Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to add some thoughts to the debate on my colleague's private member's Bill C-393, an act to amend the Criminal Code dealing with breaking and entering.
I wish to congratulate my colleague from Calgary East for bringing this bill forward, not once, but on a number of occasions in the past, as is the case for so many of us in this chamber on both sides of the House. He should be given some marks for persistence if nothing else.
We continue to utilize the private members' business avenue to bring forward concerns that we continuously hear from our constituents on a wide variety of issues. So often government prorogues Parliament or there is a break in parliamentary procedures and bills die. They have to be resurrected and reintroduced, and go through the process all over again. It is incredibly frustrating.
I am saying this not just on behalf of the Conservative Party or the official opposition, but all opposition members and indeed government backbenchers who take advantage of private members' business to highlight issues and bring them to the chamber on behalf of their constituents.
I am very supportive of my colleague's initiative to apply a minimum sentence of two years. Obviously, there could be more than two years, but two years would be the minimum for people who are committing a break and entry.
The Liberal member for Simcoe North, if I understood him and I was in the chamber for the duration of the debate on this subject today, said that justice was best served when the judiciary had the greatest amount of discretion in handing down sentences. That seemed to be the major thrust of his opposition to my colleague's private member's bill.
One of the problems that we have in Canada, and the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle from the NDP referred to this in his remarks, is that judges have far too much discretion in our sentencing provisions. All too often, because there are no minimums, judges let criminals off with the proverbial slap on the wrist. What my colleague is endeavouring to do is to highlight this problem in one particular crime, breaking and entering.
The member for Simcoe North tried to get the whole argument off onto one facet of breaking and entering which is home invasion. He rightly described it as being much more serious of course than a simple break and enter.
I do not think that we can disguise the seriousness of this and how people that have been subjected to a break and enter feel about it. They feel that it is an invasion of their person; it is not just their home that has been invaded. They feel that they themselves have been violated.
When they go to court and see the criminal convicted, and all too often it is a conditional sentence where not a day in jail is served, or a fine, it does not do justice to the feelings that they as victims have. That is why my colleague felt the necessity to bring this forward and instill some minimum sentence.
I noted as well that my colleague from Regina—Qu'Appelle said that he wanted to make it very plain that he believed we had to be tough on crime.
Yet, anyone who has watched the proceedings in the House of Commons over the last number of years, and I have been here 10 years now, and would like to check the record would see that time and time again my colleagues and I from the old Reform Party of Canada or the Canadian Alliance brought forward private members' bills or opposition motions on our supply days that did exactly that, get tough on crime. The record would show that the NDP and very often the Bloc voted against those motions. I would take it with a grain of salt when I hear an NDP member say that he wants to get tough on crime.
He went on to talk about things that had nothing to do with this piece of legislation. He talked about the despair that people feel when they are raised in poverty and the hopelessness they face when they have no opportunities. Those are valid points, but that has nothing to do with this bill. This bill deals with a specific crime and the wish of the member to see a minimum sentence introduced into the Criminal Code to deal with that specific crime.
The Bloc Quebecois member, in addressing this particular bill, said at one point in his intervention that he thought it might be a good idea to have an awareness campaign to ensure that those who commit break and enters are aware of the seriousness of the crime. He thought that it was appropriate to put our trust in the way that courts administer the system.
He said several times that it is not the role of Parliament nor parliamentarians to replace judges and that we should not be here to do the work of judges. I agree with that. However, we are seeing all too often, and what I hear in Prince George—Peace River, too much leeway given to judges. All too often we see sentences that do not fit the crime, certainly not in the opinions of the victims and not in the opinion of the broad spectrum of Canadian society. Canadians feel that we do not have an appropriate justice system anymore.
I have remarked many times in the chamber that people are increasingly frustrated with our legal system, especially once they become victims and are thrust into the system. They go to court to hopefully get their day in court, see justice done, see the guilty held accountable, and the criminal held responsible for his or her crime. They see criminals basically laugh at the justice system, thumb their noses at it and walk out of the court scot-free. The victims are left feeling violated and victimized again.
It was not bad enough in this particular case that the victims had to be subjected to a break and enter, a violation of their home, but when the criminal gets off basically scot-free, they are left with the sense that they have been violated once more.
We must send a strong message and we are not going to do that, with all due respect to my Bloc colleague, with an awareness campaign. We are not going to do it by having someone conduct an educational campaign or put advertisements on television saying people should not do that because it is not very nice to break into somebody's home.
How we are going to do it is by providing real deterrents. We are going to do it by passing legislation like Bill C-393 introduced by my colleague from Calgary East. It gets tough on crime by providing real deterrents, a minimum sentence where individuals who make a conscious decision to break into somebody's home would know that they would do two years in jail minimum, maybe more depending on the nature of the crime, but that would be the minimum.