Mr. Speaker, I am happy to participate in the debate today in the House on Bill C-42. It is at second reading. It is the beginning of what I hope will be an expeditious process to study this important change to sentencing provisions of the Criminal Code.
I can say at the outset that the Liberal Party will be supporting the bill at second reading, to send it to the committee. We obviously want to hear from experts and those involved in the criminal justice system as to what the effects of restricting conditional sentences will be.
However, certainly at first blush, we think that there is a lot of merit in restricting the use of conditional sentences, particularly for the most serious crimes. That is why when it comes to a vote at second reading, hopefully expeditiously, we will be supporting the legislation.
Bill C-42 amends section 742.1 of the Criminal Code to eliminate the reference to serious personal injury offences and restricts the availability of conditional sentences, colloquially known as house arrest, for offences for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 14 years or life imprisonment, and for other specific offences prosecuted by way of indictment for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 10 years.
The member for Edmonton—St. Albert, the Minister of Justice and others often refer to conditional sentences as house arrest. There can be a great deal of misleading information about in fact what the imposition of such a sentence represents. Defence lawyers have told me that frequently a conditional sentence or a term of imprisonment in the community, a house arrest as it is colloquially known, may be for a longer period of time than would be a sentence in closed custody, a sentence of incarceration in a correctional facility.
As the House will know, when somebody breaches the terms of a conditional sentence and is brought back before the court, for example for breaching the terms of house arrest, for leaving their property except during certain hours as deemed allowable by the judge, or for a breach of whatever nature, even a minor breach of a conditional sentence, the presumption is then that the person will finish the remainder of that sentence in closed custody.
I accept that as a reasonable presumption. If the court decides to give someone a break on a conditional sentence because, in the opinion of the court, the person does not represent a threat or a risk to the community and because rehabilitation can be better served in the community, then if one chooses to breach the terms of that conditional sentence it seems reasonable one should then face the rest of that sentence term in closed custody. However, as I said, that can often represent a longer period of time.
Therefore the idea that conditional sentences are handed out to serious offenders by courts that then allow people to go home and serve their time on their sofa is a mass simplification of a necessary tool for the justice system.
That being said, I think all members of the House can acknowledge, and other members who have spoken on this issue have correctly pointed out, that the judicial system falls into a loss of public confidence when the imposition of conditional sentences applies in cases that appear to be unreasonable, in cases where for example we have serious white-collar crime, serious fraud involving in many cases millions of dollars or as I said earlier, cases involving violence or personal injury.
I think we all accept that those who commit the most serious crimes should face serious consequences. To restrict the ability of courts to use conditional sentences in those circumstances can in fact be very reasonable.
As I said a moment ago, there is a mass simplification of conditional sentencing, particularly by this government which contends that various types of offenders sentenced to imprisonment are simply sent home, in their communities.
Things are not that simple. I was somewhat surprised to hear the member for Edmonton—St. Albert say that, in the vast majority of cases or at least many cases, judicial discretion had not worked.
We are not as demanding of judges as the Conservative Party seems to be.
The time has come, and I accept responsibility for that, to tell our courts that, as many media have reported recently, those who commit some of the most serious crimes, often economic crimes, and white-collar criminals are not facing severe enough sentences. We believe that it would be appropriate for Parliament to decide to send our courts a very clear message by curtailing or limiting the judges' ability to impose conditional sentences for such crimes.
Limiting judicial discretion is something the government is really fond of. I was amazed to hear about the Minister of Public Safety recognizing that his strategy was to build new prisons and expand existing ones. The vast majority of inmates serve their sentences in prisons under the purview of the provincial governments.
I would like to point out a grave concern I have with respect to Bill C-42. Should the number of offenders facing sentences of imprisonment in correctional establishments rise, then we as a Parliament, and certainly the government, have a duty to make better programs available in these establishments, and I would go as far as to say a duty to share with the provincial governments the costs associated with these changes to the Criminal Code.
The government likes to increase the number of people, convicted persons, who will face prison in closed custody and correctional facilities. At the same time I do not think the government has taken sufficient responsibility with provincial authorities to share the burden that these changes represent to provincial correctional systems.
I can use something from my own province of New Brunswick that happened last week as an example. The Government of New Brunswick had to send a memo to judges in the provinces indicating that they could no longer incarcerate people on intermittent sentences, those serving time for example traditionally on weekends, because the provincial jails were full.
A lot of this has to do with those waiting in correctional facilities pending their trial, those on remand, as it is known, which is also in many cases a situation that needs changes. That is why we have supported changes to restrict the ability to grant double time in remand circumstances. However it is not good enough to simply change the Criminal Code and tell the provinces to deal with it or tell the Correctional Service of Canada to deal with it.
Last week I had the opportunity to talk with people from the Correctional Service of Canada who work at the Dorchester Penitentiary in my constituency, at the Shepody Healing Centre, which is the psychiatric hospital in that medium-security federal institution and which looks after federally incarcerated inmates from all over Atlantic Canada as well as from some provinces such as Quebec. They tell me they do not have sufficient resources now to look after the seriously mentally ill inmates who are incarcerated or even those who are found not criminally responsible but are incarcerated for security reasons at a hospital like the Shepody Centre in Dorchester.
To make changes to sentencing provisions is part of the solution, and the government likes to focus on tougher sentences. Where it falls down and where Bill C-42 in our view does not do enough is in dealing with some of the factors that lead to a criminal activity or to criminal conduct. A government that cuts, as the government has, the crime prevention funding and at the same time talks about building larger prisons I think has missed the important balance that is necessary in an effective criminal justice policy.
My colleague from Ajax—Pickering, our critic on public safety issues, has done a lot of work and has recently published a number of interesting articles that highlight the government's failure to have crime prevention policies and its obsessive focus on punishing offenders once a victim has already been created.
To conclude, on behalf of the Liberal Party, I have to say, as I said already, that we will support Bill C-42. We have concerns about the lack of resources available in the federal prison system, as well as at the provincial level. We believe that the government will have to accept the responsibility of sharing these additional costs with its provincial partners.
We do, however, believe and agree that, in some cases, conditional sentencing has brought some unfair criticism upon the judicial system. For that reason, we recognize the need to further restrict the instances where such sentences are deemed appropriate.
The Liberal Party does not think, as the Conservatives do, that judicial discretion has not worked. We think that Parliament has a role to say to judges that these are the kinds of circumstances that should be eligible for terms of conditional imprisonment, conditional sentences or imprisonment in the community. In many cases for first-time offenders and non-violent offences involving minor crimes, this is precisely the way to improve the chance of rehabilitation and to prevent that person from reoffending once he or she completes his or her sentence.
We believe there is an important role for conditional sentences, but we believe in the case of very serious fraud, in the case of serious repeat property offences, in the case of sexual offences, in the case of offences involving bodily harm, Parliament has a role to say to the judiciary that those are not the kinds of offences for which a convicted person should be eligible for a conditional sentence. That is why we think there is considerable merit in adopting Bill C-42.