do something about it, or else there is no penalty for what he is doing. In this case, that appears to be what is happening. The man receives a slap on the wrist and a few days in jail and out he goes again. This occurs even when the police in their frustration beg with a judge to keep him behind bars. The judge simply releases him back onto the street.

Frankly, there is far too much of that now. We see case after case day after day in the media. These criminals are being released back onto the street even when the police request that they not be released.

Last week I received an e-mail from a lawyer in my riding who is a very good Liberal supporter. In fact, that lawyer ran for the candidacy in the Liberal Party in my riding. He wanted to run against me in the election when Warren Kinsella actually was parachuted in by the Prime Minister to run against me. That was a wonderful achievement: getting rid of Warren Kinsella in that election.

This lawyer is actually a very nice guy. We get along really well. Obviously we have differences in our opinions on politics, but on a lot of things we agree. In fact, he has been shown in the North Shore News in the last few days agreeing with our party's position on the war with Iraq, indicating that he is embarrassed by the Prime Minister and that we really need to side with our traditional allies, but I digress.

The lawyer sent me an e-mail last Wednesday or Thursday saying that he would be in court today. He is probably there right now as I am standing in the House to speak. He is in court today on a case to do with an Iranian refugee claimant who is drug trafficking in North Vancouver. He was arrested and charged. He told the prosecutor that his refugee claim was a scam, that it was only a way of getting into Canada to deal drugs and that he had been schooled and told how to do this.

Of course my first question to this lawyer was whether he advised the immigration department about this. He has, so now the guy is targeted, but it is expected that he will be sentenced to a one year term in prison for trafficking in narcotics in North Vancouver. We all know that means he will be out in just a matter of weeks or months and will be back on the street. The problem is, says this lawyer in North Vancouver who is a Liberal supporter, that he would like to see this guy's feet not even touch the ground on his way to the airport to be deported.

It is not going to happen because the guy will be out on early release or parole. That is considered to be part of the sentence so of course the immigration department cannot deport the guy. There is nothing to stop the guy going back on the street to traffic drugs again, which then creates a new charge, which puts him back into the system again, which further prevents the immigration department from deporting him. That is how stupid these laws are.

The sex registry is much the same thing. It has been done so poorly that the information in it would be relatively useless right at the beginning. It will take an enormous number of years for it to become of any use whatsoever.

I will go back to the case I just used as an example, the failure to properly deal with criminals by the government, the immigration law business. I used to use the example of my 87-year-old mother who lives in New Zealand. If she jumped on an airplane from New Zealand, landed at Vancouver International Airport and said she was a refugee, under our Charter of Rights and Freedoms because of the Singh case way back in the 1970s, I think it was, the case that the government will not do anything about, my 87-year-old mother from New Zealand could claim to be a refugee and we would have to accept her claim.

She would be released on her own recognizance after about a one hour interview. She would be given welfare, a place to live, furnished at taxpayers' expense, medical care and dental care. On average it would take her about a year with legal aid, which of course she would get, before her case came before the Immigration and Refugee Board. The chances are that the Immigration and Refugee Board would say that she was from New Zealand and was not a refugee.

If my mother refused to identify herself, the New Zealand government would not give permission to issue travel papers and we would not be able to deport her. My 87-year-old mother could live forever in Canada on welfare as a refugee claimant. That is what is happening every day under the government's immigration laws.

My riding has the largest Iranian population in the country. At least 40% of all the Iranians living there are refugee claimants. Most of them are bogus. I just mentioned the lawyer who sent me an e-mail last Wednesday or Thursday. He actually put in his email that people in the Iranian community had told him the guy was a criminal in Iran and he is a criminal in Canada and they wanted to know why we had let him in.

I cannot say how many times that comment has been made to me by the decent Iranian immigrants in my riding who came in using the proper system. They see all these, and I am sorry to use the word, scumbags who come in using our refugee laws and claiming refugee status just so they can be criminals here.

There are so many examples of the laws that the government passes, as my colleague said, where the victims are treated with disdain and the criminals get everything they want.

In terms of the retroactivity of the bill, why not use some creativity? Instead of capitulating and giving up and saying it cannot do anything because the Supreme Court will say it is wrong to make it retroactive, for the safety of the kids of our country, let us be creative.

We have a notwithstanding clause in our charter. The government is afraid to use it, but maybe if the government were a little creative, it could use it in this case. What would be wrong, for example, if we decided to use the notwithstanding clause to make the registry retroactive? We could put it to the people of Canada in a referendum and ask them whether they approved of using the notwithstanding clause that way.

What better reason could there be to have a referendum in the country than on such an important issue? Instead of capitulating to a group of politically appointed judges, why do we not ask the people of Canada whether they would agree that this issue is worth using the notwithstanding clause and to make the registry retroactive?

There is always a way. Why would that not work? Even if the government is too afraid to use the notwithstanding clause, why does it not try a little harder?

