House of Commons Hansard #25 of the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was culture.
Access to Information, Privacy and EthicsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings
Liberal
Ralph Goodale Liberal Wascana, SK
Mr. Speaker, could we simply have unanimous consent that the first report of the committee just referred to and presented in the House be concurred in?
Access to Information, Privacy and EthicsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings
Liberal
The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken
Is there unanimous consent that the committee report just presented be concurred in?
Access to Information, Privacy and EthicsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings
Some hon. members
Agreed.
Access to Information, Privacy and EthicsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings
Liberal
The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the third time and passed.
The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken
Réal Ménard Bloc Hochelaga, QC
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was sure you would remember.
I am pleased to have this opportunity to finish my speech. I was about to explain that the government lumped together the five justice bills it had introduced previously to produce the new Bill C-2, which the parliamentary committee studied very thoroughly.
As I said, even though the Bloc supports Bill C-2, we wanted to make a few changes. Before I was interrupted by question period, I told the House that the Bloc Québécois has, in the past, expressed significant reservations about imposing mandatory minimum sentences.
Bloc Québécois members have long argued that this is not an effective way to fight poverty. We are convinced that we must instead provide police with the means to conclude investigations. The issue here is more the effectiveness of legislation and the fear it inspires. We believe that some offenders, some people who might find themselves on the wrong side of the law, will be deterred more by the possibility of going to court than by the mandatory minimum sentences they could receive. In fact, the witnesses we heard in committee explained that people do not necessarily read the Criminal Code before they commit an offence. That is why, historically, we have been extremely wary of mandatory minimum sentences.
We also analyzed the whole issue of the age of consent, which has now become the age of protection. My colleague from Châteauguay—Saint-Constant was responsible for this issue. Very early in this debate, the leader of the Bloc Québécois and member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie, in cooperation with his caucus, wanted to include a close in age clause to make sure school-aged children engaging in non-exploitative sexual activity would not be liable to be arrested.
We also looked at the whole issue of reverse onus, not at the trial stage, but at the judicial interim release stage, as provided for in section 515 of the Criminal Code. The government was proposing reverse onus, which we were told was already common practice. In fact, according to the experts who came to talk to us in committee, people who committed offences involving firearms were not subject to release at the hearing stage.
Naturally, when we studied Bill C-2 in committee, we examined the whole issue of impaired driving. I am not talking about a particular departmental policy here, but about Bill C-2, which introduces three main innovations.
The bill will make it mandatory to stop and submit to tests. Previously, this was optional under the Criminal Code. There will be two main types of tests. An individual may first undergo standard field sobriety tests at the roadside. Then, he or she may be examined at the police station by a drug recognition expert. We were told that this practice existed in some American states and that some people in Quebec had even received this training.
Of course, we are not minimizing the seriousness of impaired driving. Just this morning, the Bloc Québécois lent its support—enlightened support, I might add—to a motion introduced by the parliamentary secretary to study a number of important issues, because we know our fellow citizens are worried about them.
Indeed, the bill that raised the most questions for us, even though we support Bill C-2, was the bill dealing with reverse onus for dangerous offenders.
As we all know, the Criminal Code has had provisions concerning dangerous offenders since 1947. Our seniors, for instance, sometimes used the expression “habitual criminal”. My mother said that, although never in reference to any of her own children, of course. But she talked about habitual criminals in general terms. I was able to make a link between that expression, which has passed on to the vocabulary of another generation, and a provision in the Criminal Code.
We had some questions. Of course, in matters of law, a reverse onus of proof is always very serious. The main offences are: weapons trafficking, possession of a firearm, unauthorized import and export, discharging a firearm, attempted murder, sexual assault with a weapon, aggravated sexual assault with a weapon, kidnapping, hostage taking, robbery committed with violence and a weapon and extortion.
It seems I am out of time. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask for the consent of the House to continue speaking for another five minutes. I would then be able to deliver my conclusion.
The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken
Do we have unanimous consent to allow the hon. member to continue his comments for another five minutes?
Réal Ménard Bloc Hochelaga, QC
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You are too kind. I get the impression that there are some people who like me. That is very kind. I want to thank my colleagues.
