“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.