Debates of May 17th, 2007

Criminal Code

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

My colleague said that I would remember. I am absolutely certain that I would remember and perhaps many things that were the opposite of that.

However, as I talked to the parents of a young teenager who was shot, is in hospital critically injured and no one knows what the outcome will be, they do not think this is a draconian measure.

There are some things I would say about it that I find interesting, some things we should do and some things we should acknowledge about the public. What does the public see and feel? There is a difference between what the public sees and what it feels. There is a difference between being safe in our community and feeling safe in our community. They are two quite different things.

I have read the statistics that homicides may not be up. Well, homicides actually are up in some of the groupings of people I am talking about, but the incidents of gun crimes are certainly up. People read about gun crimes in the newspaper about where, in a perfectly ordinary kind of community, a bullet suddenly comes through the living room window and lodges in the living room wall or a bullet comes through a bedroom window and lodges just above the crib of a child. That is random. This is not gang violence. The people in those houses were not even the intended victims. Those were random shootings at the wrong houses, and that is not all that unusual. Those people actually are unsafe.

However, people also need to feel safe and therefore they need to see their governments, municipal, provincial and federal, doing something so they will feel safe in their communities. The member who just spoke actually talked about this.

In the last 13 years, 40 to 45 mandatory minimum sentences were created by the Liberal government so I do not think this is somehow a great step off the path the Liberals followed, which was, as I say, 45 more mandatory minimum sentences in the length of time the Liberals were in government.

I also heard earlier today from a number of parties about sloganeering, about people changing their minds because they were influenced by politics and not by what they believe.

Since I entered politics, I have been very clear on what I believe about crime. I talked about mandatory minimums in the last campaign, as did our leader, because we understand the devastating effect it has on our communities. This is not sloganeering and it is not pandering, and to suggest that we are sloganeering to a parent who is crying because of the loss of a family member is actually quite shameful.

We hear a lot about the conclusions that have been drawn in the United States about whether mandatory minimums work. As I said, some of the amendments we put forward at committee were accepted and now some of those mandatory minimums are not what they were when they were first proposed. Our justice critic worked very hard to get these amendments through and agreed to.

However, I think in the United States, it is missing a piece that I actually think the Conservative Party opposite is missing as well in some ways, because in any of the literature I have read which has concluded that it does not work, it has used the single-pronged approach, which is simply raising the mandatory minimums, sending people off to jail and then going back and saying that our prisons are about to explode and that they are hot spots.

I can understand how many prisons in the United States would be hot spots because many of them are quite appalling, but we cannot solve a problem with one single prong. Work still needs to be done in that area and I look forward to the government bringing forward what I would hope would be the second part of what needs to happen here.

People often say that mandatory minimums do not work and that there is no history of them working at all but that is not true. I want to take people back to when drunk driving became a much more top of mind issue in our country and to the early work by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The flaw in the United States' studies and what the Conservative government still needs to do is to look into other things that we need to do to ensure this becomes successful.

I will use the drunk driving issue as an example. Yes, after a certain number of offences there is a mandatory minimum jail time, and people knew that, but that was not all they did. They increased the police resources to deal with drunk driving. In my province we called them BAT mobiles. I do not know what they were called in other places, but police set up to stop cars to see if the drivers had been drinking alcohol while driving. Many of those have been discontinued because the police do not have the additional resources to keep doing that.

It takes intensives awareness and education, not just doing it once in grade six or grade 10, but continuous awareness all though school about the seriousness of it and the consequences of it.

Often when I talk to 16, 17 or 18 year olds they know people in gangs who are using guns. Many of them have heard of a mom, a dad or a grandma and sometimes it is themselves who have been left quadriplegic and in a wheelchair as a result of either a deliberate or a random shooting, and when they tell their stories I can see people starting to think differently about the consequences.

We need to continue to inform and educate people but somehow we think that if we inform one group of people our work is done. Well, it is not. It does not matter whether we are talking about racism or something else, we must do it continuously. It is like putting a pamphlet on the dangers of alcohol in a doctor's office. If we do not keep putting them there for more people to read then we are not finished doing our jobs.

The job we have in front of us today is a continuous job. This is not just about passing the legislation. This is a continuous piece of work that involves additional police resources, intensive education and, yes, jail time when necessary. However, I would say, as others have, that this is not a blanket answer, which is why I talked about the other things that were not done in most of the U.S. jurisdictions, where they came to the conclusion that it did not work, and that have yet to come forward from the government.

I wait with baited breath to see those initiatives come forward because this is not a blanket answer. It is something that should be used sparingly, appropriately and in a focused fashion.

I will now move on to the part that is critical to all of this. We often wait until somebody gets involved with a gang before we begin worrying and trying to figure out how to get them out of the gang, which, by the way, is using guns. Our leader has talked about things like safe houses because it is very hard for a gang member to get out of the gang safely and to ensure his or her family is safe.

Let us look at the new baby that comes home wrapped in a blue or pink blanket. I unwrapped the blanket when I brought mine home and there were no instructions. By simply bringing the baby home did not automatically mean that I knew how to parent. It did not mean that I knew how to do all of those things to ensure that my youngster, in the zero to five years, would have the kind of support, education, choices, boundaries and all of those things that we do so that when children start school at five or six they are ready in all of the five areas that they are supposed to be ready in.

From the longitudinal research on this, we know that those children are far less likely to ever be involved in the criminal system. That is the work that is not here. That is the work that is missing. If that work does not come into place then we will have a problem having this be successful. We need to put into place good child care programs, which we had but which the government slashed, to teach parents how to parent.

I do not assume that just giving birth makes one a good parent. Those programs have been cut by the provincial government in my province. The provincial government's child care was cut so it just downloaded it and cut the programs that support parents, those parents who are either in the workforce or parents who are parenting at home, who have no place to go for expert advice and resources on just about all those challenges that any of us face as a mom or dad in raising children. Without that, and without those kinds of additional multi-prong initiatives, this has far less chance of being successful.

However, I can support the bill because: first, I understand that our amendments are there; second, I know what people in my community have been telling me for a long time; and third, because I do have hope that the government will bring forward other initiatives to support this.

There is no such thing as a single piece of legislation that is narrow and does not have other issues to support it--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Order, please. I gave the hon. member a full 20 minutes. I gave her a two minute signal and a one minute signal. Her time is up.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Elgin—Middlesex—London

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard from all sides of the House today and I would like to thank the member for Surrey North for bringing her views to this debate today and approaching this more from the victim's point of view and from the view of the faith people need to have in their justice system. I was happy to hear her say that at the beginning and move this debate that way.

I think that too often we look at this as a crime and punishment issue. I keep having to explain that I am not here to punish anyone. It is not that I want mandatory minimums to punish anyone, but as the member stated in her speech, anyone who picks up a gun knows what it can do and what danger it can inflict.

This is not about punishing the people who do this. It is about protecting those whom these people may victimize or have victimized. If these people are away for a minimum period of time, perhaps they will victimize no one else while they are away.

