Madam Speaker, I wanted to add my voice to Bill C-293 sponsored by the member for Langley.
This issue of minimum sentencing has come up on a couple of other matters, such as child pornography. There has also been a lot of discussion about the merits of minimum sentencing with regard to grow houses and whether or not they should be applied there.
One of the arguments that has been made contrary to minimum sentencing has to do with whether or not it is a deterrent. I am not so sure that I am interested in whether or not a sentence is a deterrent to somebody else doing it or that same person repeating it. I am more interested in whether or not the public at large feels that the penalty actually is reflective of the seriousness of the crime. That is also important. It is just as important to me as a deterrent.
All Canadians have seen many programming stories about auto theft rings. As the previous speaker said, the typical profile is not the joyride. These are people who are highly likely to be involved in other criminal activity. When we see these problems, we must determine out level of tolerance.
The other argument that I have heard about dealing with matters such as criminal sentencing has to do with the fact that the courts are clogged up and the jails are full. The courts are clogged up because the system or the process has perhaps got out of hand.
I can remember observing some cases in court. There was a young man there and his lawyer walked in and said that his client had 27 convictions this year, but 30 the year before. The lawyer appealed to the judge that the number of convictions each year were going down and this was a good thing. His client was getting better.
I thought it was almost laughable. It really was laughable to think that in a court of law one could argue that since the number of convictions were going down, things were improving. When people have this affinity to continue to break the law, there are consequences. The consequences are not just to that individual. The consequences are to the public at large.
Most people who have had a break-in in their home, which is an invasion of their privacy, would say that the impacts of that are enormous. Their personal space is violated, and their security and safety come into question. Those kinds of principles come into account.
We are also talking about a process ostensibly that is not in the federal jurisdiction in terms of the courts dealing with these matters. However, the criminal law, with regard to the sentencing that the provincial courts and the police would have to impose, becomes yet another question. What happens with issues where the police officers are in the situation where they have so much time to spend in court? The courts are not dealing with it quickly and they cannot do their jobs properly, so we are also interfering and taking up the important time of the law enforcement agents.
There will be a lot of debate on this. I am sure that there are many good excuses. I think the fundamental principle that the punishment must be reflective of the seriousness of the crime is right and with minimum sentencing, there has to be some real time. I am not sure there is going to be a deterrent factor. It is something that would have to be studied over some period of time.
I am absolutely sure that the public at large who are aware of the facts of the case in its plainest form would feel that having to serve some time was appropriate given the nature of the crime.
One other argument I have heard was that if a mandatory minimum sentence was set, the sentencing that would always be applied would always refer down to the minimum and would never go to the full extent that was permitted under the law. I am not a lawyer by profession and I cannot say that I am too familiar with the statistics, but that kind of argument is basically an indictment of the integrity and credibility of the judges, and the courts as well.
There has to be a wholesale assessment of what is happening in the courts, both federal and provincial, to find out why it is that the resources seem to be used in a way which ultimately end up with nobody winning.
Convicted people who are involved in a range of criminal activity continue to be problems to society at large. There is no remediation. There is no rehabilitation. How does this happen? I hope Parliament provides a step forward and says that what has been happening so far has not been acceptable. We think that we can and should do better.
We should be able to say clearly that when it comes to matters such as auto theft, or possession of child pornography, which I think definitely deserves mandatory minimum sentences to reflect the seriousness with which society views that criminal activity, are not acceptable. This includes grow houses as well.
Most members know that the issue of grow houses is quite serious. A very large number of them involve organized crime. Moneys related to the growing of marijuana are not used in the business of selling marijuana, but are used to finance other illegal, more serious criminal activities such as the hard drug business, prostitution, money laundering and all kinds of other things.
Any time a member gets up in this place and says we have to talk yet again about where we are now, where we would like to be, and how we get there, that member will have my full support.