Debates of Nov. 26th, 2007

Youth Criminal Justice Act

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, hon. members have been talking about poverty as a cause for youth crime. I would like to ask my colleague how he sees the current role of police.

We now have a police force that we could describe as trying to stop crimes, not prevent them. There used to be constables in the cities and police officers walking a beat. They knew everyone and were close to young people. There is something else going on now. I live in a riding that only has small towns. There were plans this year to bring in people who would play the role police officers used to play and no longer play, and that is to be close to young people to give them advice and to help them. The current government blocked all those plans. It seems to me that it is not just through legislation that the crime rate could be brought down.

My question for the hon. member is the following. Does he think a change in attitude and a different concept of the role of police, which the government could develop, could change the attitude of many young people?

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my comments, we have been very fortunate in my own riding that community-based policing has been a priority for the local police department. However, there are also a number of my communities that are policed by the RCMP as well and I know that they make every effort to engage with young people. In one particular community, Cheticamp, a French Acadian community on the west coast of Cape Breton, the officers are very well-engaged with the community.

However, what the member said is exactly right. I think if we were to walk up to a group of young people who were ready to perpetrate an act and asked them whether they knew that would get them three years in jail, or whatever that term might be, I question whether that would be a deterrent. However, if there is a relationship with local law enforcement agencies and local law enforcement officers, I would suggest that out of respect for the law and out of respect for those members, maybe that act would not take place.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague, the member for Cape Breton—Canso, has a lot of experience working with young people and I certainly appreciated what he had to say.

Regrettably, in my riding of Etobicoke North, there has been a lot of youth violence, gangs, and drugs, and it is one of the ridings that the member from the Bloc was asking about. Fortunately, there was a police raid last year where they rounded up 50-odd young people involved with gangs and drugs. So things have been more quiet since. I am hoping that they stay that way because it was a terrible problem.

What is often misunderstood is that our Liberal government made changes to what used to be called the Young Offenders Act. We brought in the Youth Criminal Justice Act and with that, we made a number of changes. I will just cite a couple.

One is that with the legislation we allowed for transfer of information back and forth between the schools and the police, which is an important thing, and the police are using that information with good effect.

A second change is that under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, and it is often misunderstood, a judge, at his or her discretion, can try a 14-year-old as an adult if this is, in the wisdom of the judge, the appropriate way to proceed.

I think those are some additional teeth we put into the act. However, ultimately, I think it comes back to the young people. What do we do with them at a certain young age? We cannot lock them up forever. They are going--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I do not like to cut off the hon. member, but I do have to leave enough time for the hon. member for Cape Breton--Canso to respond. So we will have to end the question there and I will hand it over to the hon. member for Cape Breton--Canso.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I was enjoying the preamble to his question. However, with regard to the points that were being made by the member, obviously, we have to invest with issues of poverty, with issues of keeping our youth active, and investing in infrastructures in local communities, so that we can keep these young people active.

To be fair to the government, too, the minister of defence had mentioned deterrences through this legislation. The vast majority of the old information suggests that deterrence is not a significant factor. I know that there is some new information that we have access to now that might suggest otherwise. I think that is why it is important to bring this forward to committee, so that we can hash this out, have the experts present their information, and go forward from there.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this very important debate. What we are talking about is the future of our young people in our communities. From the outset I want to say that I am against this bill and that the Bloc Québécois is also against it. There need to be very specific examples. People need to realize, and I hope the members opposite will realize, that rehabilitation and reintegration exist and are working. What is more, this works much better than repression and deterrence.

In 32 years of practising criminal law, I spent a number of years working with young offenders. We saw the Young Offenders Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act and all sorts of legislation to try to deal with youth crime. I can assure you that in Quebec, this works. I do not understand why it does not work elsewhere.

In the 1970s, my colleague from Hochelaga will remember, there was the hippie culture. In the 1990s, it was something else and now we have street gangs. I guess the purpose of this bill is to try to address these street gangs that very quickly recruit our young people and incite them to commit crime. We are going down the wrong path.