I would like to hear more from the member about the victims she has reached out to, just as I have had to speak to victims in my own riding. They are the victims that this type of legislation will actually help, rather than having them just hearing talk about how hard this will be on the criminals of this country.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as probably many members in this House do, I see a variety of people who have been affected by gun crime. I must admit that I also talk to parents who, for a variety of reasons, have not even recognized that their sons or daughters are moving into that area. It is not a matter of blame. That is not a lack of caring or love or appreciation of their children. Sometimes it is simply circumstances. They cannot be with their children or their teenagers on a continual basis, as none of us can, of course, in order to always be aware of what is happening.

I have talked with those parents who blame themselves. They wonder where they have gone wrong. They wonder what they can do to help other parents so that other young people do not find themselves in the position of actually being the perpetrator.

For the most part, the people I see who are victims of gun crimes are younger people. I have talked with the parents of a young person who is in a wheelchair. He is quadriplegic and therefore will require full-day assistance, for the most part, for probably the remainder of his life. It was a random shooting. He was not even involved in what was going on. He just happened to be present somewhere.

As well, I have talked with those people whose family members have been, very deliberately, victims of gun crime. They have been murdered. Those parents and those families as well look to what could be done differently. They want to know that there is an appropriate sentencing mechanism that appropriately reflects the severity of the crime.

Nobody has said to me, “Put somebody away forever”. But people do want to know and the parents I talk with want to know that this life that was lost or the critical injury sustained is not simply something to be brushed aside, with no mark or legacy left other than in the hearts and minds of that family. They worry very much about that.

Those are some of the victims that I have talked to. By the way, I do not have a chance to do this very often, and I am very glad I do not, but as well I talk with the victims who are police officers. Every day in our communities, RCMP or local police go out. They respond to a call and we know that certain calls are more likely to be dangerous. They actually have been victims of a shooting. Sometimes it is because there was not enough staff. Sometimes they did not know that there was a gun there. There is a variety of reasons.

However, I have talked to law enforcement people. We are telling people to please enter law enforcement because we need more people and we need them to be more diverse, including women, so that our police forces reflect our community. These police need to feel that they are backed up by the community, by the public and by the system.

These are some of the victims who have done me the honour of sharing with me or disclosing their experiences to me.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know that the member is quite familiar with FASD, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. She also knows that there is a prevalence of criminal activity among those who suffer from that mental disability and, indeed, mental disabilities in general.

I wonder if the member would care to comment on the fact that rehabilitation would not be applicable in terms of these particular persons who may be convicted of crimes. Exactly how do we help them if they are automatically subject to a mandatory minimum sentence to an institution, where rehabilitation is the activity that goes on during that period? Obviously there are cases where incarceration in the general prison population is not applicable. She may want to comment.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to do that. There are many pieces to this, but it goes back in part to the fact that appropriate supports need to be in place much earlier. I know that the member is very familiar with this and he knows this. Those kinds of appropriate supports for people with FASD, FASE and autism need to be in place much earlier.

I am still waiting for the autism strategy from the government and I am still waiting for a FASD strategy from the government, but surely we do not wait until those folks find themselves in a position of having picked up a gun. That is where those prevention programs are so critical.

That is why without those prevention programs this will not be a successful initiative. We must have those in place.

It does not mean that I will not support this bill, but I am very vocal in saying that we need those supports in place early on. We should never even find ourselves in the position of having someone with a severe mental disability, or with FASD or any of the other disabilities we could name, in front of a judge, with the judge having to think about sentencing for somebody who indeed may not be able to reason that out.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Jeanne-Le Ber has the floor. There is one minute left in the time allocated to the hon. member for Surrey North, so he has 30 seconds for his question.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my question is a very simple one. The bill supported by the NDP calls for lesser minimum penalties, and in some case none at all, for crimes committed with firearms.

Can my colleague tell me why the NDP believes that a murder committed with a hunting rifle, a long gun, is less serious than one committed with a hand gun?

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Surrey North has half a minute to respond.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if I totally understand the question. I think that a murder committed with a handgun or any firearm is a heinous crime. I think it is somewhat less likely that people are carrying long guns as they are going about the kind of criminal activity that I see in my community, but obviously any murder is serious and any murder committed with a gun is serious.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, continuing on the subject of my question, the Bloc Québécois has opposed Bill C-10. In my previous question, I said that one of the aberrations of this bill is that the proposed increase does not apply to hunting rifles. This bill creates two classes of firearms. There are long guns, as they are called in English—hunting rifles—and then there are hand guns. Some clauses in the bill even refer to prohibited weapons.

This seems rather odd at the stage of defining offences in the Criminal Code. As legislators, normally it is our responsibility to establish the relative severity of each of these sentences.

In this bill, however, there are instances where minimal sentences will not be not the same, depending on whether the crime is committed with a long gun or a prohibited or restricted firearm.

Let us take the example of section 239 of the Criminal Code, which deals with discharging a firearm with intent, sexual assault with a weapon, aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping, hostage-taking, extortion and robbery. Bill C-10 proposes to impose a minimum five-year sentence for a first offence, seven years for a second, and to leave it at four years if another type of firearm is used, namely, a long gun.

If this bill is passed, the message it sends is that it is considered more serious to commit an offence such as attempted murder or sexual assault with a hand gun than with a long gun. This is, in my opinion, completely ridiculous and totally baseless.

That was what lay behind my question to my NDP colleague as to why the NDP were, as legislators, backing a bill in which committing a murder with a hunting rifle is less serious than committing a murder with a hand gun.

I think this illustrates the approach taken by the Conservative government and its view of how to fight crime, to which the NDP has subscribed for the last few months. Under this approach, they take care of repression after the crime has already been committed but do nothing about prevention. This is not the first time under this government that we have seen this dichotomy between how hand guns and long guns are treated.

We saw it as well with the firearms registry. It was the same thing. To look good, the government says it wants to keep the firearms registry, but just for handguns and restricted weapons. They want to abolish it for long guns. What does that mean? Where did the Conservatives get the idea that long guns were less dangerous than other guns?

Give me a couple of seconds here to find a very interesting statistic showing that a good proportion of crimes are committed with long guns. Unfortunately, I do not remember the exact figure, but it was not negligible.

The differing treatments depending on the type of firearm highlight the inconsistency in the message conveyed by the government and the NDP, which supports it. This inconsistency can be seen again in the supposed intent of the bill, where they say they want to be tough on crime and fight criminality.

As the minister himself admitted when he came to testify before the committee, there are no Canadian studies showing that minimum sentences are effective at fighting crime.

We could obviously debate it from the standpoint of vengeance or punishing people for having committed a crime. If that is the purpose of the government’s bill, it should clearly say so and not try to make people think that the purpose is to make Canadians safer, when that is clearly not the case. Minimum sentences only apply after the crime has been committed. All the studies show, though, that minimum sentences do not have any impact on the commission of crimes. Some other studies have been done in Canada. One very large study showed that the recidivism rate hardly changed on the basis of the length of incarceration or whether the offender was given a prison term or a community-based sentence.

