Mr. Speaker, I rise with a bit of trepidation to speak to Bill C-275. From the address we heard from the member for Cariboo--Prince George, it is quite clear how strongly he feels about the circumstances that have led him to present this private member's bill to the House.
I have a great deal of sympathy for him and for the family of the victim who was killed in this incident, which prompted this legislation to come forward. It is somewhat difficult, recognizing those circumstances, to have to stand here and say that the members of the NDP, like the Liberals and the Bloc members, are unable to support this legislation.
If we take a quick look at the legislation, we will see that it sets out a number of provisions we have difficulty with. In effect it provides for the removal of criminal intent to charges that deal with individuals who have left the scene. It sets mandatory minimum sentences in a variety of ways. Finally, it removes the discretion that prosecutors in this country have to negotiate appropriate sentences in exchange for a guilty plea.
In each one of those cases we have as a party on a number of occasions taken the position that we are not prepared to deviate from those fundamentals that in effect underlie our criminal justice system in this country. Again I recognize that it almost sounds crass to be talking about these fundamental rights when family members still grieve and still mourn the loss of a family member as a result of the conduct that we heard described by the member for Cariboo--Prince George.
When we are here as members of this House, as legislators for this country, we have the added responsibility of taking into account not only those facts and trying to deal with them as best we can, but also the facts in a number of other cases and in fact all of the cases that will eventually come before our courts when one is being faced with these types of charges, specifically, leaving the scene of an accident with the intent to escape criminal or civil liability.
One could pose a number of questions. Why is this being done in this particular section of the Criminal Code? Why not others that are also very severe? There are numerous answers to that question. One is that in fact these principles underlie to a great degree the development of our criminal justice system over a period of hundreds of years.
I want to address specifically the issue of removing the concept of criminal intent. We can come up with any number of scenarios whereby the person either negligently or with criminal intent, or maybe without either, that is, completely innocently, leaves the scene of an accident, perhaps because the person is not aware that there has been an injury. Perhaps the person is going to seek help. We have in these sections the necessity of criminal intent so that individuals in those cases would not be faced with minimum time in jail as they would under this bill. That is a mandatory minimum, which in this case runs from four or five to seven years depending on the section that is being applied.
Let me talk about what we have determined over the passage of time. It is not a perfect system. Again I think the family will probably not accept that, but it is not a perfect system. In this case, from their perspective, and I do not know the facts well enough to be able to say I agree with them, the criminal justice system has failed them. But we know that day in and day out the system we have built generally works. It actually works much better than any other system that I am aware of in the world, but it is not perfect.
The replacement of mandatory minimum sentences, taking away the discretion of judges to make those determinations, and the removal of criminal intent would, I believe, create a worse system than the one we have now, a worse system than that found in a number of other countries. We need to retain these.
More specifically and with regard to the issue of minimum sentences, I have spoken out on this issue on a number of occasions. The member for Cariboo--Prince George mentioned the fact that there are minimum sentences in our Criminal Code. In fact, we are up to 29 now. For a number of them, quite frankly, I would be opposed to having them in there.
However, there are some that have worked. There are times when minimum sentences do work. I believe they are the exception to the general rule, but there are times when they do work. For instance, some of the minimum sentences that we have imposed in impaired driving cases, which are much less severe than what is being proposed here, have worked. However, I think it worked primarily because it was coupled with a very strong public education program that got a positive reaction from the community. I think this is somewhat of an exception.
The automotive club here in Canada came out with a study last week which showed that a further extension of minimum sentences in impaired driving situations would no longer work. They have been effective up to this point, but expanding them would not in fact produce any additional prohibitions or prevent crimes of that nature.
The other point with regard to minimum sentences that I tend to press upon is the fact that such severe minimum sentences as those being proposed in the bill would result in a substantial increase in the number of trials that would have to be conducted. Individuals who might have been willing to plead guilty and avoid the trial and avoid putting the family through the trial would plead innocent in an attempt to have the charges dismissed. They would seek an acquittal. That would happen in a good number of cases. That certainly is not in the interests of grieving families or the victims of the crime, but it is a reality.
A number of states in the U.S. have moved quite extensively to the use of minimum sentences. This has resulted in a substantial increase in not guilty pleas. Inevitably when that happens the more trials there are and the more acquittals there are as opposed to getting guilty pleas in advance.
There is another point I want to make and again I am not sure that this will be of much solace to the families. In the early 1990s in the province of Ontario, and across the country, quite frankly, significant backlogs resulted in the withdrawal or dismissal of over 50,000 criminal charges in Ontario alone.
If we do not to some degree take a practical bent on this, which includes the right of our Crown prosecutors to be able to negotiate guilty pleas for appropriate sentences, if we do not keep that system in place, we are going to be faced with another backlog and the potential of a huge number of charges being dismissed because the Charter of Rights says that people are entitled to a trial in a reasonable period of time.
For all of those reasons, and as much as we sympathize with the member for Cariboo--Prince George, we have to oppose Bill C-275.