Debates of Oct. 19th, 2010

Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Madam Speaker, over the last few months, we have seen the Conservative government shovelling money off the back of a truck to Canada's wealthiest corporations. The cost of the new fighter jets has doubled. There is $1 billion for the summit in Toronto. I could go on and on about the boondoggles that the government has been engaged in. Conservatives have a reckless disregard for appropriate financial management.

At the same time, we have seen a slashing of 70% of crime prevention programs. The National Crime Prevention Centre had funding slashed from $57 million to $19 million. We have seen a refusal to provide adequate funding to the RCMP. The Conservatives promised this funding many years ago, but now they seem to have forgotten that promise. They have been strangling the forensic laboratories that provide information important for crime prevention and for solving crimes.

So we see disingenuous hypocrisy; there is no other way to put it. The government is shovelling money off the back of a truck to its big business friends. At the same time, they are slashing funds for crime prevention, crime investigation, and policing. They are not keeping their promises. They bring forward these bills just so they can say they are doing something, when they should be dealing with the problems created by Conservative mismanagement of the criminal justice system.

I would like the member to comment if he thinks it is appropriate that the government has slashed crime prevention programs by nearly 70%. The government is creating new victims while saying they want to be smart on crime.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague makes a valid point and I fully agree with him. I do not believe it is appropriate for the government to be slashing crime prevention programs to the tune of up to 70%. Part of being tough on crime is to make sure that there are programs of prevention out there. Every time these programs are eroded, it makes our society less safe.

Remember, it was Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page who said that one of the government justice bills, instead of costing $90 million, as was originally estimated by the minister, would actually cost between $10 billion and $13 billion. There is a huge discrepancy between $90 million and $13 billion. These programs are a huge cost that is going to be borne by all of us.

I also am worried about the impact it is going to have on our social infrastructure. Already provincial premiers are complaining about the cost of our legislation. If we are going to put forward more of these justice bills, I hope we are doing it in partnership with our provincial premiers, because they also have a stake in all this. There is a cost to them and a cost to all of us, because there is only one taxpayer.

I also realize that there is a cost of inaction. I am not one who says we should do nothing and that will be it. No, I agree that we have to act. But let us do it in a way that makes economic sense and is in the best interests of public safety. At the committee level, there will be an opportunity to debate and to engage different stakeholders, so that we can have legislation we can all be proud of.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, on the heels of what I consider to be a fine speech indeed, I want to thank my colleague from Davenport for his attention to this matter. I know he will listen attentively to what I have to say.

I want to start by talking about what I feel is one of the essential ingredients for crime prevention: programs that encourage our youth to get more involved in communities and in programs that allow them to help build communities. I have witnessed this first-hand. Whether they are below the age of 18 or between the ages of 10 and 15, there are some excellent programs for them. They encourage youth to get involved in community cleanup, activism, and certain issues that are important to them and to the entire community.

I represent a riding in Newfoundland and Labrador that encompasses 191 towns. One can well imagine that the culture and activism in the region creates quite a tapestry of individualism and community spirit. The programs help prevent crime and sickness. There are many different community groups that want that one common goal at the end, which is to raise awareness of crime and make our communities safer.

This bill is not so much about crime prevention. The title of the bill is An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. As most of us know, a lot of the bills regarding incarceration and imprisonment involve conditions upon their release.

There have been several renditions of this. There were two bills prior to this one that, following the prorogation of last winter, have been combined in one bill. Before I get into the gist of this, I would like to say there are many components of the bill that should be supported by all of us in the House, because they go much further toward protecting our society.

A lot of the common themes and recommendations that came from the 2007 road map were premised on a hypothetical profile of Canadian offenders. This came from the Conservative ranks starting in 2007. Much of it deals with the imprisonment of dangerous offenders and creating new rules upon their release. There has been significant debate on putting dangerous offenders in prison for first-time offences. I have enjoyed the debate in the House. I wish the government had engaged in the debate a little more. But in the talking points we received there have been some valid arguments.

One of the issues comes down to the dangerous offender. It almost seems as if we have elevated the debate to a point where the offenders have taken on a new character. It is as if the offender has become a certain type, an individual different from how he was perceived before 2005-06, when the Conservative government was elected.

It leads me to think that we should be somewhat nervous about this attitude. It is almost as though a mind-shift has taken over the headlines of newspapers, the media in general, whether electronic or print. Sometimes we neglect to go beneath the headlines and dig deeper into individual circumstances.