In the Bloc Québécois, we have looked closely at the primary offences and assessed their gravity. We are not taking this lightly and we have asked ourselves questions about the reverse onus of proof. This means that when someone commits two offences on this list and then commits a third offence—which is cause for concern—they will have to explain why they should not be designated a dangerous offender.
The Crown is never required in court to present a dangerous offender designation. It must inform the prosecutor—because this requires the prosecutor's consent—and the court whether or not it intends to present a designation in dangerous cases or not.
The committee was informed that this could require a great deal of work in terms of the evidence and physically assembling the file. We were even given the figure of 300 hours for the Crown and 300 hours for the defence, for a grand total of 600 hours.
I would like to add as well that there are already some provisions in the Criminal Code that involve reverse onus of proof. For example, if someone is sitting in the driver’s seat and an offence is committed, that person is deemed to be the driver and owner of the vehicle, even if it is stopped.
There is also an onus of proof regarding prostitution in the Criminal Code. If one associates with persons involved in offences against sections 210, 211, 212, or 213 of the Criminal Code, one is deemed to be living off the avails of prostitution. There are six or seven examples of reverse onus that have given rise to decisions, such as Downey in regard to prostitution, Smith in regard to firearms and White in regard to the possession and trafficking of narcotics. We obviously do not want reverse onus to become a common practice.
Both the Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers and the Bar were concerned that reverse onus could potentially be prejudicial to one of the rights guaranteed in the Charter, that is, the right to remain silent.
It is only logical. If someone is in a situation where he has committed two offences and then commits a third, there is a declaration to designate him as a dangerous offender. That person necessarily has to defend himself. His lawyer can conduct his defence without having him testify, by having other people testify or calling expert witnesses. However, the people on the committee were concerned that this could be prejudicial to the right to remain silent and the presumption of innocence. There were even some witnesses who worried that it could be contrary to section 7 on liberty and cruel and unusual punishment. Other witnesses said that it could infringe on section 10 of the Charter on arbitrary detention.
It is obvious, therefore, why the Bloc Québécois took Bill C-2 very seriously. We had an excellent discussion in caucus and our colleagues argued their points of view, but we ultimately came to the conclusion that, on the balance of the advantages and disadvantages, it was best to support Bill C-2. However, I want to warn the government against any more attempts to introduce bills with reverse onus of proof.
I would like to congratulate all my colleagues who worked so hard on Bill C-2 in committee.
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Mr. Speaker, I have a quick comment. I did not object to the member having the extra five minutes, but I did want to put a condition on it that he continue as he had through most of his speech with his back to the rest of the chamber in speaking just to his caucus, because, of course, his back is the best side of him.
I would like to ask the member a question about the delay we see from the government, first in prorogation and then in bringing all of this bill together. In particular, could the member mention the information we received at committee that there are parts of this bill, in particular driving while impaired by drugs, that the provinces are not ready for?
Therefore, even when this bill goes through the whole process in the Senate and is ready for royal assent, parts of this omnibus bill will in fact not be ready to be administered by the provinces and will be sitting on the shelves for a while. The danger is that other parts of the bill may sit on the shelf for an extended period of time for the same reason.
Réal Ménard Bloc Hochelaga, QC
Mr. Réal Ménard: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his comments. It is rather bold of him, though, to assume that my back is the best feature of my anatomy. I suppose that this could well be a case of faith without works because the hon. member has a less than complete knowledge of my anatomy.
Our colleague is quite right to say that 6 of the 12 bills received royal assent before Parliament was prorogued. Parliamentarians took their work very seriously and the government’s criticism is totally unfounded.
It is true that, in committee, some provinces were concerned about the entire issue of driving under the influence, taking samples, the handling of this evidence and the acquisition of the equipment needed for these new technologies. They were concerned about the possible related costs. In addition, the working out of this part of the act must obviously not invalidate the principle that it is desirable from a public safety point of view to have the means to ensure that people under the influence of drugs are kept off public roads.
Our colleague is quite right, though, to point out that there may be something premature about it or that there are just not enough resources to enable the provinces to carry out their new responsibilities.
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-2, the omnibus crime bill.
