Mr. Speaker, I express my congratulations to the member opposite for introducing this bill.
Strangely, he has exhorted his colleagues in the House to be non-partisan in their approach and I distinctly heard two of his colleagues asking what I regard as very partisan loaded questions. I have to say that I am sorry I am quickly losing enthusiasm for the substance of the issue here as his colleagues continue to snipe and turn this into a partisan matter. The member laughs, but what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If the member is going to urge non-partisanship, I hope his colleagues will see it the same way, because this is a private member's bill and it is not going to go too far if the member is going to import partisanship.
I will not waste more time on this, but I will note that the bill is clearly not government policy. If it had been government policy, it could have been made a part of Bill C-2 or one of the other Criminal Code amendment bills that passed through the House earlier in this Parliament.
The bill, as the member has explained, purports to provide more focus in the code on the problem of the use of knives in crimes, but it also travels into the field of corrections and parole, beyond the knife issue. That is taking on a rather large piece of public policy. I know the member sees the need for it, but I am actually in the House here urging some caution as the member attempts to adapt public policy and law to respond to one particular set of circumstances, as sad as they were.
There is hardly a member of the House who has not had to respond to the impacts of a criminal act somewhere across the country and I do not for a moment diminish the kinds of difficulties that there are out there. However, in reality our country has always had crime, and I am probably not wrong in predicting that there will be always be crimes and people who are misguided and that there will be victims. I am not discounting those circumstances, but it is a reality that we have to live with every day in the House.
As for the bill itself, I want to spend a couple of minutes focusing on what the bill tries to do, because the question as to whether I will support it as a private member will hinge on that.
It seems to me that it is not terribly misguided to focus on concealed weapons, but in this particular case, the section we are dealing with is not just about knives. It is about any concealed weapon, any concealed prohibited device or prohibited ammunition. Therefore, let us be fair here in recognizing that the penalties the member urges in amending the code will apply not just to knives but also to prohibited ammunition or a prohibited device that on its own might not be as lethal as a knife could be.
The member has gone to the extent of imposing a regime involving a mandatory minimum sentence. In the first case, it would be a 90 day sentence. However, this is not the first time that members opposite have urged the House to impose mandatory minimum sentences. In fact, we have adopted a statute here in this Parliament that extends mandatory minimum sentencing for a number of firearm offences.
I would have thought that if the government and the Department of Justice felt further tweaking of the sentencing involving mandatory minimum sentences was needed, it would have included these types of provisions in the government bill, but it did not. I am not discounting the sincerity and enthusiasm of the member in proposing this, but I just want to reiterate that it could have been dealt with as a government bill. It was not. There must have been a good reason for that. I will just leave those reasons unanswered.
In providing for sentencing, this House and previous governments going back many years, way beyond 13, have attempted to construct Criminal Code and sentencing provisions which fit the times, in this case our times, the time of the millennium.
The last time the House did this was in about 1995. We thought we had it right. We thought the sentencing provisions suited the times. It was quite a massive revision. Placing these principles in the code was something that had not happened in Canada. These principles had been generated actually by the courts prior to that.
With respect to the principles of sentencing, the objectives include, and there are just six: the denunciation of unlawful conduct; deterrence; separating offenders from society; assisting and rehabilitating offenders; providing reparations for harm done to victims or the community; and promotion of a sense of responsibility in offenders and acknowledgement of the harm done to victims and the community. There was a special reference to the abuse of children under 18 years of age. There is a fundamental principle which is called proportionality. A sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender. That principle also is articulated in our Constitution.
There are other sentencing principles with respect to things which aggravate an offence. I will not go through the whole list. There are a half dozen of them. Most of them are self-evident, things that aggravate the offence. There are several other principles.
A sentence should be similar to sentences imposed on similar offenders for similar offences committed in similar circumstances. Where consecutive sentences are imposed, the combined sentence should not be unduly long or harsh. An offender should not be deprived of liberty when less restrictive sanctions may be appropriate in the circumstances. All available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances should be considered for all offenders. There are other provisions.
The point in my reading these is that these are very reasonable, rational provisions and principles that are used every day in our courts by judges who do the sentencing.
One of the members opposite during his remarks referred to this as judicial reform. This is not judicial reform. The judiciary does a very good job by all standards of measurement, domestically or internationally. We are not reforming the judiciary. Anything we do in here could reform the Criminal Code, could reform the way we handle corrections and conditional release, but we are not handling the judicial part. We give under law to our judges the discretion to sentence using the Criminal Code framework and the principles that I have just read.
By most measurements, things are operating fairly well. In the case at hand to which the member responded, and I have to acknowledge and congratulate him for responding to a constituent or constituents in this case, it is just the one case. I know there are hundreds and hundreds of other cases across the country. Bills actually have come through this House which in common parlance have borne the name of a particular victim, without mentioning any. I am not too sure that it is the right way to construct our sentencing and conditional release.