Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-10. I will begin by saying that I believe all members and all political parties are concerned about crime. In fact, the Liberal Party takes the safety and security of Canadians very seriously.
We introduced legislation in the last Parliament to address some of the current concerns. We increased spending on policing and especially on the broader issues related to terrorism over the last number of years. We set up procedures for various police jurisdictions in Canada and across our borders internationally to work better together.
Through the development of the Department of Public Security, we ensured that all the security, the police and the border related agencies, came together for better protection of public security and improved coordination between those various agencies.
I gave that little bit of background to reinforce the fact that as a party we believe strenuously in fighting crime and utilizing all the best tools and approaches available to do so. I will be opposing the bill. With this bill I expect some government members, probably many, will say that those who oppose the bill are soft on crime. However, that is not the case at all.
Those of us who are opposed to Bill C-10 want to have an evidence based approach to changing the justice system and to ensure at the end of the day that we have better results. I just do not believe that Bill C-10, the way it is currently drafted, really cuts it.
The question really is whether Bill C-10 is the step forward that the Minister of Justice claims it can be. I sincerely think not.
As with so much that the new government has brought forward, the intent of Bill C-10 may be fine but the design of the legislation is such that it would not achieve the intended results. I think it could make things more difficult by ending up at the end of the day spending more money on building more prisons, more infrastructure and not dealing effectively with policing, rehabilitation and crime prevention.
I believe the government has taken a very simplistic approach to a very complex problem. There is an old saying, “don't let the facts get in the way of a good story”. I think that is what is happening with the approach that the Minister of Justice is taking with Bill C-10, and that does worry me.
Legislation should be evidence based. The Minister of Justice has failed to bring forward evidence on this bill in a comprehensive way that would lead at least myself and, I think, many others to support the bill. The Minister of Justice seems more intent on having the language sound right than on designing the legislation in a way that would lead to those intended results.
The legislation caters to the view that there is a massive increase in crime when actually the evidence, the statistics, would show otherwise. That is not to say that there is not serious crime in the country, there is. We could all pick an instance, blow it out proportion and almost make it into a movie. Those people affected by crimes feel very aggrieved, and rightly so. We have a responsibility as a country to see that justice is done, but would Bill C-10 deal comprehensively with the concern of those crimes? I most definitely think not.
In Bill C-9 and Bill C-10 we see a certain amount of Americanization of the Canadian justice system. I have had the opportunity to see both systems and our justice system is vastly improved over the one south of the border. We have less crime in Canada. We have greater rehabilitation and far fewer jails per capita. We have fewer repeat crimes and there is greater safety on our streets. We can ask any citizen which cities they could walk into and feel relatively secure and they would say Canadian cities. Our system of justice is far less costly than the system south of the border.
Does Canada's approach to crime need to be improved? I would say that it certainly does, but Bill C-10 is not the answer, at least not in whole. I could support some parts of the bill but I believe overall the bill is seriously flawed.
Do mandatory minimums have a place? Many critiques over the last 50 years would say no and many would say they do not. Personally, I believe they do in some instances but not with the kind of simplistic blanket treatment that the bill proposes.
The issue can be dealt with in other ways. I can give an example of where I think judges were lax and where the justice system is currently soft, and that relates to the marijuana grow operations in British Columbia. Police officers and the RCMP will tell us about going into marijuana grow operations, taking them down, putting their lives on the line to deal with the problem and that before they go to the office the next morning the people they charged are out on the street. That is wrong and it should not happen.
I know we are not supposed to criticize judges but I did this while I was in the position of solicitor general and I maintain to this day that in too many instances in the province of B.C. the judges are soft on marijuana grow operations. However, there other ways of dealing with the issue than mandatory minimum sentences. In those instances in British Columbia where it relates to marijuana grow operations, the intent of the law is not quite being followed. There is too much softness. The judge would have to explain his or her reasons for not imposing the maximum sentence that is in the law.
The bill is terribly flawed. I had hoped to quote the member for Mount Royal when he said that Bill C-10 was not evidence based legislation but I see I am out of time. I would refer members to the remarks by the member for Mount Royal in which he gave a very good legalistic argument in terms of why Bill C-10 cannot be supported as it is currently drafted.