I would like to start by expressing our grave concern over the delay in getting these parts of this bill passed through the whole process. The government has been blatantly partisan in its agenda with regard to this bill and its parts, using it not in the best interests of the country in advancing some of these bills as rapidly as possible, but actually slowing down the process so that the government could be critical, particularly of the Liberal Party, both in the House and Senate, and so it could attempt to portray the Liberals and I guess all opposition parties and anybody who does not adopt its right-wing radical agenda on crime as being soft on crime.
More than 60% of the bill was in the Senate. There were three different bills in the Senate when we broke for the summer recess. Based on past practice, I would argue that at least one and probably two of those bills would now have cleared the Senate or certainly would have by the time we break at year-end. Probably all three of them would have cleared.
The government's decision both to prorogue and to then bring back all these five bills into the omnibus bill has now delayed the passage of at least those three bills by several months. Also, of course, with a minority government we always sit on that edge as to whether we will have a snap election because of lack of confidence in the government, and there are good reasons to have lack of confidence in the Conservatives.
That could happen at any time. If that happens, we have to start the whole process all over again after the next election when we get back. We could be looking at delays of another year or two years. The government purposely caused that delay in order to play partisan politics with these bills.
Let us look at the bills we had before the Senate. We had the mandatory minimums bill there, which is a big part of the government's agenda. I should say in regard to mandatory minimums that the opposition parties, led by mine, were able to get the mandatory minimum sentences reduced to bring them generally in line with the sentencing policies of our courts across the country, our superior courts in particular, and with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so that this would not be struck down at some point in the future.
That bill is still sitting there. Of the five bills that make up the omnibus bill, it was the first one to get to the Senate. It is still sitting here and again it is going to be literally months before it gets through.
Again, there is absolutely no reason for that other than partisan politics on the part of the Conservative Party and the Conservative government. It is shameful, quite frankly.
In that case, the reason we supported this bill is that we need specific guidelines given to our judiciary with regard to specific violent crimes. That bill did so. Quite frankly, the bill was one we had championed in the last election. Once we brought the bill into line with the charter, we were quite pleased to support it.
Let us look at the other bill that was in the Senate, the age of consent bill. We have fought for a large number of years over the issue of raising the age of consent from 14 to 16. I would say the issue has been before the House at least a half a dozen times over the last 10 years in the form of private members' bills. We attempted to get the issue before the House in a government bill during the Liberal administration in 2005 and were unsuccessful, but there is strong support in the country to raise the age of consent from 14 to 16.
As we see in the opinion polls and as a number of experts tell us, it is running at 70% to 75% support for this to be brought into law, to be brought into the modern age, really, and to bring us into line with a number of other jurisdictions. I will not deny that a number of people are opposed to this, but in fact the vast majority of Canadians want it. Again, we are at serious risk of not seeing this happen should we have a snap election because of the conduct of the government.
Similarly, there was a fairly small bill that dealt with alleged violent crime and people seeking bail who were accused of violent crimes where handguns or guns were used. It got broad support from all of the opposition parties, as well as the government, obviously. It was sitting in the Senate. Now it is at risk of perhaps never becoming law until after the next election.
I want the Canadian public to understand the kinds of politics that the government is prepared to play with on what are very crucial issues. In some cases, they are life and death issues.
In order for the Conservatives to make their agenda work for them, to be tough on crime and to beat their chests, the whole macho thing, they need to be able to attack the Liberals in particular for being soft on crime and for delaying. That is not accurate. None of the opposition parties has delayed these bills at all.
The omnibus bill is made up of five former bills, as I have already mentioned. The three I have mentioned involve mandatory minimums for serious violent crime, the age of consent, and the provision with regard to bail. The other two components deal with impaired driving as the result of drug consumption, for both licit and illicit drugs, as well as a provision in that particular part of the bill for doing away, reasonably and I expect effectively, with what is more commonly known as the two-beer defence.
Quite frankly, in my opinion, it is somewhat of a scandal that this was ever allowed to develop as a defence. Basically, it significantly undermines the use of the breathalyzer and that technology. I believe we have the right wording now to do away with that defence when it is inappropriate and still allow, in those extreme cases where for whatever reason the breathalyzer technology has broken down or has not been applied properly, that people would be able to defend under those circumstances and prove that in fact they were not impaired by the consumption of alcohol.
