Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak in the debate on Bill C-393, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (punishment and hearing), introduced by the member for Leeds—Grenville,
I want to begin by speaking about the example he gave as the prime motivation behind the changes he has introduced and the experience of the Moffitt family from his community. I appreciate the difficulty in which this kind of situation places a family.
Thirty years ago this fall, a close friend of mine died as a result of a knife attack. I think he was stabbed 39 times. No one was ever charged in that crime. I remember being at home watching the TV news and seeing the report. That is how I found out about his death.
Duncan Robinson was my friend. The relationship probably was not as close as a son or brother, but that affected me profoundly and still does to this day, when I remember what happened to him back in 1978. No one was ever charged in that crime so there has never been that kind of resolution to the situation. I have often thought about what happened.
I remember walking the streets of Toronto not long after that. There had been an artist rendering of a potential suspect. As I walked down the street a number of times, I thought I saw somebody who looked vaguely familiar to that drawing. I sometimes even followed someone for a few blocks to see if I could get another look at the person, never being able to make that kind of identification.
Therefore, I have never had the experience of having to sit through a trial for a loved one who was murdered. I do not know how my views of our justice system might have been changed on the way it worked or did not work.
I do know the murder of my friend Duncan was a major motivation in my political involvement. The situation that I saw surrounding his death led to so many questions about how we perceived the place of citizens, how we dealt with crime, how we reported crime in the media, how the police characterized their investigations and how the church dealt with my friend's death.
I had so many questions about how it had all happened. Because I identified so many serious problems as a result of that, I decided I could not remain silent any more and became very politically involved to try to address the social conditions I saw surrounding my friend's death.
As I say, had I the experience of seeing the matter go to trial, my interest in the justice system and the judicial process may have been different, but I chose to work on the social conditions surrounding my friend's death.
I appreciate that the Moffitt family has chosen to be politically involved and to raise the concerns and shortcomings they experienced, as outlined by the member Leeds—Grenville. I believe those are all serious questions that should be asked of legislators and of our judicial system.
However, I have some serious questions about the solutions the member has proposed in his bill. Not unlike my colleague who spoke previously, I have serious concerns about the use of mandatory minimum sentences. I also believe they have not been proven to be effective in reducing crime. I do not believe they make us safer, as citizens, from this kind of crime, from any kind of crime for that matter.
I believe in the experience of many jurisdictions in the United States for example. They are undoing that kind of legislation because it has been shown not to be effective in reducing crime. In fact, they may create other problems related to lengthy imprisonments of people, where there is not any hope for reintegration into the community successfully.
Therefore, I have serious questions about measures that would impose a mandatory minimum sentence. It is not something I easily would support and, in fact, I have not supported it in this chamber. I am also concerned about measures that would call into question conditional release. That is an important part of our judicial system, justice system and correction system.
Conditional release has served us well for the most part. That does not mean every conditional release has gone well, that there have not been problems with it. In any system we design there will be problems. There will be specific instances. That does not mean we do not take those problems seriously when they crop up, but I believe every system will have its shortcomings.
We are served well by conditional release. Release into the community, with specific conditions and supervision, is an important step in reintegrating an offender back into the community. Also, the way the community takes responsibility for the integration is also an important feature of our justice system.
Credit for pretrial custody is important. It is a major impetus to ensure timeliness in our justice system. To incarcerate people prior to a trial, prior to their conviction, should be taken very seriously. That needs to be recognized in our justice system. Again, the specific case raises some particular questions about that, questions that deserve an answer. However, generally the principle of credit for pretrial custody is very important.
I also believe judicial discretion is important in our system. This is one of the reasons why I have a difficulty with mandatory minimums. I agree there should be clear indications from Parliament, from legislators about what appropriate sentencing parameters would be for particular crimes. However, the people we ask to hear evidence, to make judgments on the situations of the people involved in crimes should have some discretion in how they mete out justice on our behalf. Judges do that responsibly. They take their role in that very seriously and they make very responsible decisions.
Again, that does not mean mistakes are not made. That does not mean there are exceptions to the rule where things have not worked out probably the way everyone involved would have liked them to have worked out. For the most part, this is exercised appropriately in our society and it should remain a feature of our justice system.
I want there to be a point in our justice system where there is the ability to exercise some humanity and to hear the particulars of the case and to respond to the specific situation in which those people are involved. We are well-served by judges who on our behalf exercise that humanity. I also have concerns about limiting judicial discretion.
There are a lot of reasons to be very concerned about knife crime in our society. We know that is a significant problem in so many places. I do not want for a second to dismiss the concern about knife crime and the tragedies and problems that causes in our communities. However, we need to seriously consider not just crime punishment measures, but also measures that seek to prevent crime in the first place, to prevent those situations from happening.
We have heard that youth crime is on the increase. We have to put some programs in place that specifically try to address this issue. I am not sure that increasing punishment for crime is going to effect that kind of change. We know increased punishments do not serve as a deterrent for crime, that it is a punishment measure and is something completely different from deterrence and from crime prevention. We need to put more effort into those areas.
I can commit on behalf of the NDP that our justice critic will carefully examine this legislation, that it is a measure we believe should be taken seriously. We may not always agree with the solution, but we believe this is an important issue about which Canadians are concerned. Clearly the member for Leeds—Grenville has put forward a very reasoned argument for this kind of legislation. We know the Moffitt family is very concerned to see this matter addressed.
For our part, we will ensure that we look carefully at the implications of the legislation. We will look carefully at the proposed solutions. We will look carefully to see that the solution proposed actually does the job that the bill hopes to do, which is to make us safer, to ensure that crime is appropriately addressed in our society, that punishment is appropriate and that our justice system works effectively to keep us all safe. We can safely make the pledge to ensure it takes place.