There are plenty of examples. I attended meetings of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights for several months. Experts who appeared before the committee said that cracking down on crime is working in the United States. That is not true. All kinds of evidence and statistics were provided. The Conservatives are basing their bill on false data from the United States. Cracking down has not reduced the crime rate. That is simply not true. The homicide rate in the United States has not dropped despite the fact that they put more people in jail than anyone else and even though they have the death penalty. Are the Conservatives trying to reopen the debate on the death penalty with this bill? I would not be surprised if that was what they wanted. I hope that is not the case and that they will provide some reassurance to that effect.

A basic tenet of law states that onus must not be placed on the accused when seeking interim release if doing so would violate the presumption of innocence. Therein lies the problem. That is a fundamental principle. Why reverse the onus? There are articles in the Criminal Code that cover this, and they have applied until now. Young people who committed repeat offences were not released. That is not the problem; the problem is reintegration.

I do not know what has gotten into the Conservatives. They need to understand, once and for all, that putting people in jail as often as possible and for as long as possible does not stop crime. The real causes of crime—as they themselves will say—are poverty, poor social environment and so on. It seems strange that even though they know this, they have never put forward any solutions to these problems.

When I was with clients in court, sentences were decided case by case. The judge had to explain the sentence to the individual. It is hard enough for a judge to determine an appropriate sentence for individuals over 18.

Now imagine the problem they have with those under 18. The closer a person is to 14, the harder it is.

A young, 14-year-old person, whether the Conservatives like it or not, does not think the same as someone who is 18, 20, 22 or 24. Kids should be kids. Yes, crime does exist among young people and it must be dealt with severely. I agree—I am not saying that we should all give them our blessing and trust them implicitly. They must be dealt with by the courts and sanctioned appropriately.

I would point out that, as legislators, we talked about sanctions for young offenders and not sentences. There is a significant difference. The sentence must then be explained, the sanction that is about to be given to an individual. The younger the offender, the more careful we must be, the more we must customize the sanction, and focus on rehabilitation and reintegration. This is what I want to explain to the Conservatives, given that “rehabilitation” and “reintegration” do not seem to be part of their vocabulary.

Someone who commits an offence—and that is what we are talking about—must be given the opportunity to return to society. We must explain to them and make sure they understand the risks, and take steps to ensure they do not reoffend. Among young offenders—dozens of whom I have represented—it is foolish to believe there is any reverence for crime, that they want to return to crime, that they like committing offences, that they like breaking and entering, that they like committing murder. This is all false. It is an urban legend.

Quite often, the young person is put in a certain situation. Here are some examples. The most common crimes committed by young people are breaking and entering and car theft, or using illegal substances, of course. It does not involve hard drugs, but rather using marijuana and hashish. However, when someone begins using cocaine, certain measures must definitely be taken. I am not saying that we should not intervene, but that we must do so while considering the needs of young people. And what young people need is rehabilitation and, above all, reintegration.

We have to remember that the young person must return to society and become a productive member. Bill C-25 provides for the opposite. Consequently, they will start out slowly by keeping youth in a crime school. They even want to send young people to adult jail more often. I would like my friends opposite to go and see what goes on in a penitentiary. That is no place for a young person. We have to think in terms of rehabilitation and reintegration.

My wise colleague from Hochelaga spoke of Supreme Court decisions where the justices stated:

Parliament has sought preferably to promote the long-term protection of the public by addressing the circumstances underlying the offending behaviour, by rehabilitating and reintegrating young persons into society and by holding young persons accountable through the imposition of meaningful sanctions related to the harm done.

As I have only one minute left, I will conclude by saying that with this bill we run the risk of going in the wrong direction. We run the risk of being entangled in something very difficult from which we will not be able to extricate ourselves, namely repression and sanction.

