Debates of April 2nd, 2003

Budget Implementation Act, 2003

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[Marlene Catterall, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Discussions have taken place among all parties and there is agreement, pursuant to Standing Order 45(7), to defer the recorded division until Tuesday, April 8, at 3 p.m.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Message from the Senate

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

I have the honour to inform the House that a message has been received from the Senate informing this House that the Senate has passed a bill, to which the concurrence of the House is desired.

The House resumed from April 1 consideration of the motion that 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, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Sex Offender Information Registration Act

[Aileen Carroll, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Madam Speaker, there having been lengthy discussion and consideration of Bill C-23, I think it is an appropriate time for the following motion. I move:

That the question be now put.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The motion is in order. We are now in debate on that the question be now put.

[Randy White, Canadian Alliance, Langley—Abbotsford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I must express my profound disappointment on how Bill C-23 has been handled in the House of Commons.

Having written the original bill on the national sex offender registry, I have followed the issue for a long time past, even when the government did not understand what we were trying to do with a national sex offender registry. Now it has come out and suggested that it has a great idea about a national sex offender registry and how to handle it.

One of the profound disappointments is the retroactive issue. Today we voted on an amendment to Bill C-23 that would have made sure this particular issue would be retroactive. I will go into that in detail in a moment.

However, the problem I am having is that the government does not want to make the bill retroactive. In other words, it wants to implement a national sex offender registry but it does not want to include all those who are currently incarcerated in this country, either provincially or federally, for sex offences. That includes approximately 10,000 sex offenders who will not be registered in the registry on opening day.

I read into the House yesterday the names of some of the people who will not be registered. I asked my staff to provide me with an arbitrary list of sex offenders who were written about in the last three months. I read out the names of some of these individuals who will not be on this registry on opening day. I do not understand why the government, which has the ability to register these people, will not do it.

I do not know what to say or what to do any longer in this country where we get lip service about implementing a national sex offender registry. The government accommodates everything that I wrote in the original private member's bill, but in the last two pages it ruined the whole damn thing. It ruined it all.

How? First, after Royal Assent there will not be one soul on that registry. How they get on the registry, if we are lucky enough to get them there, is they have to get out of prison, commit another a sex offence crime, go back to prison, serve their time and then they will be put on the registry.

Has anyone ever heard anything so stupid? For the people listening to what I am saying, I do not understand at all why they would vote for those people. It is a disgrace how they are handling this situation.

[An hon. member]

Oh, come on.

[Randy White, Canadian Alliance, Langley—Abbotsford, BC]

“Oh, come on”, the minister says. What excuse does the government have for not making this retroactive? I ask the minister to give me one damn good reason. He cannot.

There are other problems that are just as bad, and counting on lawyers for some of this stuff is outrageous. Here is another reason. Registered offenders will have the right to appeal a registration order. In other words, rather than name the sex offences, upon which the offenders name would automatically enter the registry, there is an appeal process so that the offenders would have the right to appeal a registration order. Can anyone imagine the stupidity of this? It means more money in the hands of the criminal lawyers, more time in the courtroom and less time for victims.

In addition, the bill would force the crown to apply to the courts to have the offender added to the registry at time of sentencing. That is just the most stupid thing.

I have been in more sentencing hearings where individuals, for example, Armbruster is a good case with 63 prior convictions, including sexually assaulting his grandmother. He is a guy who should have had a DSO, dangerous sex offender, designation and the crown would not apply for it because it thought maybe it could not get it. This is a guy with 63 prior convictions.

To leave it in the hands of the lawyers in a courtroom is a ridiculous position to take. We must take the arbitrariness out of the situation and make it mandatory. When someone is convicted and sentenced for a certain sex offence then it should be automatic.

As if that was not bad enough, then we come to the fact that the legislation provides a loophole for sex offenders: If they can show that being added to the registry would cause them greater harm than the public good that is served by them being on the list. That would be left in the hands of judges.

I have dealt with a lot of decisions lately by judges, particularly in the area of drugs, and it boggles the mind how they make decisions any more. How can we allow a loophole in the act that would allow a judge to consider whether there would be greater harm to the sex offender by putting him on the registry than it would maybe be for the public good? How is it possible to weigh these things? Why is the government doing this? Is there no common sense left over there?

The minister, when he woke up, looked a little confused about it. What is wrong with the people over there? Do they not understand that leaving all this stuff to the discretion of judges and lawyers in the courtroom does not work?

If someone is bad enough, it is at the discretion of judges and lawyers to decide whether the person should be on the sex offender registry, although the person would not be on it anyway until the person commits another crime. I just do not understand.

This is perhaps one of the most disappointing times I have had in my 10 years in the House of Commons. After spending so much time writing the original bill and then seeing the government follow through with that bill, putting essentially everything into it that we had in the private member's bill, but allowing these three items: discretion of the judge, the discretion of the lawyers to even apply for it, and the non-retroactivity, it has ruined the whole thing.

I cannot help but think, quite frankly, that the government really does not want the bill so it has thrown three hard things into it, which will not serve victims of crime or the Canadian people very well, in the hopes that it will just die on the Order Paper somewhere.

I guess the other thing is that it places me and my colleagues in a position to vote against something we have long fought for. We have in fact basically embarrassed the government, along with the police and victims' rights groups, to put this into legislation. Now it throws these three things in, which make the legislation quite useless, and we are forced to vote against it because it does so.

I have seen this political ploy more times than enough in the House of Commons where omnibus bills are brought in and enough is thrown in it to get the opposition to vote against it. The bill before us has to be voted against because of the difficulty the government has laid before us.