Many people in my riding read the news of the day. It simply states, at the very beginning, the name of the offence, what happened and a headline saying that somebody did this. I do not want to go into details because I do not want to mention any particular case. However, what happens is that we have this visceral reaction against the people who have perpetrated these particular crimes. I am not separate from that. I, too, read some of these headlines and wonder how some people can bring themselves to commit a crime that is so drastic.

One of the questions we seldom ask and should be asking when we get caught up in these headlines is what brings a person to a level of desperation that compels the person to do this. We need to ask what the circumstance is of the particular individual prior to the crime to push the person into behaving in such a manner. I do not think these words would say to someone that they are getting away with crime.

However, the problem with some of these talking points and headlines, and locking people up and throwing away the key type of attitude leads us to believe that there is nothing more than just that. It is this shallow attempt to look at crime legislation, Unfortunately, what we forget, which is what I returned to a the beginning of my speech, is the crime prevention program that dismissed that crime in the first place. The person who committed that most violent of offences, if circumstances had dictated, if the community had engaged that person at the very beginning of a turn for the worse, then could we not have avoided that situation? It is the type of situation we cannot quantify. That is the problem with the debates that we have here within this particular chamber. We need to dig deeper into the crime prevention side.

I am voting for the bill at second reading because I know there are people who are dangerous offenders and because there was no level of community engagement at the beginning that could have avoided the particular crime. I get that and I think almost everybody in this House gets the same message. We have no problem with taking this to the next round and sending it to committee. I understand about tightening some of the rules and putting people back into society after serving time. However, the problem is that we have only skimmed the surface of what is a complete package to bring crime rates down.

Crime rates have dropped over the past 15 to 20 years, although I would not say dramatically. Each day when I see the news, I can guarantee that at any given moment, on any particular radio station's website, 40% of the news deals with events that happened in the last 24 hours and names are released. What is in a name? What is in the circumstance is what we must look at. Unfortunately, however, when we try to bring some semblance of mature debate in this House about crime prevention, what bothers me the most is that we do not give it the attention that we should and, unfortunately, that does not lead to a wholesome debate.

Yes, I will support sending the bill to committee for a very important reason. This would further the debate for crime prevention. The prison system across the country is about to get a tremendous amount of financial pressure. How will we address this in light of the fact that we have a tremendous deficit? We need to make an agenda of items like health care and pension reform in light of the fact that we also have new expenditures in the prison system.

One of the things I want to address, which I hope the committee addresses once it receives the bill, is the road plan for people to receive the resources by which they can put themselves back into society in a different state of mind than when they first entered. Where are the resources by which prisoners can help themselves to get back into society the way that we think they should be engaged back into society?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the hon. member knows that the bill would do a couple of dramatic things to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, two things in particular that are of enormous concern to those familiar with the system.

It has been argued that the bill reflects a profound shift in the way that corrections are delivered. The two particular issues are a wording change that seems innocuous at first but would actually change the act in a way that would pave the way for violations of offenders' rights and also affect their ability to access rehabilitation services.

I wonder if my hon. colleague would comment on how concerned he may or may not be about that fundamental shift that stems back from the road map that was authored by Mr. Sampson, a minister in the previous Mike Harris government that advocated privatizing prisons and other policies such as that.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I ended my speech by saying that I was concerned that we may be taking a step backwards with respect to this bill because the resources we give to a particular individual to come back into society would be much different from when they entered.

Another thing that bothers me is that with this fundamental shift, this mindset shift I will call it, or perhaps it is a paradigm shift, when people go back into society they have not received the resources by which they can resuscitate their behaviour.

We know that California adopted a similar strategy with regard to corrections. Building larger prisons, upping the number of people and the time they spend in them, the result was not safe for communities. As was pointed out, there was staggering debt, unbelievable costs and in fact less safe communities. The rate of recidivism in California has now crossed the 70% line, which is the rate at which people reoffend.

I think the member has a very valid point. On the other hand, there are also valid points from the government when it talks about the input of victims, which I do agree with.

There we go. In typical Liberal fashion, we have this side and we have that side.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on behalf of the New Democratic Party to Bill C-39.

After listening carefully to debates from all sides of the House, it is my desire to express something that I hope will have a bit of a unifying effect on this debate. I believe that all members of this House want to have safe communities. I believe that all members of this House care about victims. I also believe that all members of this House advocate policies that they really believe will result in safer communities, better respect for victims and, what we all hope to achieve, a reduction in the crime rate in this country.

Where we differ, and debates should be marked by respect and care as we listen to each other, is in the various approaches and philosophies that may be advanced to achieve those ends.