This is very interesting because it shows once again that the sentences criminals receive has no influence on the recidivism rate. Another study followed up on offenders. These authors even concluded that quite the opposite was the case and that increased prison terms led to a slight increase in the recidivism rate. I will provide a reference for this study so that my Conservative colleagues can read it.

I am referring to a study done by Paula Smith, Claire Goggin and Paul Gendreau of the Psychology Department and the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies of the University of New Brunswick entitled The Effects of Prison Sentences and Intermediate Sanctions on Recidivism: General Effects and Individual Differences. The study was delivered in Ottawa in 2002, and was written for the Solicitor General of Canada. The government will have ready access to it. The conclusion that I quoted is on page ii of the introduction.

I wanted to talk about this to show, once again, that there is no connection with the length of time a prisoner is incarcerated and serving a community-based sentence or a prison sentence. As well, there are certainly no automatic deterrent effects.

There are other useful statistics in this regard and the Conservatives would do well to consider them: there are three times more homicides in the United States than in Canada and four times more homicides in the Untied States than in Quebec. In Quebec, in fact, an approach based much more on rehabilitation than punishment has been adopted, and this is the part of Canada where there are the fewest violent crimes and the least crime.

Apart from a particular kind of popular morality or the simplistic discourse that amounts to saying that we must punish criminals severely, that we must be hard on them and impose longer sentences, ultimately reality will catch up to us. Everywhere in the world where a jurisdiction has tried to fight crime with punishment, we see higher crime rates than in jurisdictions that place greater emphasis on rehabilitation.

Obviously a balance has to be struck, and in the Bloc Québécois we believe that punishment is necessary in many case. We must keep that balance, however, so that we do not have to invest extremely large amounts of money in keeping people in prison. I gave the example of the United States, where the homicide rate is much higher, and the prisons are bursting at the seams because the incarceration rate is much higher than ours. The United States is using that money to put all those people in prison for longer times, rather than investing in fighting crime.

Some of our government colleagues rose in the House earlier to give some examples. They asked me what sentence I would like to see given to the guilty person if I were the parent of a person who was killed.

Personally, I would prefer that that individual not have committed a crime. It seems to me that it is essential, and more important, to prevent crimes than to console ourselves by saying that the person who committed the crime will go to prison for a long time and will suffer, because he or she will not like it there. That does not cancel out the crime. That does not mean that the families who have had members killed, families in which women have been raped, families of people who have been terrorized by home invasions or the like, are going to be able to turn back the clock.

Minimum sentences raise another problem, and I think that this should prompt us to use them very sparingly.

Minimum sentences have perverse effects. This is documented, and is a known fact. I would like to talk about two of those effects.

First of all, there will be instances in which judges will be forced to impose a minimum sentence that they find unwarranted. In such cases, they might acquit an individual entirely, rather than be forced to sentence that individual to a penalty they consider excessive under the circumstances, for cases in which a more appropriate penalty would be a conditional sentence, community service or a few weeks in jail.

This has happened in the past, and this should be a real concern to those people who wish to get tough on criminals. By trying to force the hand of judges, we would be creating situations in which judges could not sentence certain individuals to a minimum sentence that would be inappropriate. They would therefore acquit the individual instead.

Another problem is likely to arise, André Normandeau, a criminologist at the Université de Montréal, reminded us. With minimum sentences, lawyers often negotiate plea bargains for their clients in exchange for charges that do not require minimum sentencing. This involves some negotiation and ultimately does not lead to an appropriate outcome.

This measure leaves judges with no flexibility and, in certain cases, could lead to situations that are questionable, to say the least, because, when passing legislation, we could not possibly take into consideration all parameters and every case that could make its way to court. Judges are appointed specifically to consider these cases.

I would like to highlight the example of Robert Latimer, the father who killed his 12-year-old daughter, who was severely disabled, in an act of compassionate homicide. This is a subject that concerns us considerably and that many people are talking about. Mr. Latimer was convicted of second degree murder, which automatically forced the judge to sentence him to 25 years in prison, even though the jury that convicted him asked for a much more lenient sentence, given that it was an act of compassionate homicide.

The judge did not even have this option, because, quite simply, the law did not allow it.

In a future case, a jury could be faced with the same dilemma and could go to the other extreme by saying that it makes no sense to send someone to prison for 25 years for a murder committed out of compassion and that, in that situation, it would acquit him completely. In the end, that is what happens when we meddle in the judicial process.

I was astonished, because so often we hear the Conservatives complaining of judicial activism, which is when the judges—those who are close by, at the Supreme Court—use the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, for example, to amend or to strike down laws and influence our judicial and legal system.

The Conservatives repeatedly complained about this state of affairs, whether in the case of same sex marriages, or abortion or other issues. After having said that it is not right for judges to get involved in politics, the Conservatives table a bill that does the opposite and where members of Parliament want to do the work of the judges. I am sorry but it seems to me that as legislators we should be concerned with the issue of the gravity of crimes, establish maximum penalties in the Criminal Code to put into perspective the relative gravity of crimes, compared one to another, and leave to the judges the task of evaluating each situation in detail and determining what sentence is the most appropriate.

Another important point should be emphasized, which is that there is a major issue of perception in this whole debate, with the explosion of the all-present media—especially a certain class of media—which puts out the news as performance. In fact, there really is a perception among the population that crime is increasing and that we are living in a society that is becoming more and more violent. It is unfortunate to see that government members, instead of doing the work of explaining the real facts to the population, will manipulate and use people’s fears to advance their right-wing cause.

In general, I would emphasize that between 1991 and 2000, the rate of crime went down by almost 26% in Canada. That is true in almost every area: the rate of crime is in constant and general decline. To claim that crime is a growing problem and that, therefore, we need tougher penalties does not in any way correspond to reality. The proof is that the place where the fewest violent crimes per 100,000 population are committed in Canada—I referred to this earlier—is Quebec. The government, therefore, should focus on getting results, take inspiration from the Quebec model of combating crime rather than that of the United States, which I spoke about previously and which has met with a resounding failure.

I would like to conclude by saying that there is a little hypocrisy in what the government is proposing. In order to fight crime it should fully reinstate the gun registry and free up all the grants for programs to combat crime in all of our ridings that the minister has blocked and that are languishing on his desk. That would be a real campaign against crime rather than the appearance of a campaign.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member's speech and it was very typical of the Bloc. He was all over the place. He was talking about different types of crime and what the government is doing. What he does not realize is that today we are debating Bill C-10 and what we are talking about are offences involving firearms, in other words, people who pick up a gun and go into a store or somebody's home and have every intention of using it. The only reason people would pick up a gun is because they have the intention of using it.

This is not talking about jaywalking. He mentioned how it may be too harsh for a judge to put these people in jail. Maybe they need community work or a few weeks in prison. We are talking about serious criminals, criminals who would be willing to use a firearm to seriously injure or murder somebody and hopefully we would be able to catch them before that act occurred.