What we should be doing is talking to our young people, explaining to them, making them understand and reiterating that crime does not pay, that you must live up to your obligations and that a solution must be found when a sentence is handed down. We have to explain this to the youth so that he accepts the sentence. If he does not, he is headed straight to the school of crime known as prison.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in this debate I think one of the greatest dangers we face is the danger of polarizing the differences between rehabilitation and deterrence. We are not talking about an either/or approach.

My colleague mentioned that we were talking about putting people in prison for as long as possible but that is not at all factual. My colleague must have missed the announcement that our government made in terms of the $22 million that we are investing in prevention and rehabilitation programs.

One of the objectives of this bill is to deter and prevent youth from entering deeper and deeper levels of criminal activity. I remember a parent in my riding begging the judge to have her son sentenced to a treatment or jail facility so he would be protected from further criminal activity.

Does my colleague not agree that within the huge spectrum of different treatment options that we have, such as prevention, rehabilitation and restorative justice, which are all important, one of the key factors needs to be the element of deterring behaviour that would end up causing further damage, not only to the victims but to the offender himself or herself?

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there is a fundamental difference. I do not share the opinion of my hon. colleague across the floor. If he would amend the bill by removing clause 2, I am sure we could agree easily.

However, as soon as anyone says, as it does in clause 2, that the judge should add deterrence to the sentencing criteria, this goes against a Supreme Court ruling. Actually, this would mean setting aside rehabilitation, social reintegration, and the notion of guiding and protecting young people. No!

At some point, what is the judge going to say? That since this is the offender's 15th or 18th break and enter, he or she will be put away for three years. That is what will happen. However, a young person who commits 15 breaking and entering offences must have some sort of a problem. To date, in such a case, questions would be raised, the situation would be looked at, and the family and background would be examined. We would try to understand why this person committed such offences and make decisions accordingly.

Under the proposed amendment, unfortunately, we would lock them up and throw away the key, if possible.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rose initially to speak to what is in effect a motion before the House to close off debate, a motion moved by the member for Edmonton—Sherwood Park. I actually was rising with mixed feelings. On the one hand, because it is important that the debate on this bill continue for an extended period of time, I was going to be critical of my colleague for Edmonton--Sherwood Park. However, on the other hand, since I already spoke once to this matter, the motion now allows me to speak a second time and make additional points. Therefore, I actually want to thank the member for making the motion.

Hopefully, the motion will also give enough time to other members of this House who are bringing forward good points, as we just heard from my colleague from the Bloc and earlier from my colleague from Parkdale, about how we go about strengthening our youth criminal justice system without impairing the steps forward that we have made over the last 20 or 30 years.

I practised law during that entire period of time before I came to the House and a good deal of my early career was spent dealing with youth crime. It was different legislation at that time. It was much more punitive in nature. The law did not have much emphasis on rehabilitation. It recognized the difference between youth and adult crimes but was much more limited.

Over the years, our society, reflected in the legislation that Parliament passed, has moved forward. As that was going on, we saw a continuing reduction, until very recently, in crimes generally, both by adults and youth, and specifically with regard to youth crime, we saw some very substantial drops in the rates of youth crime. This decline corresponded with us reducing the times that youth spent in correctional facilities and emphasized the amount of time they would spend either in the community receiving treatment and counselling, et cetera, or in facilities that were of a psychiatric and psychological nature where very intensive treatment would be available for them.

What happened, and both the federal government and the provincial governments were at fault for this, is we saw in the middle nineties, in budgets that were passed by the former prime minister when he was finance minister, and we saw it in a number of the provinces, most notably in Ontario under the Mike Harris and Ernie Eves administration, substantial cuts to those treatment programs. We also saw cuts that affected the quality of life for those who are more vulnerable in our society.

There has been the commencement of an analysis by sociologists and criminologists to try to explain the spike in crimes that we have seen, the development, as we heard from some of the other speakers, in many more street gangs forming, noticeably over the last four or five years, but which started even earlier than that. It is interesting to go back and look at the increase in the crime rate, particularly among youth and the spike that we have seen in the last three or four years.