The final bill and the one, quite frankly, that gave us the greatest problem is the bill that dealt with the dangerous offender provisions. Before I go to that, I want to raise the whole issue. As we saw yesterday in the vote at report stage, the NDP in fact, with one exception, supported the bill. We believe that in spite of the dangerous offender provisions, and I am going to come back to that in a minute, the balance of the bill had provisions in it that either we had ourselves brought forward in the last election in our political platform or were prepared to support the government on because we felt that it was in the best interests of Canada. It actually either protected people or met the requirement of having to make amendments to the Criminal Code where it was long past needing those amendments.
It is interesting that just yesterday in the Ottawa Citizen there was a summary of a report that came out of the United States. It is called, in part, “Unlocking America”. The report was done by a number of well-known criminologists and sociologists. It is a very extensive report. It is consistent with a large number of other bodies of evidence in the United States on the imbalance that has been created by successive governments in the United States, primarily at the state level, in terms of the states' incarceration and criminal law practices.
Always the issue when we are looking at the criminal justice system, at civil liberties and human rights in light of the criminal justice system, and at protecting society, which of course is the absolute first criteria, is that there is this balance. How do we best protect society?
To do so, obviously, we use the criminal justice system. We have crimes and we have punishments, but equally important, and one perhaps could argue much more important, is the whole question of how society prevents crimes from ever happening. It is generally accepted, I think, that there are two ways of doing that.
One is to have preventative programs particularly directed at youth so they never enter into a lifestyle that leads them to committing crimes, both petty and serious, and, second, it is also to have a society that has reasonably strong enforcement to guarantee that the laws are in fact there and are enforced to protect society.
Every time there is a conviction, I like to think that it is in effect is a failure on the part of society for not having proper prevention and enforcement infrastructure in our society. Maybe it is not utopian to believe that we will ever get to that point, but it is utopian to believe that at this time we would be able to prevent all crime, so ultimately we need that system in place whereby incarceration or other penalties can be invoked.
Obviously the ideal to strive for, the perfection that we should all strive for as legislators, is to prevent a crime from ever occurring in the first place so that we do not have victims and also so we fulfill our responsibility of protecting all of our citizens, all of our residents of Canada, to the absolute maximum.
The “Unlocking America” report shows what the Americans have done in a large number of states, although not all of them by any means, because they did some comparisons. They have struck the role for government to play, a role very much on the incarceration and punitive side. The report, which is consistent with any number of other reports that have come out of the U.S., shows the ineffectiveness of that. It is ineffective and very expensive.
It is interesting to see the comparison between some of the states that have followed more closely the Canadian model up to this point over the last 20 or 30 years. The model showed that those states had lower incarceration rates, but with a couple of exceptions the states with the lower incarceration rates also had lower crime rates, and vice versa, so that those states that had particularly high incarceration rates had the highest crime rates.
A good comparison is that between the state of New York and the state of California. The state of California, as we all know, did the three strikes and out policy and all sorts of other very heavy-handed incarceration and sentencing policies. Its crime rate was consistently higher over the last two decades than that of the state of New York, which took many more steps with regard to prevention and enforcement and was much more effective at bringing its crime rates down.
There are a couple of statistics I want to mention. One is that the report looked back more than 30 years ago to what the crime rate was in the United States, to what it went to and to where it is now, and also at what the incarceration rate was at that point and what it is now. The incarceration rate increased eightfold over that period in the United States. Obviously the population during that period would have increased by probably about 30%. The incarceration rate went up 800% and the population growth was perhaps about 35%.
The crime rate is almost identical in the United States today to what it was in 1973. That was the year of comparison used. It is almost identical. It went up and it went down, dramatically in some states, New York state being a good example, but the incarceration rate had absolutely no impact on the crime rate in the United States even though it went up 800%.
The other thing that stood out through that whole period of time, so it had no effect on the crime rate, is that it is now costing the United States $60 billion a year for all the people it has incarcerated. The United States has an incarceration rate that is highest in the world. It is even higher than China's. China has roughly three to four times the population of the United States. The United States has 2.2 million people incarcerated at the present time and China has 1.5 million.