He stated that in the United States violent crime rates are up, but what he did not mention is that states that have minimum sentences, compared to states next door, have fewer violent crimes because criminals are smart. They know that if they commit a crime in the state that has the minimum sentence they are going to go to jail automatically, so hence the state next door has higher violent crime rates.

What does the member suggest we do with violent criminals who cannot be rehabilitated? Should we be hugging them, according to the Bloc member?

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is astonishing to hear my hon. colleague glorify criminals and say how smart they are. I think there is a problem when people commit crimes. I would not describe these people as smart. If they were so smart, they would not get caught.

If what the hon. member said were true, why do Ontario criminals not come and commit crimes in Quebec where we take a rehabilitative approach? This kind of pseudo-psychology is just too facile.

When people commit crimes, there are two main kinds. First, there is the kind that is planned, organized and prepared. The people who commit this type of crime do not say to themselves that if they are caught, they will get 7.5 years in prison instead of 4.8. The people who plan crimes think that they will not get caught. That is why, as all the studies show, imposing minimum penalties on these people has no dissuasive effect. They are convinced that they will not get caught. The second kind, often committed with firearms, is crimes of passion which are not thought through. These are people, for example, who just lose it at some point, go crazy, take a shotgun they keep around the house, and go and kill their spouse. These people do not go down the stairs with their gun saying to themselves, “Gee, the new Government of Canada passed minimum sentences so I had better not kill my wife”. That is not what they are thinking. This bill will not change anything here and this woman’s life will not be saved.

What might help this woman, though, is a firearms registry that works properly, gun control, and a campaign to raise awareness that shotguns are no less dangerous than handguns. In the example I just gave, by the way, the minimum penalty would not be any greater under this bill because the minimum for crimes committed with shotguns stays at four years.

This government bill is not consistent. They want it to look good, but the reality is something else. When criminals commit vicious crimes and deserve long sentences, judges hand them down. What the Conservatives are saying is that sometimes and in some situations, judges look at all the evidence and decide that the maximum penalty is not warranted or a lesser penalty should apply. Some critics say that these judges are wrong, but how are we supposed to know? What study shows that they are?

Studies have been done which took members of the public and gave them the facts of a case, all the evidence admitted by the court was explained to them, and they were asked whether the judge’s decision was appropriate. Most of the time, people who were well informed, who knew the facts well and who went beyond the news in the media concluded that the judges had made the right decision.

Personally, I am much more likely to have confidence in a judge who has listened to a trial for several hours and who weighs the evidence submitted to him or her before determining sentence than in a member who is talking about a hypothetical case, who does not even know the context and who says that the crime is less serious because it was committed with a shotgun or more serious because it was committed with a handgun.

Where will it stop? Will we be saying that if the crime was committed between midnight and three a.m., it is more serious? Honestly, this makes no sense. I think we have to get back to basics, do our job as legislators—establish a legal framework that clearly defines the maximum sentences for various crimes so the relative seriousness can be determined. Most importantly, we have to do the work that is needed on prevention, through our social policy and crime fighting programs. Those programs exist now, but they are still sitting on the desk of the Minister of Public Safety. They are just waiting for a signature

We do not need a bill to be read three times in the House of Commons and three times in the Senate and be given royal assent to do this. We need the minister’s signature. And we are still waiting for that.

This would be genuine crime prevention, it would help families in Quebec and Canada. Those families do not want criminals staying in prison for the rest of their lives, or for as long as possible. What those families want is for there to be no crimes and no criminals. So that is what we have to work on.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member has raised some matters for consideration.

There is no question that all members in this place want to ensure that our criminal justice system is doing the job that is necessary for the protection and safety of Canadians, and for the deterrence, rehabilitation and prevention objectives of the criminal justice system. However, the aspect of deterrence, the mandatory minimums, is really what we are looking at.

I would just note that the supreme court of the United States recently found the determinate sentences for mandatory minimum penalties found in the American federal sentencing guidelines to be unconstitutional and deemed them to be advisory only.

I wonder whether the member would maybe share some concern that even in Canada this particular serious escalation of mandatory minimums may in fact be challenged in the Supreme Court.

I note that the bill does not even come into force until there is a proclamation by governor in council, which means it is not going to be in force in Canada should it pass through all stages of Parliament. The government is going to have some discussions and I wonder if those discussions will reflect the fact that there may in fact be a constitutional challenge.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to pretend to be a constitutional expert, nor do I want to anticipate whatever decision the Supreme Court may make, but the decision in the United States clearly illustrates where we can end up when we mix up our functions, when we mix the legislative function up with the judicial.

In all advanced societies based on the rule of law and governed by laws, everywhere in the world where people live in true democracies that protect individual freedoms, everywhere, there is separation of the legislative and judicial branches. Members of legislatures and elected representatives enact laws and define crimes and the relative seriousness of those crimes. Judges apply the laws and determine sentences, and in my opinion, in this case, we should rely on this fine British tradition, which is a good thing.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to debate Bill C-10 at second reading before it went to committee. Question period today reminded me of the circumstances which existed at the time when the government House leader pointed out that it took some 220 days for Bill C-10 to be dealt with by the justice committee.

It is a perfect example of how in this place selectivity of the facts tend to paint a different picture unless all the facts are put on the table. Indeed, I can recall one member outlining in some glorious detail exactly what the facts were.

We know that at the time that Bill C-10 was referred to the Standing Committee on Justice there were 10 or 11 other bills already in committee for it to work on. I am not sure the public would fully appreciate the due diligence and kind of work that needs to be done by a standing committee when a piece of legislation comes forward, but many of these had to do with the Criminal Code. Some of them did not, but they were all part of the crime-related agenda that the government had spoken about.

The interesting thing is that when we talk about 220 days, it is not 220 sitting days of this place, it is 220 calendar days. I suspect any bill that gets introduced in mid-June is going to be languishing for about 100 calendar days but only because the House will not be in session. It is kind of disingenuous to describe things in terms of calendar days when it comes to Parliament.

There was a lot of criticism of the approach that the government made to the criminal justice bills. Instead of doing what has been done in the past, which is creating a so-called omnibus bill where a number of the areas that a government would like to propose amendments to the Criminal Code would be put together in one bill.

All of the witnesses that would be called for any one of those bills probably would be the same witnesses needed for the other bills and any others that might come along. They are representatives from the legal community, the justice department, stakeholder groups, advocacy groups, et cetera.

Members may not necessarily be lawyers. There are a number of members of Parliament who bring a lot of diversity to some of the committees. Being a lawyer on the justice committee is not necessarily the only prerequisite, so the committee must rely on expert testimony.

It was kind of interesting that the committee found itself bogged down in so much work with so many different bills that it had to deal with, virtually sequentially, simply because the continuity of the witnesses and testimony made it so. Even though Bill C-10 was sent to committee, it did not get dealt with for some time, that is true, but it was not because the committee did not want to deal with it or the opposition was being obstructive. It was because the committee was fully engaged in other legislation.

