Mr. Speaker, I must confess--and maybe I am misinterpreting the government members--that I am getting a mixed message about which sentence would be imposed, the foreign jurisdiction's sentence or the Canadian standard for that offence. I am given to understand from a previous speaker that we would respect the sentence imposed by the foreign jurisdiction, but if I correctly understand the member for Mississauga South, we would be using the Canadian standard. There seems to be some ambiguity about that.
I have another concern that I think is very, very important to consider and I would like the member to respond to it. We have the British criminal justice system process in Canada. We bend over backwards to make sure that people are not going to be incarcerated without having a very fair trial. We must prove every element of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt before we convict. We have a very elaborate appeal process to correct errors and mistakes in the process.
Despite that, let me say that I have a penitentiary in my riding of Prince Albert and I do talk to inmates from time to time. A large majority of them say they are victims of the justice system, that they are innocent, that they have been falsely convicted. I have often thought that for true rehabilitation one has to take responsibility for one's actions. One has to look in the mirror and say, “I did something wrong and I have to do something to change my ways”. However, I find that a large majority will not accept responsibility, even under our system.
There are a lot of countries with criminal justice systems or processes that are very different from Canada's. They have no concepts like the right to counsel, a fair trial, reasonable doubt and all of the rest of it. However, people are convicted under those systems. I wonder about them coming back to our Canadian system. Will our courts and our system start reviewing the process employed in those other jurisdictions to determine that these people were guilty of an offence? Will we be saying that they did not get charter protection, that they did not have a right to counsel, that they were not presumed innocent before they were found guilty and so on?
There are a whole lot of differences in the justice systems around the world. I just wonder what this act does in this area. When they come back here, are we going to use the Canadian standard to evaluate the process that these people were convicted under in other jurisdictions or are we going to accept it?
I would like to have clarification on the first point too, if I may.