Mr. Speaker, I usually begin a speech by saying that I am pleased to speak on a certain subject, but today, I must admit, I am not pleased with the motion. In fact, I find it rather ridiculous. I think it is unfortunate and I will explain why, that we are spending so much time—a whole day—on a motion that is not even votable.
First, it is obvious that my political party is not a great admirer of the Canadian Constitution. Not only are we sovereignists, who want to get out of the Constitution rather than amend it, but also, most importantly, we believe that the Canadian Constitution, especially in its 1982 form, is illegitimate. It was imposed on Quebec. We remember the “night of the long knives”. No Quebec government since 1981 has wanted to sign this Constitution which was imposed by a conspiracy involving the federal government and the governments of nine Canadian provinces. I think that is the first essential point we wish to make.
My second point—and I will speak to the three points raised by the hon. members of the Canadian Alliance—is the following. In the motion, we are asked to bring in measures to reassert the will of Parliament. I then have the following question: where do the will and business of committees come in?
Let us begin with the first point, the definition of marriage.The Standing Committee on Justice, of which I am a member, is working very hard on this issue, and has been doing so since January. We have heard witnesses in Ottawa, Vancouver, Edmonton, Moose Jaw, Steinbach, Sudbury, Toronto, Montreal, Iqaluit, Sussex, New Brunswick, and Halifax. We are working on it.
So, what is the Alliance trying to do? It is trying to set aside the work of the committee by presenting such a motion. The Alliance, which prides itself on being very democratic, and which commended the democratic process chosen by the committee in going to consult the people across Canada, now comes here with this motion, saying in effect, “Never mind the hundreds of witnesses we have heard; never mind the hundreds of briefs they have submitted; never mind the honourable work done by all the hon. members from all political parties who sit on this committee; none of them matter”.
I am a bit frustrated that the House is being told today that the adopted definition and other things are being threatened, when the Standing Committee on Justice is addressing this very issue. I am sorry to have to say this, but this is an obvious example of the Alliance's lack of respect for this committee's work. By presenting this kind of motion today, it is showing a lack of respect.
On the definition of marriage, the government has said, given the three decisions by the lower courts, that Parliament must address this issue. A discussion paper has been provided to the members and is available to the general public. The public has been asked to tell us what it thinks about the four options.
It will not come as a surprise when I say that, of the four options presented by the government, two are unconstitutional due to the division of powers.
One of the four options is allowing civil unions. However, I would remind members that, under section 91.26 of the Constitution Act, 1867, the federal government has jurisdiction over marriage and divorce, and the provinces and Quebec have jurisdiction over all other matters relating to family law. This means, for example, that anything Parliament wants to do relating to family law, if it does not concern marriage or divorce, falls outside this Parliament's jurisdiction. For marriage, Parliament has jurisdiction only over its basic conditions. So, the idea of civil unions must be set aside based on the division of powers.
The other option is for the state to withdraw from marriage and leave this up to organized religion. Persons solemnizing marriages in the provinces get their licence from the provinces. For example, in Quebec, priests, rabbis or imams solemnizing marriages are officers of civil status. Consequently, it is not up to Parliament to tell Quebec and the provinces who has the power to solemnize the union of two people. So, these two options must be set aside given the division of powers.
The committee therefore has to choose between keeping the current definition of marriage—in other words, the union of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others—or changing the definition. On this, I would simply like to point out that the courts, such as the British Columbia Court of Appeal most recently, have ruled that the current definition is discriminatory and that this is not justifiable in a free and democratic society.
People can complain as much as they want, they can criticize this idea of judicial review, they can do whatever they want. The fact is that the principle of judicial review forms the very foundation of how our democracy operates. I will remind the House that this idea in Canada goes back to an old principle adopted by Chief Justice Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1835. Canada could not use the example of the British Constitution because it is unwritten, so this notion of judicial review came from the United States.
As I was saying, they can complain about it and criticize it, but the fact is that today our society operates this way. This is the constitutional arrangement that we have set up. Being a sovereignist, I hope that when Quebec becomes independent, we will also have some way of protecting minorities from decisions of the majority. I also hope that the constitution of an independent Quebec will contain a judicial review process. This a key element for the rule of law and one of the fundamental elements for healthy democracy.
That was the first point. The second point refers to house arrest for child sexual predators, which allows them to produce and possess child pornography. Obviously, as a father of young children, I completely agree with all those who defend children as our greatest resource and say that we must protect them. That seems quite obvious to me. I think it is unfortunate that they would play politics on this by accusing other member of the House of not having the interests of children at heart.
I have been in politics for 15 years now, and I was elected almost six years ago now. I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying that there is not one person in this House, from any of the five different political parties here, that does not have the interests of children at heart. No one can say that.
It is all right to criticize the government's approach, for the opposition parties to criticize each other, but to say that someone in this House does not have children's interests and protection at heart is bad faith and demagoguery. In politics, I believe demagoguery always backfires on the one who uses it.
We are all aware that this part of the motion by the Canadian Alliance refers to the Supreme Court judgment in Sharpe , with which the members of this House are rather familiar. Apparently, the Alliance was upset by two particular aspects of this judgment. First, the Court's interpretation of the defence of artistic merit. In fact, a large part of the decision was taken up with this. The court interpreted this defence as follows:
I conclude that “artistic merit” should be interpreted as including any expression that may reasonably be viewed as art. Any objectively established artistic value, however small, suffices to support the defence. Simply put, artists, so long as they are producing art, should not fear prosecution under s. 163.1(4).