Members will know that the Standing Committee on Justice along with the finance committee are the two most active committees. They meet several hours each week and have very detailed discussions of important legislation and other related matters.

I wanted to point that out in case someone suggested there was any deliberate delay. As a matter of fact, members may recall that the official opposition made an offer to the government on a number of those bills, I have forgotten at this time whether it was 8 or 10 of them, to deal with them summarily and pass them so they could go through the system.

The government rejected that opportunity to get legislation through this place quickly, to make compromises, which is important in a minority government. There are very few bills that ultimately get through here that have not had the rigours of debate, negotiation and some compromise. That is the nature of a minority Parliament.

We do have Bill C-10 before us. There are some issues. I find it kind of interesting that, depending on where our motivation is, some will say that we need these mandatory minimums and we have to have them a little bit higher because we have to get tough on crime.

First, we have to understand, and Canadians will understand, that we are talking about minimums. That does not mean that someone who has, for instance, robbed a bank and had a gun but did not use it did not commit a serious crime. Committing a criminal offence while in possession of a firearm is a serious offence.

The issue here is that minimums are established, but that the judiciary, the judges, have the discretion to set the penalties to fit the crime. We are not talking about the maximums. We are not saying, “Let us get tough on crime”. So, Bill C-10 really does not fit with the explanation or the characterization of being tough on crime. It has to do with deterrents.

A balanced approach to the criminal justice system in any country around the world has three elements. First, there is prevention. In the bills that the government has brought forward, not one of those bills that I can recall is dedicated toward crime prevention.

The second element is deterrence. Deterrence does come from things like mandatory minimums, so that those who might contemplate committing a crime with a firearm, knowing that the offence may get them an automatic two year sentence in addition to whatever the judge may want them to have but it will be at least two years, that represents an element of deterrence.

What happens when we raise that from two to five or from two to seven or maybe two to ten? The expert testimony that came before parliamentarians was very clear. There comes a point at which the amount of time is irrelevant to someone who will be committing a crime, so the mandatory minimum, it does not matter how high it is, will not be a factor on whether or not they are going to do what they are going to do. That is why we have independence of the judiciary. That is why we have judicial discretion and on a case by case basis, the sentencing is dealt with by the court, by the jury, and by the judge to determine an appropriate sentence, given the circumstances of the case.

The final element in a balanced and responsible judicial system is rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is a very important part of our criminal justice system. People commit crimes and are sent to jail. If we did not have a program to promote rehabilitation, if we just put people away in a cell, slammed the door shut, slid the food through the door and that is where they stayed, we would basically be creating a situation where those people would come out of jail when their sentence was finished with a disposition that they would be very likely to be dangerous people in society.

The justice system does provide for every opportunity for rehabilitation for those who have committed crimes. That is important because once people come out, we want them to be able to resume their lives once they have served the time they had to serve.

Even within the system for good behaviour, the system provides for parole situations and early release. It is reflective of those who have shown the remorse for their crime or who have circumstances which would indicate they are not a further danger to society.

However, even under those circumstances, they also continue to have that sentence even though they may be on parole. If they violate any of their parole conditions, they will be immediately be back in jail. The sentence is the sentence. It depends on where one is serving it and in what form it is being served.

We have had some discussion about whether we have come to a point where mandatory minimums have escalated to an extent which brings into concern the issue of constitutionality. Earlier in a question, I advised the House about a note I had received about the supreme court of the United States. It recently found the determinant sentences for mandatory minimum penalties found in American federal sentencing guidelines to be unconstitutional and, therefore, deemed to be advisory only. I am also aware that about 25 states have eliminated the lengthy mandatory minimum sentences since 2003.

Why does the supreme court of the United States now have this problem? Why have a number of states backed off these very high mandatory minimum sentences? There must be a reason. They did not do it just because they thought it might be good thing to do. It is not a matter of handling it on a whim. It is handled on the basis of experience and evidence.

We know that the comparative penal systems between Canada and the United States are quite different. The penalty system within the United States is much more serious than it is in Canada. I think people's first intuition might be that if there are stiffer penalties and stiffer sentences, that will be good to reduce crime. It is not the case, and the United States compared to Canada is in fact the proof.

The sentencing is harsher in the United States, but the rate of criminal offences and incarceration of people is about 30% higher. However, that is not the only jurisdiction. There are others. The justice committee heard from expert witnesses to see what is going on. It had the benefit of this experience of tracking other jurisdictions and of what was happening in Canada.

People want to suggest that somehow Canada is a crime haven and things like that. Sometimes some very bad things happen in our country, but they plot on the graphs the incidents of criminal activity from a broad range. In general, the crime rate has been going steadily down over the last number of years. Canada is doing extremely well in addressing crime, but it is not through the penalties or the deterrents. It is what I talked about earlier. It is through the prevention measures.

I will divert a little to a related matter. It has to do with how to deal with those who are mentally ill, or an example as we debated on Monday, those who have fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. It is a subject matter that I have been working on as a member of Parliament for at least 12 years. The subject matter at the time was referred to as fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol effects.

I was a member of the health committee. I had studied and researched what the health committee had been doing before I became a member of Parliament. I came across a report called “Foetal Alcohol Syndrome: A Preventable Tragedy”. In brief, the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy causes brain damage to the fetus in a prenatal situation and that the child will be born with brain damage, with mental disabilities. Interestingly enough, if we look at the pattern, people who suffer from mental disabilities have a very high predisposition to run afoul of the criminal justice system.

This concerned me and I wanted to know more about it. I learned that because of the brain damage, people did not know the difference between right and wrong all the time. We can tell them a hundred times not to do something because it is wrong and they do anyway because they somehow think it is right.

I raise this because in our criminal justice system we have to deal with people who have, in some cases, mental disabilities. If a person has a mental disability and maybe had a gun when he or she robbed a bank, under certain circumstances in Bill C-10, this person could be put in jail with a mandatory minimum of say five years or maybe even seven year.

We have to ask if prevention, deterrence and rehabilitation are all elements of a responsible criminal justice system. How is it responsible to take people who suffer from a mental illness and who probably do not know the difference between right and wrong and put them away in jail, in a system which is based on delivering rehabilitation? In the case of someone who suffers from mental illness, rehabilitation is not applicable.

It is an interesting case, but I raise it because there are circumstances on a case by case basis where two identical crimes may get different sentences. Some may be lower, some may be higher. Why? Because there are sometimes mitigating circumstances, sometimes exacerbating circumstances. That is why we need judicial discretion. That is why we have the independence of the judiciary.

With regard to judicial appointments, I heard the Prime Minister say in this place that he would like to have judges who were more closely associated with his ideological thinking, people more attuned to the way he saw the world. Does this not attack judicial independence? Does this not affect our court system? It concerned me that the Prime Minister was prepared to say he would start shaping the courts just as is done in the United States. The President of the United States makes appointments to the supreme court because of a person's history on a certain side of an issue.