The incarceration rate in the United States compared to Canada is about 7:1. Our crime rate is about one-quarter of what it is in the United States.
The point I am trying to make by bringing forth these facts is that we need to be very careful in Canada as to how we deal with crime. As I have said, the greater majority of this bill is a bill that we looked at and said that, yes, these are good provisions, these are provisions that make sense in terms of building a fair, equitable justice system that protects our society.
We need to be very careful that we do not go down the route of the United States in terms of this excessive use of incarceration and punitive process that produces no effective reduction in the crime rate and, at the same time, is hugely expensive for the taxpayer.
That brings me to the final part of Bill C-2 that gave us the greatest concern. We believe that the part in this bill that deals with the dangerous offender section of the Criminal Code is already in the code and the amendments that the government was making, in particular, the reverse onus that it was bringing in, was offensive to the charter. We had crossed the line. We had not struck that proper balance. We were going the U.S. side. We were going to incarcerate, for the rest of their lives in the vast majority of cases, everybody who was designated a dangerous offender, which would increase our prison population to some significant degree.
The ultimate conclusion is whether we support the entire bill when we have this provision that is so offensive to the charter or, quite frankly, is so offensive to just common sense that it will not work. It is a useless tool because it will be struck down by the courts at some point in the future.
At the same time, if we oppose that, we give up the rest of the bill that has the age of consent. Even the mandatory minimums that are in there and some of the provisions around impaired driving are badly needed in our society.
Faced with that decision, and after much debate in our caucus, we ultimately had to support it and, unfortunately, abdicate our responsibility as legislators to pass proper legislation and expect that at some point down the road the courts will strike down that part of the dangerous offender/reverse onus part that is so offensive. We are not comfortable, quite frankly, with that but we are here to make decisions and that is the decision that our caucus has made.
I want to make one final point with respect to a question I raised with the Bloc. It is a question of how the government has approached this. Some parts of the bill will be delayed even after it gets through the Senate because the provinces, which need to administer parts of this, the impaired driving in particular, are not ready for it. I think that is a mistake on the part of the government. It should have been ready with the provinces to implement that. It is a section of the code that needs to be amended and needs to be implemented as rapidly as possible and we have had no explanation as to why it delayed on that.
Chris Charlton NDP Hamilton Mountain, ON
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to make some comments about the bill that is before us and to thank the hon. member for Windsor—Tecumseh who, as we know, was recently voted the most knowledgeable member of Parliament. Therefore, I take his comments on the bill very seriously and I want to congratulate him on that distinct honour.
I notice that the Minister of the Environment is applauding the member and I really appreciate that.
I know the member for Windsor—Tecumseh is one of the hardest working members. If we look at the number of crime bills that have gone through the House since the last election, the number is absolutely phenomenal. It is because of the member's diligence that we have been able to make some of the amendments that have made some of the crime bills palatable to those of us in the NDP caucus.
When I think about the kinds of issues that are raised with me by my constituents, yes, they are concerned about crime but they are not really looking for a law and order response to those. What they are looking for is a response that is based on some fundamental principles of justice.
As the member for Windsor—Tecumseh just said, four out of the five bills that are part of the omnibus bill, after his tremendous work and the amendments that he has brought forward, I was comfortable supporting on behalf of the constituents of Hamilton Mountain.
However, the reverse onus provision is really troubling for me. I think it offends the fundamental sense of justice. It is a law and order approach. It does not really speak to the way that my constituents of Hamilton Mountain would want us to deal with these very serious crime bills.
I am wondering if the member for Windsor—Tecumseh could tell me whether my concerns are right. I am hoping that the reverse onus provision will be struck down by the courts and that it will actually not meet a charter challenge and therefore I can feel just a little better about having supported Bill C-2 yesterday at second reading. I did that because I agreed with four out of the five bills, but the fifth bill is troubling to me. I would like the member's assurances, as the most knowledgeable member, that that provision will be struck down.