This judgment indicates that two types of material must be excluded from the definition of child pornography:
(1) written materials or visual representations created and held by the accused alone, exclusively for personal use; and (2) visual recordings created by or depicting the accused that do not depict unlawful sexual activity and are held by the accused exclusively for private use.
We presume that the text of the motion refers to one of the above two points, although I cannot read the minds of our Alliance colleagues. Since I have trouble understanding the intervention by the Alliance, however, I must base my intervention on a premise, and this is the one I have chosen.
We have trouble understanding how the Alliance could apparently overlook the fact that the government introduced a bill last December 5 that was specifically aimed at amending the Criminal Code as it relates to child pornography. The amendments proposed by the government address precisely those two aspects. They are the focus of the bill.
First, there is a proposal for a new public good defence and, moreover, the bill tightens up the definition of child pornography, which will cover aspects it did not use to cover.
While we in the Bloc Quebecois question the constitutionality of such a change to the definition of child pornography, we intend to do serious work in committee, considering the proposed changes and listening to testimonies in this regard.
I think much greater respect for parliamentary procedure and for Parliament per se would have been shown, had committee work taken place before such a motion were put forward. The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights should have been given an opportunity to hear testimony from victims, lawyers, constitutional experts, peace officers, and artists before such a motion was put forward.
We believe that studying Bill C-20 in that environment will allow a much more serious and intelligent consideration of the issues raised in part (b) of the motion with respect to child pornography than the present debate does.
I will now address conditional sentences. Naturally, we deal with many things, and cannot deal with everything at once. But again, I would like to remind the House that the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights is considering conditional sentences and that we are not done putting our recommendations together.
Once again, for the third time in as many points, if the Canadian Alliance wants to be respectful of the legislative process and Parliament, it should do a good job in committee.
The Alliance should make sure it does its work in committee thoroughly, seriously and studiously, instead of presenting a motion such as this.
The Alliance motion is probably referring to the Supreme Court decision in R. v. L.F.W. In that case, the Attorney General appealed a conditional sentence of 21 months given to an offender convicted of indecent assault and gross indecency.
In this case, the offences were committed between 1967 and 1973 and the complaint was filed in 1995. At the time the offences began, the victim was six years old and the accused was 22.
The Supreme Court was divided in its decision but the Attorney General's appeal was rejected.
The Bloc is of the opinion that trial judges and courts should have all possible latitude in determining sentences for each case they hear, on a case-by-case basis.
They are in the best position to determine sentences. Any given sentence does not have the same impact on everyone; the impact varies from one person to another. In committee, I raised certain other questions—sometimes by questioning the witnesses—that we will continue to raise and to examine as part of the committee's business. Instead of holding a debate here on a non-votable opposition motion, a motion that is all over the place and serves as a sounding board for the Canadian Alliance, it would have been more appropriate to do this work in committee, and do it more seriously.
I see that I have only three minutes left. I have so much to say in such a short time. To conclude, I will talk about granting prisoners the right to vote.
In the case of Sauvé v. Canada (Chief Electoral Officer)—a 2002 decision—the Supreme Court of Canada was asked to rule on the constitutionality of section 51 of the Canada Elections Act, which disqualifies persons imprisoned in correctional institutions serving sentences of two years or more from voting in federal elections.
The issue the Court considered in this case was the following: does this provision infringe the rights guaranteed by section 3, namely the right to vote, and section 15, equality rights, of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
The court, and this is important to remember since it is obviously a difficult subject for both parliamentarians and judges alike, overturned the previous decision by five to four. The majority opinion, signed by Justice McLachlin, ruled that the right to vote is fundamental in our society and cannot be lightly set aside.
The court found that to deny prisoners the right to vote is to lose an important means of teaching them democratic values and social responsibility. That is the purpose of sending people to prison, to tell them, “You have done something wrong. We want to rehabilitate you so you do not stay in prison for the rest of your life”. At least, I hope that no one in this House wants to see anyone remain in prison for life without any chance of getting out and becoming a full-fledged, law-abiding, responsible citizen who will find a job and contribute to society.
The government's novel political theory that would permit elected representatives to disenfranchise a segment of the population finds no place in a democracy built upon principles of inclusiveness, equality, and citizen participation.
The court adds that the argument that only those who respect the law should participate in the political process is unacceptable. Denial of the right to vote on the basis of attributed moral unworthiness is inconsistent with the respect for the dignity of every person that lies at the heart of Canadian democracy and the Charter.
The court ruled in the Sauvé decision that the Canada Elections Act provision denying the right to vote to inmates serving a sentence of two years or more infringed section 3 of the Charter and was not justified under section 1.
The Bloc believes that it is not appropriate to seek to amend this decision. Furthermore, it should be noted that inmates already had the right to vote in provincial and municipal elections in some provinces, including in Quebec.
In closing, I think that this is a waste of time, that this motion is badly structured, and that it shows a lack of respect for the committees, particularly the justice committee, which is working on three of the four issues mentioned in the Alliance motion.