It is a pattern that we have seen time and time again, not only on justice bills, but on other legislation. Canada seems to be more driven by what is happening in republican America, what is happening with George Bush and how does George feel about these things. We seem to be following blindly.

Canada has a responsible system. The Liberals brought in 45 different instances where mandatory minimums were proscribed. There is no question that we support mandatory minimums, but there comes a point, and I believe that is the issue in this bill, where the escalation has gone so far that it brings into question the constitutionality of it and whether there will be a constitutional challenge here. If there is, Canada will not be the better for it.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to listen to my colleague discuss this bill. I would like to hear a bit more because the society bequeathed to us by our ancestors is a lawful society based on striking a balance between the crime committed and the punishment imposed. That is the choice our ancestors made in order to pass down a society that is different from American society. Too often we look at the Conservative government and see that it is moving closer to the system of repression established in the United States. That is not the system that our parents and our grandparents wanted to leave us.

I would therefore like my colleague to elaborate on the importance of maintaining a system of law where the punishment fits the crime.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right. There are some principles and values which are built into our system, certainly starting with the charter and the protection for all under the rule of law. Even a serious criminal has rights under the charter and the rule of law.

The member is also right with regard to proportionality. It is a principle that the judicial system tries to ensure. If we were to take a particular crime and put it outside of the proportionality model, we may find that all of a sudden the integrity of the system comes into question. That is a very serious consideration.

The principle of the punishment fitting the crime, and I think the member would agree, is subject to certain elements or aspects in a certain case. No two cases are identical in all aspects. There may be mitigating factors. There may be exacerbating factors. They may warrant a more serious punishment or a lower one. This is with regard to people who we would consider lucid, who knew what they were doing, et cetera.

As I raised in my commentary, we also have the situation where we have people whose knowledge or admission and their ability to understand what they have done all of a sudden creates a whole different situation. I do not know what happens to people who are put into the system. What I do know is it has been estimated that in some provinces almost half of the population in the jails of some of our provinces and in federal institutions suffer from some sort of mental illness or an alcohol related birth defect. This concerns me a lot.

The fastest growing industry in the United States is building jails, putting people away. It has done nothing to make the United States safer. We should learn from their experience.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois is often criticized for not participating or for being very different. Today, however, it is aligned with the Liberal Party on the discussion of minimum sentences.

I would like to discuss a second aspect. The almost automatic nature of parole is at issue and not the entire system of penalties, or penalties in the Criminal Code. Therein lies the problem and I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about that.

At present, criminals are released when they have served one sixth of their sentence. That is the problem. The fact that we impose minimum sentences is not at issue. When the sentence has been imposed, the individual or the criminal must serve that sentence. Nothing in this bill challenges the fact that parole is granted almost automatically. Does my colleague agree?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is quite right. When Bill C-10 is considered in isolation, there are a number of other elements related to an effective criminal justice system which are not reflected in this bill. There are some other bills, and I mentioned about 10 or 11 other bills that have been presented by the government, some of which could have come together. There could have been a more comprehensive approach. The Liberals absolutely agree with that.

In response to the member's question, here is what a Liberal government would do. We would immediately convene a round table meeting of the federal, provincial and territorial ministers, together with representatives of key organizations representing the police to commence discussions on developing long term, sustainable, cost-sharing arrangements for additional police officers. This is the prevention side of it. In terms of early parole, conditional release, et cetera, these are areas of concern which still continue to be discussed by parliamentarians.

There is no question that we need to continue to re-evaluate things. There has been some success, but the system must be responsive. I would certainly suggest that in a balanced system in which there are appropriate elements of deterrence, of rehabilitation and of prevention, the kinds of issues that the member talks about, whether or not the public sees someone getting out earlier and maybe reoffending, there are reoffenders, but statistically, they are not the majority. By far they are the minority of cases.

Is there a balance to be achieved? Is there more work to be done? Absolutely. The criminal justice system, much like our Constitution, is going to be as dynamic as a growing tree. I expect there will be more discussions, and there should be more discussions, in this place on the propriety of sentencing and release and parole provisions.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague about other initiatives that a new Liberal government would be prepared to implement immediately.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Immediately, if not sooner, Mr. Speaker.

We do have a published commitment of some of the initiatives. We would give the RCMP money for 400 additional officers to help local police deal with guns and gang activity. We would ensure more money was available for the provinces to hire crown attorneys. We would continue to support reverse onus bail hearings for those arrested of a gun crime. We would establish a fund that would help at risk communities cover the cost of security in their places of worship or other gathering places.

We would strive to set up organized crime secretariats like Ontario's guns and gangs task force. We would strengthen legislation aimed at preventing Internet luring. We would act on the recommendations of the Privacy Commissioner. We would update and toughen legislation to deter and prevent identity theft. We would amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act to make it mandatory for organizations to notify people of data breaches involving their personal information. We would act immediately to implement all 22 recommendations made by the federal task force on spam which have been ignored by the current government.

There are many more, but I know the time is up. I am sure when we do form a government after the next election that all of these issues will be dealt with swiftly.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak in this debate. It seems to me that the agenda is a little thin and so the government has gone back to its law and order agenda.

I want to talk about my riding. In some respects this is the kind of issue that the government thinks it is resolving. I have a riding in the east end of Toronto. I do not know how well members know Scarborough or the east end of Toronto, but Scarborough is the centre of the universe. My particular section of Scarborough is interesting in that below Kingston Road are some of the nicest homes one can buy in all of Toronto. It is a lovely area. Some of the homes run upwards of $2 million. North of Kingston Road, which is a rough dividing line, are some of the more impoverished areas in all of the greater Toronto area.

One of the more impoverished areas is Markham and Eglinton. In a very small area are approximately 17,000 people in a series of high rises. Many of them are new to this country but certainly what they all have in common is that they do not have a lot of income. The United Way identified that particular area, which is called Scarborough Village, as an area that was in need of assistance. There were a number of other areas around the GTA that got special attention from the United Way.

The United Way comes into an impoverished area and what would be, statistically at least, a high crime area and says to the community, “This is a problem. The community is not functioning. What should we do here?” It does community assessment, assesses community needs and identifies community leaders.

In the process of working in that community for a year and a half to two years it has done the assessment. It has developed things like community events. It has developed a functioning community centre. The United Way has assisted the community in pulling itself up by the boot straps.

We have to bear in mind that a fair number of these 17,000 people are just desperate to make the rent. That is about as good as it gets for them. They have come from afar. They are struggling with the language. They are struggling with a diminished status vis-à-vis what it would have been like in their former countries. That creates social problems between spouses. It creates social problems between one generation and the next. Sometimes the kids adapt fairly easily and do not necessarily respect their parents who are having more difficulty adapting.

It is a bit of a fertile ground for crime. We as the larger community have been concerned, but the specific community of Scarborough Village has been concerned also.