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Mr. Speaker, I am, quite frankly, embarrassed about that award, in part because I think I am now expected to live up to it for the rest of the year until we have another one next year and someone else will take over responsibility for that.
I have two answers for my colleague from Hamilton. I practised law for 27 years and I practised a fair amount of criminal law at the start of my career, a lot of matrimonial law in the middle part and then personal injury law. Throughout my career I had clients who were charged and convicted so they were criminals. I had a lot of clients as well who were victims of crime, many clients who were victims of spousal and parental abuse. In my personal injury practice I had a number of clients who were assaulted or in other ways and suffered as victims of criminal conduct.
Throughout my entire career I can honestly say that I never had anyone say to me, “I am really happy this person is going to get 10 or 20 years in jail, if the alternative was that I wasn't a victim at all”. I never had a victim say to me, “I'm really more concerned about the penalty this person is going to suffer than I am about the impact it's had on me and my desire never to have been victimized”.
That thinking by victims of crime should give us some guidance.
With regard to the specific provisions of the reverse onus, there is another part of the bill that has a very good part. It is actually about 95% of the bill that we support. There are provisions for recognizance changes. We have needed those since I was practising criminal law back in the mid-seventies. We finally got around to doing it. It gives judges greater authority to control people when they are not incarcerated in an institution and it provides for significant additional protection to society. Therefore, that part of it is good and I think the member should feel comfortable in supporting the bill for that.
Ultimately, yes, on the reverse onus we will need to rely on the courts to strike it down.
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my hon. colleague explain the delays and the interference from the government on its crime agenda. We know that the government members are sitting in the backroom cranking out their Gestetner machines to say how all members in this House are soft on crime unless they wear blue Conservative and how their 10 percenters will be rolling across our ridings saying that the members of the House are delaying action on crime.
However, what we have seen is that they were the ones who prorogued the House. They held up the business of Parliament for a month and when the bill on age of sexual consent came back, they did not revive it. It would have been law now. It is the same with the gun crime bill. It would be law now. We will most likely be in a situation where we could go to an election and nothing will be settled.
Most of us come here to Parliament in order to create good policy, to create a stronger fabric for our country, but we are seeing the petty partisanship of the government. Do the government members really want to have this solved or would they rather have the gaping wounds so that they can continually beat their chests, point to their base and say that no one else is tough enough on crime? I think there is actually a desire on their part not to have these issues dealt with so they can tell Canadians that nothing is being done. They can then tell Canadians to elect more Conservatives so that they can go back and obfuscate issues of crime even more.
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Mr. Speaker, at some point the Conservatives will run out of sections of the Criminal Code to amend. Maybe they thought they were getting close to that and in order to slow the process down they thought they would bundle these all together. They probably thought there would be an election before the bill would pass and then they could go out and tell Canadians that they needed more seats because they need to get a majority government in order to get the bill through. Obviously, if it had gotten through before that, they would not have that argument.
I think there is some logic behind that. However, it is quite cynical logic and it does not bode well for the moral compass of the Conservative Party. Unfortunately, I think it is very close to reality.
John Baird ConservativeMinister of the Environment
Mr. Speaker, I may, from time to time, not agree with the hon. member but I certainly have respect for his experience in this regard. He is a member who passionately believes what he says and I have nothing but respect for that.
I would like to underline for the member that the government would be more than thrilled to see the tackling violent crime act become law so we can protect vulnerable people. I represent the constituency of Ottawa West—Nepean where there are a lot of seniors who are concerned about this issue. I have friends who have been the victim of home invasions and whose families have been victimized. What they sent me here to do is to be their voice on this issue.
My comment for the member opposite is that the government would like nothing more than for the tackling violent crime act to become part of the Criminal Code.
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the minister's comment but the facts do not back him up. I appreciate the position he has taken. My house has been broken into three times. The last time, my daughter, who was in university at the time, was at home.
People do want their government to protect them. It is always an issue as to whether this does it. I have problems with some of the approaches the Conservatives have taken as to whether they would be effective. I would have been much happier, quite frankly, if the government had spent more time on making sure those 2,500 police officers that were promised in the last election were out on the street. Not one of them has been delivered up to this point.