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if we could have some order in the House. It is really very distracting to speak when we have conversations going on.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I think the hon. member raises a good point. If there are any members who wish to carry on conversations with their colleagues could they please use one of the lobbies on either side of the House so we can all hear the hon. member for Windsor—Tecumseh.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what we have seen is the spike and we have seen it most noticeably in the last three or four years in our crime statistics. We have seen it particularly coming out of crimes committed by youth gangs.

If we go back and study the sociological data, a good number of individuals committing those crimes were in their early to late adolescence or early teens at the time when these financial cuts came about and when the impact of the cuts to those programs, whether it was the treatment programs, affordable housing or basic social assistance, were felt. We saw a 22% cut in social assistance in the province of Ontario in one budget.

Those cuts had a substantial impact on the ability of mostly single parents to provide even the basic necessities. We are seeing this analysis coming at this point, and I think it will be a few more years before we can say whether it is a valid analysis, but at the very least it should say to us that we need to be very careful about how we deal with youth crime. How do we treat it, handle it or reduce it?

A simplistic analysis that we see in the bill, and particularly in the second part of the bill, says that all we need to do is introduce some new sentencing principles, take them from the adult sentencing principles that we have now and say that we need to denunciate these crimes, deter these crimes and use those sentencing principles to do it.

There is overwhelming sociological evidence that deterrence works very little, as does denunciation even in adult crimes. There is even better evidence that it does not work at all in youth crimes.

It is good that we are continuing to have this debate because it allows us to hear more stories and information from other members of the House that this bill is not the way to go or tinker with the youth criminal justice system because it is not effective and, in fact, we may have unintended consequences.

We know that if we put people who are psychologically vulnerable into certain settings they come out more hardened, experienced and better criminals in the sense that they learn while they are in those custodial facilities from other more hardened criminals how to commit crime better. They oftentimes come out more bitter and more vicious. We know those things from all sorts of studies.

This simplistic analysis of simply saying that we need to denunciate, we need to deter and put those principles into our youth criminal justice system flies in the face of overwhelming factual evidence to the contrary.

We hear from the Conservative government that it is spending money on treatment programs. As I said earlier, the analysis we had from across the country was not $10 million or $20 million a year in additional funding. We have some makeup to do for all those programs that got cut, both federally and provincially, all those funds that stopped flowing to help build a better society, whether it is for recreational or treatment programs. We cut those funds and they have not been put back.

I think one of the speakers earlier this evening talked about $22 million going back in. The analysis we made, in assistance with the network of communities across the country that did the analysis, is that at a minimum we needed $100 million a year. If we could find all that money in the budget to give tax breaks to large corporations in the billions of dollars, could we not have found more money for these programs? Even though the government may be spending $22 million, it actually is not since it has not got around to spending it all. However, it could have spent another $80 million if it had not given those billions of dollars in tax breaks to large corporations that did not need them.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, in his comments, the hon. member referred to words like “denounciate”. I have not found that one, but I am sure he means denounce and deter. He said there is an attempt by this bill to import denunciation and deterrence into the Youth Criminal Justice Act. If I understood him correctly, he would be against the importation of the adult concepts to youth criminal justice principles.

I wonder if he thinks that the two references that I know of by the Quebec Court of Appeal and the Ontario Court of Appeal with respect to the imposition of an adult sentence on a youth being unconstitutional and against section 7 of the charter. Does he think those references anew would lead to a similar result with the importation of adult sentencing principles?

I fully realize that an adult sentence is quite a bit more stiff when it comes to section 7 than adult sentencing principles, but does he not think there might be words of warning in the two court of appeal judgments that might assist us in committee at least, if the bill gets that far, in sculpting away some of these adult concepts to make the law in fact constitutional?

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will start by saying that I recognize my friend in particular because of his Irish ancestry is much more eloquent than I am and may have better pronunciation. The principle is denunciation. It is denouncing certain conduct, so he is correct from that perspective.

