Mr. Speaker, I would like to continue with the theme that the problem is not the number of judges, although I think everyone agrees with regard to the backlog and the specific claims process, which we are all supporting. The problem is in the way judges are appointed. If the way judges are appointed is such a disaster, which it has been as handled by the government, of course if we have more judges the problem is just going to increase.
When the Conservatives came to power they went around the process of the judges' salaries and put the iron fist on that. Once again, they inhibited the independence of the process and the judiciary by interfering in that process. Then they rejigged the whole judicial appointment process in ways that were roundly criticized by most judicial system experts across the country. It was only a recommendation. They would stack the appointment of judges in favour of the government.
That is not a secret agenda. This was quite open because the Prime Minister himself made the point that they needed the judges not to be independent, but to implement government policy, to make their interpretation of the law so that it would affect government policy rather than be an independent, fair, just interpretation of whatever laws there are. Of course, then government can change the laws if it does not like how they are interpreted.
I of course want to support the point on specific claims. This is a very important procedure that will definitely support the judges who will be required to catch up on the horrific backlog of claims for aboriginal people in this country and get some of those longstanding claims finally dealt with.
The final point I want to make is on the failure of the government to deal with crime. Although crime is being reduced in Canada, the government chose this as a high priority, and if it had been successful during its mandate there would have been a reduction in crime and we would need fewer judges, not more.
What is the reason for this? There was a wonderful show on CBC's The Current, last Thursday I believe, in which Anna Maria Tremonti talked about the failures in the federal jails in Canada. If we are going to reduce crime and a majority of crime is repeat crime, how do we deal with that? We have debated this numerous times in the justice committee. We have heard the experts' solutions. We have heard police officers' solutions.
Those solutions deal with making sure those crimes do not occur in the first place. They deal with removing the root causes of crime. They deal with removing overcrowding and poverty. They deal with the lack of ability to gain meaningful employment, whatever the reason might be. They deal with removing the much lower achievement of aboriginal people, on average, and with getting their school system up to the same level of achievement and therefore the same opportunities for gainful employment.
As the CBC analyzed with great care last week, this also deals with the treatment of prisoners. There are the criminals, in jail, where we have access to them, and they are going to reoffend unless they are treated properly. The program showed repeated examples of insufficient treatment, educational opportunities and anger management. Quite often the inmates themselves were asking for these services, these things that would help them return to society.
At committee, the experts told us that longer jail terms in many cases actually increase crime because jail is like a university of crime and inmates who are away longer from a quickly evolving society do not then have the ability to easily integrate. However, if they have the skills, they come out to a whole different world. It just exacerbates the situation if they are not getting training in the institution.
There has been one great leap forward in training and rehabilitation. It relates to alternative sentencing and different types of treatment of criminals outside of simple incarceration. A few weeks ago at an Ottawa city committee that deals with this, the chief of police gave marvellous examples of how that system had much greater rehabilitation effects.
We have failed for probably a thousand years to rehabilitate and to succeed in stopping recidivism, but at least some of these group conferencing and other types of non-incarceration sentences are actually having an effect. That effect is 60% to 70% in stopping a person from repeating a crime, whereas traditional incarceration has an effect of roughly only 40%.
We have finally come upon a new system that is having some effect on certain levels of criminals, but the government tried to pass a bill that would eliminate this for the vast majority of crimes. Fortunately, that bill did not pass. It was stopped.
Another example is that of the aboriginal court justice workers. The program was renewed at the eleventh hour. Thank goodness the present justice minister is totally supportive of that program, thinks it is a good idea and ultimately did renew it, but the government pushed that program right to the brink. Instead of rehabilitating offenders in this way that has been so successful, those workers had to spend their time fighting the fact that their program was expiring and there would no longer be any funding. At the last moment, funding was put into the program. I hope this system is actually put in on a permanent basis so these workers do not have to keep applying for funds.
Our position on this is that of course we want the justice system to work effectively. Justice delayed can be justice denied, so we want sufficient justices in the system to deal with cases. We certainly want judges for the specific claims, but we would certainly like the government to take far more action to reduce crime in the ways suggested by members of all the opposition parties and all the experts who came before committee. That would actually reduce crime so we would not need to keep increasing the number of judges and have an act like this.