The government says that it wants to go ahead with the bill but when it prorogued Parliament that legislation died in the Senate. We had to start all over again. Rather than bringing it back at the stage it was, the government brought it back and started all over again in this House. I think, to some degree, that puts into doubt the credibility of how serious the government is in wanting to get these bills passed and the laws into place soon.
Andrew Telegdi Liberal Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the previous speaker for his speech and his understanding when it comes to dealing with crime and how to actually lower the crime rates.
I dare say that the scope of the bill is problematic. It troubles me, because instead of dealing with legislation one piece at a time, it puts a number of them together, some of which are good, but some of which are very offensive. Certainly that is not the way a minority Parliament should function, nor is it the way the Prime Minister when he was the leader of the official opposition said that a minority Parliament should function.
The member mentioned the study “Unlocking America”. I used to be involved with an organization called, Youth In Conflict With The Law. It was named after the proposed youth in conflict with the law act which ended up being the Young Offenders Act. I started working with that organization in 1976 after I left university. One of the focuses we had was to try to deal with offenders within the context of the community and to do as much as we could at the community level to create a safe and secure community. One of our mottos was that crime and justice is a community responsibility.
For all the reasons mentioned by the previous speaker and documented in “Unlocking America”, getting tough on crime does not work. In “Unlocking America” nine leading U.S. criminologists and sociologists who have spent their careers studying crime and punishment did an exhaustive study. They pointed out that the approach of getting tough on crime, building more jails and incarcerating more people, just does not work. It might make great television and it might make great news in the tabloids, but it is an approach that just does not work. It ends up being very expensive. Beyond being very expensive, it ends up being very destructive.
Bill C-2 is one bill, but another one which will be coming forward is Bill C-25 which deals with young offender legislation. I find it very frightening that under this particular bill, unfortunately, people who go into the system as young offenders can end up in the penitentiary system, not for committing a great deal of crime in the community, but for reasons such as committing a crime within the institution itself.
Numerous people came forward at the committee hearings on this bill. One of them was Dr. Anthony Doob, a criminologist from the University of Toronto, who very clearly showed that the perception of crime in many ways is driven by the media and by politicians who want to exploit the fear of crime and does not truly have that great a basis in reality.
In his studies, Dr. Doob asked the people in one control group for their reaction to headlines from tabloids. Dr. Doob gave another control group transcripts of the trial. Dr. Doob found that in cases where people had the information, they had read the transcripts and understood the judge's reasoning, they either agreed with the judicial sentence, or thought that the judicial sentence was too harsh. This was in total contrast to those in the group that received their reports on crime from the media, from the tabloids, or from television programs.
The media love to tell about the goriest crimes that have occurred in the local community, or in the country. But if there is nothing in Canada, then they will look to the United States, and if there is nothing there, then they will look to any continent on the planet for their special diet of criminal activity. These reports frighten people. Usually they hear these reports just before they go to bed at night.
It has often occurred to me that those folks and politicians who engage in that kind of fearmongering are victimizing a large number of people. People begin to believe that the relatively safe community they live in is much more dangerous than it is. That is not right. Parliamentarians and political parties should not be engaged in that kind of fearmongering.
Another individual who made a presentation was Kim Pate, who is with the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. Unfortunately, Kim did not have enough time to talk at committee, but she did talk at length about the challenges faced by inmates who suffer from mental health problems in the federal institutions. She also talked about the over-representation of particular minority groups that are incarcerated. In Canada there is a disproportionate number of aboriginal people incarcerated. This raises some very troubling questions. Miss Pate also talked about the number of institutional charges that will be put on somebody entering the system, to the point that the individual, for whatever he or she has done in the institution, could be declared a dangerous offender.
Today I talked about Ashley Smith, a young woman who was due to be released from prison today. She was sentenced in New Brunswick as a young offender at the age of 15. She took her life on October 19 in an isolated jail cell at the Grand Valley federal institution in Kitchener following an extensive period of solitary confinement. Four correctional staff at Grand Valley were charged with criminal negligence causing death. One correctional staff member at the Saskatoon Regional Psychiatric Centre has also been charged with assault.