There are so many sex offenders out there. The people listening and watching do not know if they are living in their community or living next to them. They would know and could know if the government had followed our original bill. However the people living next door to a sex offender will not know because the government has seen fit to virtually eliminate that information for the next five to eight years, because it will not record people who are currently in prisons.

I can say this about the legislation. I am profoundly disappointed in how the government has tackled these two or three items. I am deeply hurt that victims in this country will not be well served. Innocent Canadians will not be served. They will never know who is living next door. The police will not know. These three changes have, in effect, rendered the bill useless. I do not believe the government had the intention of really implementing a bill that would have been effective.

[Gary Lunn, Canadian Alliance, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to stand and represent all my constituents of Saanich—Gulf Islands. I want to make a few points on the sex offender registry.

It is important to make the point that on March 13, 2001, my colleague from Langley—Abbotsford brought forward an Alliance opposition supply day motion calling for a national sex offender registry. In that motion it had a timeline that the government would have this completed by January 2002. Again, that motion was discussed over two years ago and the government has taken over a year to actually get this one done. However, now that it is finally done, as my colleague just stated, I believe it is very inadequate in three main areas.

First and foremost, the most troubling aspect of the legislation is that it is not retroactive. There are literally thousands and thousands of sex offenders. There are people like Karla Homolka who will be released from jail in the coming years, if not months. She will not be on the registry. There are thousands more who are equally as bad and will not be put on a registry to protect the public.

The recidivism rate is reported as high as 50%, some at 40%, but there is no question that it is high. Some would argue that it is almost a disease. Child predators, child molesters and pedophiles do offend. They attack and prey on the most vulnerable in our society. I have to ask: who are we trying to protect? Who is our duty to? I have to believe that every member of the House would want to protect the most innocent and vulnerable in our society.

My daughter turned eight years old today and I cannot imagine for the life of me how any parent could handle anything happening to a child that is so innocent, so young and so vulnerable. It would horrify me but it does happen.

As parliamentarians we could go a long way to lessening the opportunity of that happening and, if it does happen, we could increase our opportunity to protect them before they are put in harm's way.

In my readings, where there are effective sex offender registries, if a child is abducted by a sexual predator or someone else, if the authorities can get to a database and do a search of the immediate area to find out if there are any potential sexual predators residing in either a one kilometre radius or whatever it is, the chances of success are exponentially greater of getting to that child or person before the child or person is murdered or actually put in harm's way.

We have to ask ourselves what the most important thing is that we are trying to do in the legislation. I question the simple fact that we have the ability to make this retroactive. I would argue that we are probably doing more to help sexual predators than harming them by putting their names on a registry. If they know they are on a registry, the ones who are borderline or may not be as severe, they may not reoffend if they know they can that easily be tracked down. We have such amazing tools now, such as DNA, yet we seem to have lost our way when we read the bill.

It is absolutely, completely unacceptable that the bill is not retroactive. That is the single fundamental flaw and because of that flaw alone, I cannot support the bill. There are other weaknesses in the bill, which I could support, but I cannot because of the simple fact that it is not retroactive, that there is going to be an empty database.

I urge the government to rethink this. It has just passed a motion not allowing any amendments which is incredibly unfortunate.

The bill should be retroactive. Our interests should be in protecting the most vulnerable in our society, protecting people the victims, not the sexual predators, not the offenders, not the pedophiles. Unfortunately we seem to have our priorities backwards.

There are other weaknesses in Bill C-23. They are twofold.

First, even when the bill comes into force, somebody who is convicted of a sexual offence will not go on the registry again. Forget about the retroactivity, which is so bad that we have not been able to deal with it, but if we move forward now into the future, just being convicted of a sexual offence will not put someone on the registry. The Crown will have to make an application in each and every case to have someone put on the registry. Again that is backwards. It should be automatic that once a person is convicted of a sexual offence, and we could list all the offences, that person would automatically go on the sex offender registry.

For the life of me, I have no idea why a drafter or even why the government responsible would do it this way. It absolutely makes no sense.

To top that off, there is another loophole for the sex offenders. They can make a case to be excluded from the registry if they can show that being on the registry would cause them greater harm than the public. I am at a loss for words. We are not talking about somebody who is accused or who maybe committed an offence; we are talking about a convicted sex offender. The person has been to court, has been tried and found guilty, yet somehow it would cause that individual greater harm than all society. Again we have it backwards. Again it is our children, the most vulnerable in our society. I cannot imagine a member in the House who could possibly support that, yet that is the way the bill is written.

Members stood in the House of Commons and voted for the government to create a sex offender registry and two years later, this is the best it could do. One wonders if the government is competent to govern. I mean that. When the government comes in with a piece of legislation such as this bill, one questions what its interests are.

In summary, first, it is absolutely, grossly inadequate that the bill is not retroactive. That alone is enough to not support the registry. Second, even after a person has been tried and convicted of a sex offence, that person is not put on the registry. Only if the Crown applies for that person to be put on the registry will that person be put on. It should be automatic. The default should be that the person is automatically put on the registry. Third, if the convicted sex offender can show that there would be greater harm to that individual than that of society, that person can be excluded. I would imagine that if one was on the sex offender registry, it would probably do them more good in trying to stop the recidivism.

I urge the government to allow an amendment to come forward to at least make the bill retroactive. Otherwise this legislation would be absolutely meaningless.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The question is on the motion that the question be now put. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The vote will be deferred until tomorrow at 10 a.m.

[Marlene Catterall, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Discussions have taken place among the parties and there is agreement, pursuant to Standing Order 45(7), that the recorded division requested on the motion that the question be now put be deferred until Tuesday, April 8 at 3 p.m.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Is it agreed?