Mr. Speaker, I am happy to take part in the debate on Bill C-343, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (motor vehicle theft).
I can say right off the bat that the Bloc Québécois will vote against this bill. I will use the few minutes I have to try to explain the position of the Bloc.
Right now, in the Criminal Code, car theft is treated as any other theft, that is as a crime against property punishable by different penalties according to the value of the stolen goods. When an individual steal a motor vehicle whose value exceeds $5,000, the offence is punishable by a maximum prison term of 10 years. If the value of the vehicle is less than $5,000, the offence is punishable by a maximum of two years of imprisonment. Light sentences are usually imposed on car thieves and repeat offender rate is high. That is the reality.
Some people would have us believe that minimum sentences and minimum fines could solve the problem of theft. My colleagues from the Conservative Party are mistaken. The repressive system they have in the United States does not reduce the number of offences that are committed. Quite the contrary, the crime rate is higher in the U.S. Reality is very quickly catching up with them.
We need to have faith. We did not create our justice system. What we are trying to do here in this House is make the system better. It was our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers who created the system.
The justice system they created called for punishment that fit the crime. The justice system has a certain balance. Our parents and grandparents and their parents before them chose the very values and foundation of our society. It is a societal choice that was left to us by our ancestors.
Today, because the government is not happy with how the courts make certain decisions—often because they have been highly publicized—it wants to reform the entire legal system. That is what the Conservative Party wants to do: replace judges with minimum sentences. This is just the opposite of what our ancestors wanted.
In Quebec, the people who came before us did not bequeath this type of legal system to us. They left us a system based on equity and the judiciary. We trust in our judges to impose punishments that fit the crime.
The bill does not address certain dichotomies. As I explained earlier, the maximum punishment for thefts of vehicles worth $5,000 or more is 10 years in prison. The bill seeks to reduce the maximum prison term to five years. It sets minimum sentences and reduces maximum sentences.
It is important to understand that the society that was bequeathed to us wants balance, with a justice system based on the judiciary. We have to leave it up to the judges to hand down decisions. There are precedents. There are people who came before us. A whole framework has been put in place. The members of the judiciary do their job very well. We can discuss and argue about court decisions, but every case is unique. It is impossible to make all criminals fit the same mould.
The bill imposes minimum fines of $1,000 for a first offence and $5,000 for a second offence. Usually, people who steal cars do it because they do not have enough money to buy one. Even if we include minimum fines, car thieves who do not have the means to buy a car will not have the means to pay the minimum fine. They will face community work, fine option programs and prison sentences because they do not want to pay. We will have to put them in prison. The prison population will increase.
The law and order policy the Conservative Party is trying to sell us on makes no sense. It makes no sense when you think of the huge amounts of money that will be spent on the penal system. That is what will really happen if the Conservative Party brings this in.
What I just mentioned is only one example. A simplistic bill has been tabled to say that too many motor vehicles have been stolen. Regardless of the punishment associated with auto theft, if there are cars to be stolen and if people can make money selling car parts, there will always be criminals willing to do it. Mandatory sentences will not put the brakes on this system.
We have to be able to supervise people. Rather than focussing on punitive measures, we need a rehabilitation system. We need tools to take care of young people because these are juvenile delinquents who hate society for all kinds of reasons and who will do anything to stand out. They often get involved in bad stuff like auto theft.
We have to try to identify these people and invest in rehabilitation, in people who work with juvenile delinquents, in street workers. We have to try to stop young people from getting involved in criminal activities. That will definitely not happen by increasing sentences.
The Bloc Québécois has never changed its position on this issue. Every time the government tries to impose minimum sentences, it interferes with the judiciary and judges' decisions.
It comes as no surprise that the Conservative Party, given what it is doing with the judiciary, given that it sees that these minimum sentencing bills—