Mr. Speaker, Bill C-64 addresses a gap that we have in the Criminal Code which is clear why our former colleague, Chuck Cadman, raised the issue. It deals with the issue of tampering or altering in some fashion the vehicle identification numbers of motor vehicles. The approach he took is somewhat similar to what is in the government bill before us today, and would go toward making the alteration of the VIN number a crime under the Criminal Code and that definitely is something that we need to address.
We have heard from other members that 170,000 vehicles were stolen in Canada in 2004. We all know that there are different types of people who steal vehicles. The bill addresses the theft of motor vehicles by organized crime more than the other two groups which would be the person stealing for what I euphemistically describe as joyriding, or the person who steals it for the use in the commission of another vehicle.
In the vast majority of both of those cases, there will be no attention paid to changing the number since the purpose of the theft is for other reasons. We are told by our police forces that approximately 60% of all vehicles stolen are stolen by organized crime gangs. They are the ones we are really after with regard to this amendment to the Criminal Code.
There is a term in the bill which says how the alterations can occur, but the key word is alters rather than removes or obliterates because the purpose for the resale of the vehicle, once it is stolen, is that a VIN has to be there in most cases. A good number of these vehicles are moved out of province and in a large number of cases, out of country, but when those resales occur, there has to be a VIN on them in most cases in order to have a purchaser accept the vehicle.
There can be a number of times when the purchasers themselves are involved in criminal activity, but in most cases these resales are to people who are innocent third parties and have no idea that the vehicle has been stolen. The reason they know that it has not been stolen is because the VIN has been altered and appears to be accurate reflecting the ownership.
Assuming the bill gets through second reading of the House, it will go to the justice committee. Our party will support the bill for that purpose, but I want to signal to the government at this point, as we have heard already from the Conservative Party and its justice critic, concerns about the first subsection. I share with the member for Provencher concern over why it is necessary to add the additional wording after “without lawful excuse”. It appears to be placing an unnecessary burden on the Crown of another element of the offence that would have to be proven in the court and proven beyond a reasonable doubt in spite of the type of wording.
I look forward to some explanation from the justice department lawyers as to why they felt it necessary to put this in because as I see it right now, and again this is from my experience in the criminal courts, that does not appear to be necessary. We have other offences within the Criminal Code where the terminology “without lawful excuse” exists without additional wording and those Criminal Code charges are of long standing, going back probably to the start of the Criminal Code and have certainly been used repeatedly in any number of criminal charges that have been successful.
The second point I would make with regard to my reservation about the bill addresses the sentencing component. Like my colleagues from the Conservative Party, I am not a believer in the use of minimum mandatory sentences, just the opposite, in fact. I am not promoting that in this case but we need to look at what we are really trying to do here.
We are trying to get at organized crime stealing vehicles. In the course of that activity they need to alter the VIN number in order for their resales to be carried out. If that is the target group of this amendment to the Criminal Code, it seems to me that we should be putting in clauses, as we have done in a number of other sections of the Criminal Code, to address to the courts a mandatory direction that if the individual who is convicted of this crime is identified as being a member of an organized crime gang, that would be an aggravating factor in the sentencing.
We have to recognize as well that in the vast majority of cases if people are going to be convicted of this charge, they are also going to be convicted of theft but they may also be convicted of being a member of an organized crime gang, which is a separate offence. If those convictions are before the court, then I suggest to the justice department that it would be appropriate that their involvement in an organized crime gang would be a fact that the court should be made aware of and that the court should be mandated to take that into account as an aggravating factor in the sentencing process so that the conviction would result in a sentence that would be closer to the top end of the maximum that can be apportioned in the circumstances rather than at the lower end.
On the other hand, there are 16-year-olds who take vehicles and alter them. We have to appreciate that a lot of people think of the VIN number as being a number that is buried somewhere inside the engine component of a vehicle. That is not the reality. The VIN number is oftentimes on or under the dashboard. It is easily accessible and so there may be very unsophisticated, first time criminals altering it, maybe for the purpose of resale. Our courts would look at that fact and then maybe decide there is a potential for rehabilitation and would not want a mandatory minimum because the person was not involved in organized crime and therefore it would not be an aggravating factor.
We are at a stage where the NDP will be supporting this at second reading and referred to committee where the two areas I have expressed concern over can be addressed with perhaps amendments from the government or the opposition parties.