I have gone to quite a number of meetings. I have met with folks who think that something needs to be done. The police are very involved in this process. They are very keen on seeing the community heal itself, have respect for itself and reduce itself from a high crime area. Not once did they ever talk about minimum mandatories. Surprise, surprise. They did not talk about minimum mandatories. They did not really think that there was that much wrong with the Criminal Code. I can see areas where we might want to do reverse onus on gun crimes, the guns and gangs task force and things of that nature which have actually been useful in terms of getting some of the bad apples off the street, but minimum mandatories is certainly not one of the things that they actually talked about.

That seems to me to be just about the classic statement of how wrong-footed this particular government is on the issue of security and safety in our communities. The Conservatives missed the boat.

The Conservatives missed the boat because they think that getting tough on crime, which means this kind of draconian sentencing, taking away the discretion of judges, eliminating the ability of a judge to shape a sentence to fit the crime under all the circumstances, is the way to go. They do not think that minimum mandatory is the way to go.

My colleague earlier talked about particularly disadvantaged people and how this kind of draconian one size fits all approach to the crime somehow or other would reduce crime. Unfortunately for the government, there is not a statistic, there is not a jurisdiction, there is not a study in the world that actually shows that. Minimum mandatories have virtually no impact on crime.

If in fact the government were seriously interested in doing something about crime, actually reducing recidivism, in fact getting criminals in particular back into a functioning element of society, it would get behind the guns and gangs initiative, it would get behind organizations like the United Way.

I have a suggestion, and I have suggested this in other instances. Of the enormous amount of money that is going to be spent on housing all these criminals by virtue of this minimum mandatory legislation, which I am told would be something in the order of about $220 million to $250 million over the next five years, I would suggest that my riding's portion just be directed to the United Way.

I have a little bet going with the government that if we were able to put that money into the United Way, we would have a lower crime rate. That money would be of more use than throwing folks in jail and throwing away the key. That does not seem to be a favoured view these days. People want to be tough on crime.

Our position in the Liberal Party is we want to be smart on crime. We want to do what works. What a strange concept.

It has been shown that having minimum mandatories does not work. In fact there are apparently something like 25 jurisdictions in the United States that have backed away from minimum mandatories because they have experienced it and it does not work. Recidivism is up and they are spending enormous sums of money on keeping people in jail.

I can see how this legislation works for those who are pro jail and for those who want to develop more and more jails so that we are housing more and more people. I guess it is some form of solution for homelessness.

My suggestion would be that the money be given to the United Way and organizations such as that to develop the community, to allow the community to develop. The best policing of the community is the community itself. Statistic after statistic, study after study shows that minimum mandatories fall disproportionately on disadvantaged groups.

I do not have a particularly large aboriginal population in my riding, but what I do have is a large black population in my riding. When we talk to the community leaders, they are very concerned about black crime, particularly black on black, and youth crime. What they need and what they are crying out for is community development, the ability to do some parent substituting, basketball courts, community centres, homework programs. They are asking for facilities where they can access the Internet, facilities where they can access all kinds of services that we tend to take for granted. They are not talking about amending the Criminal Code to get minimum mandatories, because they know that is just a useless exercise.

I respectfully say to the government that this exercise in minimum mandatories is frankly an exercise of hot air. The government could have allocated the money to facilities such as I am suggesting here.

Mr. Speaker, I see that you are standing for some very good reason.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

It is with regret that I interrupt the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood, but it is 5:30 p.m.

The House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

When we return to the study of Bill C-10, there will be 10 minutes left for the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood.

Property Rights

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West—Glanbrook, ON]

moved:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should amend Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to extend property rights to Canadians.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to the motion that I tabled on April 23. Motion No. 315 states:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should amend Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to extend property rights to Canadians.

Let me begin by saying that this is not a new concept. I know that there have been many members before me who have worked on this, either through private members' legislation or additional motions. I know that the member for Yorkton—Melville has done much work in this area and I am grateful to him.

Sir John A. Macdonald and the Fathers of Confederation clearly understood the importance of absolute property ownership for all Canadians. They wished to entrench in the institution of a self-governing Canada the primacy of property ownership.

Prime Minister John Diefenbaker established the Canadian Bill of Rights, which for the first time included “the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof”.

As justice minister, Pierre Trudeau proposed the passage of a charter that would give constitutional protection to certain rights, including the enjoyment of property. As Prime Minister he again proposed entrenchment of the Charter of Rights, which would have guaranteed the right of an individual to use and to enjoy property. While the Charter of Rights and Freedoms became a reality, the inclusion of property rights did not make the final cut.

I am particularly happy to be able to move this important motion during the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As Canadians, we celebrate the charter. The charter, which is embodied in the Constitution of Canada, enshrines our rights and freedoms. We value these freedoms. We value the political rights guaranteed in the charter. We value the civil rights ensured by the charter.

It is for these reasons that we rightfully celebrate the charter, as it marks the progress we have made as a country, but as we celebrate this milestone for the charter and reflect on its meaning for Canadians, both collectively and individually, we should also ask whether there are areas that we can enhance to strengthen this living document.

To be certain, the charter guarantees specific political and civil rights of Canadians from policies or actions of all levels of government. It nobly seeks to unify Canadians around a set of principles that embody these rights. But in seeking to unify Canadians, the drafters of the charter also glossed over those fundamental rights that were excluded, rights of Canadians that also deserve to be guaranteed and protected.

The absence of property rights in the charter is one area where we as parliamentarians may wish to focus our attention when thinking of whether there are ways that we can enhance this document.

My Motion No. 315 urges the government to recognize the need to entrench property rights in the charter. The motion would amend section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to extend property rights to Canadians, with the intention of giving individual property owners the right to a fair compensation for their property, and to ensure compensation within a reasonable time period.

I believe in the rights of Canadians and specifically the need to strengthen the protection of property rights. Every person has the right to enjoyment of their own property and the right not to be deprived of that property unless the person, first, is accorded a fair hearing, second, is paid fair compensation, third, the amount of that compensation is fixed impartially, and fourth, the compensation is paid within a reasonable time period.

Exclusion of property rights from our charter violates convention, convention as captured in the 1960 bill of rights, convention as captured in common law, convention as captured in provincial statute, and convention as captured in the United Nations declaration of human rights. The importance of protecting property rights has long been recognized in Canada and around the world.

I know that my Liberal and NDP colleagues share an understandable and healthy respect for the United Nations and hold it in high regard, so they might wish to recall that article 17 of the 1948 United Nations declaration on human rights states:

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Although Canada ratified the UN declaration of human rights over five decades ago, Canadians continue to be deprived arbitrarily of their property, and we have wilfully remained out of step with most other signatories.

Other democracies have taken a lead in property rights legislation, including the United States, Germany, Italy and Finland. Several Canadian provinces, including British Columbia, New Brunswick, and previously Ontario, also have at various times indicated resolutions that support stronger protection for property rights.