More seriously, with regard to the question of the constitutionality, both courts of appeal were dealing with the legislation as it is worded now, which does not permit for there to be adult sentencing principles incorporated into the legislation. Both courts of appeal were very clear and, quite frankly, very forceful in the language they used that lower courts could not incorporate those concepts into the legislation.

If this bill were to get through, and certainly the opposition parties are all feeling that it should not as it is worded with these sentencing principles in it, this bill would be challenged under the charter from a couple of perspectives, at least the issue of proportionality, that youth have to be treated differently and the seriousness that we apportion to those crimes. That will come up.

Overall, the right of a country to expect that youth are going to be treated differently from adults would be very much part of that challenge. As opposed to those two court of appeal decisions which did not deal with the charter issues, we will see that--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Edmonton—Sherwood Park.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by simply correcting the record. It was not I, though I could have easily done it, but the member for Lethbridge who made the motion to which the hon. member referred.

I would like to counter some of the comments that have been made, particularly from the Bloc member but also from the member from time to time, though not as strenuously, and that is that we on the government side do not have concern for young people and how to prevent crime. That is a false statement. It is false and I want to set the record straight.

To give an example very quickly, one of the saddest visits I ever made was to the youth detention centre in Edmonton. It is incredibly sad to walk in there and see young people who have been found guilty of crimes, such as knifing fellow students in the school yard or using a weapon to commit crimes, maybe theft at a store or something. I have a great deal of compassion and concern for how we keep those kids out of there in the first place. If I ever had a chance to make a speech, I could enlarge on that.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to apologize to the member for Edmonton—Sherwood Park for that misinformation. It was done in all honesty. I understood he had moved the motion.

I have been in those kinds of institutions as well. I sat on the boards of a number of institutions that dealt with individuals. I have also dealt with the victims of youth crime. The bottom line is that simplistic solutions are not the answer and there are parts of this bill that are introducing simplistic solutions that will not move this forward at all.

Back to my basic point, the government needs to be spending more money if we are going to deal with the spike in youth crime in this country.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to rise today to speak on Bill C-25, An Act to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act. With this debate, I feel as though I am reliving some previous debates we had here in the House of Commons. A few years ago, the Bloc Québécois waged a strong offensive against the then Liberal government regarding the Young Offenders Act. I remember that my colleague from Berthier—Montcalm, Michel Bellehumeur, who was the Bloc Québécois justice critic, voiced what the legal community and the National Assembly were calling for. What is more, my colleague defended the Quebec model against the repressive model put forward by the federal government at the time. We were proposing and defending rehabilitative and preventive approach.

Essentially, quite apart from Bill C-25, the real problem lies there. Before we debate the bills we should adopt in the House of Commons, we need to take a long, hard look at the approach and the model we are using when, in our justice system, some people, groups and governments are trying to shift the burden of proof to adolescents and use pretrial detention, with the effects that can have on adolescents. That is where the problem lies.

Quebec made a choice to work with adolescents. It decided not to simply view detention as the only way to respond to acts that could be criminal, but to bring together social stakeholders who work with our young people and involve educators and families so that young people can have a healthy environment. If adolescents do things that are not acceptable, it is because they are being seriously affected by various social problems. It is because they are in an environment where poverty is a reality for them. It is because young people are having more and more difficulty in finding jobs. It is because they feel they have no future.

When these young people commit a wrongdoing, it is because there is a fundamental problem, a societal problem upstream. What do we have here to deal with this situation? We have a government which is using the stick to deal with these social issues, with the problems relating to youth employment, or with the deadlock that young Quebeckers and Canadians are facing. We must ask ourselves whether this is the proper approach to put young people back on the right track. We, on this side of the House, do not believe it is.

We believe that rehabilitation and prevention must prevail. Inequalities are getting worse. Delinquency is becoming a way of life for an increasing number of young people. The exclusion of young people in the workplace, and in their environment, is becoming a major issue. Rather than coming up with a justice system that uses the stick against young people, we should provide adequate assistance to this generation, whose members often no longer hold any hopes.