Ashley's tragic death has raised a number of troubling questions that must be answered. How did a young girl struggling with mental illness, incarcerated as a young offender, end up, through excessive institutional charges, in federal correctional facilities thousands of kilometres away from home? What can be done to improve the way we deal with offenders so that we minimize the recurrence of such tragedies? When will we learn as a society that it is more feasible to invest in community safety and crime prevention programs than to pursue draconian laws that incarcerate more and more people at the expense of public safety? I underline at the expense of public safety.
The “Unlocking America” report makes the point that over-charging, which has occurred in the United States, has done absolutely nothing to bring down the crime rate. It has done everything to destroy families and communities and to perpetuate discrimination. This has been going on much too long.
In talking about crime prevention, I will come back to my community, the Waterloo region. We have been working on community based crime prevention since 1978. Next year we will be hosting the 30th annual justice dinner. We will bring in speakers on how to improve public safety through social development in our community.
We are not the only community that says this is the way it should be done. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police talks about creating public safety and reducing crime, not through the hiring of more police officers, not through building more jails and not through hiring more jail guards, but through social development that addresses the root causes of crime.
In 1993, following on the excellent work of a Progressive Conservative government, the justice committee, with Mr. Horner as chair, produced what is known as the Horner report. The Horner report called upon the government to fight crime through social development.
My community took up that challenge at that time and we created the Waterloo region's Community Safety and Crime Prevention Council. The very first chair of that council was Larry Gravill, the chief of police.
The membership of the council includes all the social service organizations, local governments, non-governmental organizations involving criminal justice, the crown attorney's office and the police force. We worked collaboratively on how the community could address the root causes of crime.
Over the years many other folks have come forward to chair the council, be they from the school board, local government or the Children's Aid. The last chair we had for the committee was Matt Torigian, and he has been appointed and designated as the new police chief in Baden.
Surely that approach is much more preferable to the approach that is put forward in the bill, particularly on the mandatory minimums and the designation for dangerous offenders.
An interesting thing I did in my questionnaire was to ask whether we should have the traditional Conservative neo-con approach to fighting crime, or whether we should do it through social development. I am happy to say that two to one, the citizens in my community want to fight crime through social development.
I mentioned that the neo-cons like to put out wrong information and try to tell untruths. I will give an example. The member for Kitchener—Conestoga put out a householder where he said, and I will be quite willing to table it--
Ken Epp Conservative Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB
Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, it has been a long tradition and part of the rules of this House that members do not speak in a derogatory fashion about other members, and the use of the individual's language with respect to our party is, because of the context in which it is used, derogatory.
Mr. Speaker, I would ask that you demand that he not use those offensive terms when speaking of our party.
The Acting Speaker Conservative Royal Galipeau
I thank the hon. member for Edmonton--Sherwood Park and I am sure that the hon. member for Kitchener--Waterloo will get back to the essence of the debate, and he will do it in a parliamentary fashion, as he is experienced to do.
Andrew Telegdi Liberal Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Mr. Speaker, I am at the very essence of the debate. My point is people are putting out wrong information to serve political purposes that have no basis in fact.
I will table in the House a mailout by the hon. member for Kitchener—Conestoga. In it he says that the 2005 rate of violent youth crime increased by 22%, but in essence, youth crime in 2005 fell by 2%. This is the kind of fearmongering about which I am talking.
I said we end up victimizing a lot of people when untruths are spoken, when facts are misrepresented and when a community is portrayed as being more dangerous than it is. Waterloo region is a relatively safe community and its crime rates are relatively low. It is unconscionable that somebody would try to scare members of that community by putting out false information.
In wrapping up, if we want to create a more peaceful and secure community, the best way to do it is through prevention. Yes, there are some people who have to be locked up, and some for a long period of time, to protect the community. Make no mistake, the government is trying to make us as safe as people are in the United States, the most violent society in the western world. It has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
In putting this together as an omnibus bill, it is unfortunate that the government would put in parts of it that should not pass the House. Over time the Conservatives will be known for the neo-cons that they are and for exploiting people's fear of crime while doing nothing to address public safety.
John Baird ConservativeMinister of the Environment
Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member's speech.
Could the member tell the House why he voted in favour of the bill if he thinks it is so terrible?