I do not think the lawyers in the justice department are trying very hard. At the very least they could have written something into the bill and tried their darndest to make it retroactive. If eventually it was struck down, at least we could have said that we tried. We have not even tried.

If we look at some other western civilizations such as Britain or the United States, they use retroactivity. For example, in Florida the DNA bank was established a few years ago. I remember standing in the House speaking about this when we were debating the DNA bill. When the DNA bank was introduced in Florida, it was made retroactive. Criminals were forced to give blood samples, something the Liberal government would not do as it would be infringing on criminals' rights if we forced them to give a sample when they were arrested. In Florida that is what was done.

The ability to solve crimes in Florida has increased dramatically because now there is such a valuable database of genetic material from those criminals. Meanwhile we here in Canada are struggling along, trying to gradually build a DNA database one person at a time and getting people's permission instead of going into the prisons and retroactively taking blood samples from all prisoners so we can identify them. That is what we should be doing, just as we do for fingerprints. If it can be done in the U.K. and the United States, we should find a way to do it here instead of constantly sitting on the fence.

It is the same situation with the Iraq war. Everything the government does is a half measure. It sits on the fence. It will not make a decision. Instead of joining with our traditional allies to make some things retroactive, to force criminals to provide DNA samples, it capitulates to a nothingness, a failure to make a decision. It upsets people.

The intent of the bill, according to the government, is to establish a national database of sex offenders so that the police will be able to use the database to track the activities of sex offenders, their whereabouts and to be able to provide the public with the information or just to solve crimes. It is a noble intention. As I said at the beginning of my speech, if it is worth doing, it is worth doing well. We should be doing our darndest to make this bill effective and to make it work well.

Instead of that, the government has dragged its feet all the way, kicking and screaming until we have this half measure before us today. If we think about it, the government was really reluctant to even bring in this bill. Let me provide some history.

As mentioned earlier by my colleague from Red Deer, it started with the member for Langley—Abbotsford almost 10 years ago in this place. For 10 years he has been urging the government to establish a sex offender registry. Why did it take so long? If the government had brought it in the very first year that my colleague demanded it, we would already have 10 years of information, even if we had not made it retroactive at that point. We are already 10 years behind where we could have been. It should have responded on day one, instead of being more worried, as the government always is, about the rights of criminals instead of the rights of the victims. Just think how valuable that sex offender registry would be today if we had established it in 1994 instead of still talking about it in 2003.

On March 13, 2001, two years ago, the House voted in favour of a Canadian Alliance motion which read:

That the government establish a national sex offender registry by January 1, 2002.

We are 15 months further downstream from the day by which the House agreed that registry was to be established and we are still talking about it. We have not established the registry.

[An hon. member]

Stop talking and get on with it.

[Ted White, Canadian Alliance, North Vancouver, BC]

One of the members opposite says to stop talking and get on with it. We do not have the power to get on with it. They are the ones who are dragging their feet.

In 1988 after the murder of an 11-year-old boy by a convicted pedophile on statutory release, a coroner's jury recommended the creation of a national sex offender registry. That was in 1988, 25 years ago. It is not entirely the fault of the government opposite. I would love to blame the Liberals for the whole thing, but actually they picked up a dead file from the previous government.

Why the reluctance to do anything? We could have had 25 years of information in that registry, but we still have nothing. The Liberals are a disgrace. We look at the people sitting on the opposite side today, getting on with other work, not particularly taking any notice of the debate, doing their duty in the House instead of considering what we could be doing together in a non-partisan way to make the registry really work. As my colleague from Red Deer said, we should be working in a non-partisan manner instead of trying to find ways to make the bill mediocre, which is really what it is right now.

Our recommendation when we discussed this in caucus was that even though the bill contains a half measure, it goes partway toward establishing an effective registry. Over time it will become worthwhile. We decided that we really had to put on the record in this place the objection of the majority of the public to the mediocre nature of the registry, the way it is being set up, and to demand of the government even at this late stage to please show some integrity, creativity and resolve to work on the bill to make it retroactive and to get people on the registry who should be there. Let us get it done.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with some amazement to the hon. member on the other side. He talked about the fact that after the House adopted an Alliance motion which called on the government to set into place a sex offender registry, the government was not able to comply with the suggested date of implementation.

Normally the Alliance is the party that talks about grassroots, consultation and in particular consultation with other levels of government. It has scolded the federal government when we have made a decision, taken a position or adopted a policy without, in his party's view, properly consulting with the other levels of government.

In this case the federal government consulted with the other levels of government, the provincial and territorial governments. There was a working group. It was the consensus of all the levels of government that the sex offender registry would not be retroactive. It was agreed that it needed to be charter proof, not to put into play and into jeopardy the entire regime.

I would like to know what the member has to say in particular about making a registry charter proof. It is clear under our charter there is to be no double jeopardy. No individual who has already been convicted and sentenced to a particular sentence is to have that sentence added on to. I would like to hear from the member about that. If he is in favour of changing that, it changes many other things, labour relations and many other domains. I would really like to hear what the member has to say about that.