Great Britain first introduced property rights in the Magna Carta of 1215. I know that the opposition loves to try to chastise the government when it comes to questions of rights. If all my colleagues are firm in their commitment to the rights of Canadians, they should support and embrace this motion. No document more ardently seeks to defend Canadian rights than the Bill of Rights.

In 1960 Prime Minister John Diefenbaker brought in the Canadian Bill of Rights. Part I of the bill reads:

1. It is hereby recognized and declared that in Canada there have existed and shall continue to exist without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion or sex, the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely,

(a) the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law;...

I know that all members of the House support such a principle as outlined in the Bill of Rights as it applies to property rights. There is, however, an arguable weakness in the bill. There is a flaw. While it mentions property rights, a guarantee of protection and compensation in those cases where private property has been expropriated is not explicit.

Such ambiguity dilutes the level of protection for property rights. Because it is a regular statute, it could be overridden by a new federal statute. Without the explicit mention of compensation, a new federal statute could rather easily restrict the right of Canadians to fair and prompt compensation.

Motion No. 315 would correct this by entitling Canadians to fair and prompt compensation in circumstances where it is necessary for an individual to surrender property to the government.

The Bill of Rights remains in place today, but our courts tend to refer to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. While both have positively contributed to Canada and its people in the past, the emphasis on the charter severely circumscribes the rights of some Canadians.

Nowhere was this more clearly evident than in a ruling by the Manitoba Court of Appeal on February 4, 1999. The court ruled against a Manitoba resident's right to sell his own grain grown on his own land. The ruling stated that section 1 of the Canadian Bill of Rights, which protects property rights through a due process clause, was not replicated in the charter, and the right to “enjoyment of property” is not a constitutionally protected fundamental part of Canadian society.

No Canadian would become aware of this lack of protection for property rights, however, until it is too late, that is, until the government arbitrarily expropriates the property of a law-abiding, taxpaying Canadian without any compensatory measures.

This happens already with farmland, for example, where government may force farm families out of production for government purposes. For example, approximately 97,000 acres of Quebec's best farmland was expropriated. In spite of the fact that 3,200 farm families were displaced, only 5,000 acres were ever used for the airport operation.

The essence of this ruling is echoed by Professor Peter Hogg, a pre-eminent scholar of Canadian constitutional law. In Constitutional Law of Canada, Professor Hogg writes:

The omission of property rights from s.7 [of the charter] greatly reduces its scope. It means that s.7 affords no guarantee of compensation or even of a fair procedure for the taking of property by government. It means that s.7 affords no guarantee of fair treatment by courts, tribunals or officials with power over the purely economic interests of individuals or corporations.

Further to this, he writes:

The product is a section 7 in which liberty must be interpreted as not including property, as not including freedom of contract, and in short, as not including economic liberty.

My motion would provide Canadian citizens with the protection they require but would not interfere with government's ability to continue its work. Canadians deserve to be reassured that the federal government respects their fundamental rights to own and enjoy property.

This motion, therefore, is an effort to continue the crusade started by our forefathers and the drafters of the 1960 Bill of Rights.

Motion No. 315 is consistent with our government's clear and unwavering commitment to introduce measures to promote rights in this country. Whether working to correct historical injustices like the Chinese head tax or dealing with the aboriginal residential school legacy, whether working to protect the rights of women and children from acts of criminality or endeavouring to extend to Canadians the right to vote for the representatives of the Senate in Canada, this is what our Conservative government has been doing.

Motion No. 315 is also consistent with the earlier efforts of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. He was an ardent advocate for improved protection of property rights. He first argued this case in a 1968 paper entitled, “A Canadian Charter of Human Rights”, tabled when he was the minister of justice.

He reiterated the case in his 1969 paper, “The Constitution of the People of Canada”, and once again in 1978, when he introduced Bill C-60, the constitutional amendment bill. He attempted twice more to extend the scope of the charter to include property rights.

With such longstanding and diverse support, moving forward with such a motion as Motion No. 315 seems long overdue. Accordingly, I wish to urge the government and all of my colleagues to support the motion so that we can have measurable advancement on the promotion of Canadian rights.

Why would we seek to deny Canadians' intrinsic rights?

One concern that has been expressed about the inclusion of property rights in the charter is related to the complicated matter of the definition of the term “property rights”, but protecting property is not just a conservative or a liberal value but a Canadian value, a value that every party can support. Through time, the term “property”, not unlike the charter itself as a living document, has evolved to mean much more than simply real property.

However, the fact that the term will have to be interpreted by the courts, which may interpret it very broadly, is not a good reason for excluding property rights from the charter.

If property were interpreted by the courts more broadly than in the traditional sense, the entrenchment of property rights also could have positive effects for those persons who do not own real property at this point.

The entrenchment of property rights in the charter could do more than simply protect those who own real property from expropriation without compensation.

In other words, if we were to ask who benefits from this motion, the answer is clearly every Canadian.

Property is not just land and buildings. It may extend to all forms of personal material properly. Merely in order to preserve one's right to own property at some point in the future, government must restrain itself in the present. The right to own property is as much about potential ownership as actual ownership.

The best any government can do is work toward equality of opportunity. The right to own and enjoy property is pivotal to all other rights.

The idea captured in this motion embodies the principles of fairness and justice that Canadians hold dear. Our country was founded on these principles and values.

The prospect of new property in its various forms drew our ancestors to this country to settle land, in both the east and the west. They wanted to protect the property that they worked so hard to attain. Canadians are no different today. Our charter should reflect the right to own property and the right to not be deprived of it without due process of law and compensation that is both just and timely.

Whether it is the farmer who fears losing his or her livelihood due to greenbelt expansion, families who must be uprooted to accommodate a much needed mid-peninsula corridor in my riding, or the senior citizens who have worked hard and saved well to pay off their home only to be forced out because it is located near an endangered species habitat, every Canadian who owns and enjoys property should not be arbitrarily deprived of that property. That is precisely what this motion seeks to ensure by amending section 7 of the charter.

The 25th anniversary of the charter provides an opportunity to highlight all its merits and to see how we can improve the charter. I believe the inclusion of property rights is an important step in this direction.

All party support of this motion would demonstrate our commitment to enhancing the property rights of Canadians. The House has heard various debates over the protection of property rights. Indeed, the House has even witnessed widespread cross-party support for the enhancement and promotion of property rights on various occasions.

On one occasion, the Deputy Speaker of the House stated: “We must entrench the right to property in our Constitution. The right to hold and enjoy property provides one of the checks and balances against undue concentration of power in government at any level”.

We cannot emphasize enough the importance of property rights.

It is not hard to find examples in this country of the government unjustly expropriating property or forcing people to sell land and other material without compensation, without other options, and indeed, without any form of recourse to the courts. It is simply misleading to suggest that we have adequate protection of property.

Only when these rights to property are enshrined in the charter will our rights and freedoms no longer be in jeopardy. It is for this reason that I ask all members of the House from all parties to support the inclusion of property rights for Canadians in the charter.

To say yes to Motion No. 315 is to say yes to all Canadians.