What we are promoting today is a model that has proven successful, that has allowed us to have a homicide rate that is three times lower than that of the United States.

Of course, because we read major newspapers, every now and then we see that some young people committed a wrongdoing. In fact, what the federal government is trying to implement here in Canada is an approach similar to the one used in the United States, whose effectiveness has not been demonstrated.

For example, the homicide rate is three times higher in the United States than it is here, in Canada. So, did this approach based on repression help improve the situation? Of course not.

It is the same thing with violent crimes committed by young people. It is true that, in Quebec, the latest figures for 2006 point to an increase in violent crimes committed by young people. However, that is the only such data. All the other available data show that this type of violence is not increasing. Come to think of it, the government's approach is not aimed at the proper group.

What is the purpose of Bill C-25? According to clause 1, a judge must presume that the pretrial detention of a young person is necessary if:

1(2)(a) the young person is charged with a violent offence or an offence that otherwise endangered the public by creating a substantial likelihood of serious bodily harm to another person;

1(2)(b) the young person has been found guilty of failing to comply with non-custodial sentences or conditions of release; or

1(2)(c) the young person is charged with an indictable offence for which an adult would be liable to imprisonment for a term of more than two years and has a history that indicates a pattern of findings of guilt—

What is the government trying to accomplish with clause 1? Two things. First, it is trying to use presumption against young people and transfer the burden and the responsibility to them even though the problem is a genuine, social one.

Second, the bill seeks pretrial detention of adolescents even though we know that trials often result in not guilty verdicts. Adolescents would be kept in jail even though the verdict could turn out not to be a guilty one. Imagine the impact of that on adolescents in their formative years.

The battle we are fighting today over Bill C-25 is the same battle my colleague from Berthier—Montcalm fought several years ago over the Young Offenders Act.

In conclusion, we are defending the Quebec model here, a model that promotes prevention and the rehabilitation of our young people, as opposed to the federal government's approach, which is about repression and detention, and which is not at all the approach that should be used when young people need help.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I mean no bad ideas about this, but I cannot resist asking a question of members of the Bloc, who are always saying they would like us to adopt the Quebec model. I just wonder about the facts. I do not believe that Quebec is crime free. I believe there are substantial problems in Quebec, at least there have been in the past, unless it has changed recently, with organized crime and with biker gangs just like in the rest of the country.

I would like to know why, in the member's opinion, the Quebec model is so superior when the results do not seem to show, to me at least, that things are substantially better.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in this House, we do not claim that the Quebec model is better than another. The Quebec model is simply different. We see how the Conservative member is attempting to standardize the penal approach here in Canada. He confuses motorcycle gangs with youth under 18. That is basically what he has just said, and that is completely different.

Can we allow minors, adolescents—even though they committed reprehensible acts—to be put into the same system as consenting individuals over 18?

We have to work with our youth to put them on the right track, first of all by understanding them, being there for them and helping them develop. We will not help them by throwing them in jail.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to know whether the Bloc Québécois member will support the first part of this bill.

As you know, the bill has two parts. The second part will not have the support of all opposition members. However, in our opinion, we can come to an agreement on the first part because it results from the recommendation by Justice Nunn from Nova Scotia.

I would quite simply like to ask whether the member and the Bloc Québécois support the first part of the bill.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thought I was clear. The problem with this bill is not a few clauses. The problem is the actual principle and basis of this bill, as well as the approach it takes.

For us, it is clear that it is not a question of supporting the principle itself or negotiating based on one part compared to another. We do not agree with the approach taken in this bill. We will defend the Quebec model because it gives the best results and has been proven.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, as reported (without amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group. No. 1.

Tackling Violent Crime Act

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

It being 6:30 p.m. the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on Motion No. 2 at report stage of Bill C-2.

Call in the members.

(The House divided on Motion No. 2, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #14

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I declare Motion No. 2 lost. I therefore declare Motions Nos. 1 and 5 lost.