Speaking on behalf of the New Democrats, we believe in the approach that we characterize as being smart on crime to attain those ends. I cannot emphasize enough that New Democrats believe in protecting victims. In fact, as I have said in this House before and I will say again and again, our party has been the one with the strongest record of protecting victims. We have always been a party that speaks out for the most marginalized in society: the poor, the disabled, people whose voices are often not heard in debates and those who do not have access to power. I would also point out that it is a well known fact in sociology and among people who are familiar with the issue of crime that crime most often is committed by and against those very groups. Most victims of crime are actually found in the most marginalized sectors of our society, the poor, et cetera.

The New Democrats have always brought those voices to the House of Commons and have always insisted that their interests be taken into account when we discuss any issue. Therefore, I am proud today that New Democrats can be said to be one of the strongest voices in this House for standing up for the rights of victims of all types.

I want to talk briefly about women because women are often the victims of crime. Our party has a policy commitment to advancing the equality rights of women that is second to none in this House. When we talk about advancing the interests of victims and bringing their voices to any debate that touches upon their interests, once again, New Democrats have a record that is something to be proud of.

I can also say that the New Democrats believe fundamentally that the best way to keep our communities safe is to take whatever measures are effective and that work to ensure that offenders do not reoffend. That seems like a simple concept but it is absolutely profound in its application. When someone breaks the law and is sent to jail, the number one goal ought to be to do what we need to do to ensure that while the person is in custody that the person when he or she gets out does not come out and re-victimize someone else.

This is where philosophy comes into play. There are those on the government side of the House who believe that the way to accomplish that goal is to increase the severity and duration of the punishment that those people experience. They say that more prisons need to be built and that more people need to be locked up for longer periods of time. They claim that if Canada invests billions of dollars in that policy approach, we will have safer communities. I respectfully disagree with that. I do not disagree with it because of ideology. I disagree with that because of facts.

Earlier today, I asked one of my colleagues on the public safety committee, the member for Edmonton—St. Albert, to name two jurisdictions in the world where the policy approaches that the government is taking toward crime, locking more people up in harsher conditions for longer periods of time, has resulted in lower crime rates. What was his answer? He refused to answer. He could not name one place on earth.

One would think that the government, with all its resources, with its ability to do research, with the entire civil service at its disposal, with its Department of Public Safety and Department of Justice, could do that research. It could provide this House with the kind of information we need that would support these policies. But not one state, not one government, not one country, not one province, can the government name where these policies have been put into place and have actually resulted in safer communities.

I do not call that an ideological attack. I call that a fact-based one. I am legitimately curious. We are not the only society on earth that is grappling with crime. Every society is. Around this world there is every kind of approach to crime one can imagine. There are more liberal approaches, more conservative approaches, tougher approaches, more lenient approaches. The northern European countries' approach focuses more on rehabilitation. Southern European countries and eastern countries, and countries all over the world such as Asian countries, have strong approaches to crime with very tough prison conditions.

What are the results? Why can the government not tell us which model it is emulating? Why can it not tell us which country or state it is using as a model that has adopted these policies that result in safer communities? The fact that the government cannot mention one causes me great concern simply as a parliamentarian.

This bill does have some interesting measures that are worthy of some discussion. Of course, I also think it is fundamentally flawed because profoundly, philosophically and policy-wise, it is simply mistaken.

Bill C-39 takes the absolute wrong approach to correctional policy. It does not promote public safety. It runs counter to reducing reoffending behaviour. It opens the door to violation of human rights. It runs counter to several Supreme Court of Canada decisions on the rights of people as they are treated by the justice system. It adopts a U.S.-style approach to prisons that is regressive, expensive and ineffective.

I want to mention a timely and topical piece that ran today. The head of Correctional Service Canada, Don Head, today announced that his department estimates it will have to spend $2 billion over the next three years because of the Conservative government's approach to crime. It will have to lock up an additional 4,500 Canadians. To put this in perspective, right now there are approximately 13,500 offenders in the federal corrections system. This would add another 4,500 people to that, approximately 30% more people, in the next 36 months.

Mr. Head said they will have to hire thousands more staff. The department will have to spend much more money on programming. It will have to double-bunk prisoners because it simply does not have the space to house the number of people the government wants to lock up in the next three years, in violation I might add of international conventions to which Canada is a signatory, saying that we would not double-bunk prisoners in cells overnight.

That $2 billion estimate is lower than the Parliamentary Budget Officer's estimate, but I would point out that it is higher than the figures the Minister of Public Safety has indicated so far. Before we spend billions of dollars, Canadians very legitimately ought to ask if this is a good approach and if it will work.

A good analogy that all Canadians can relate to is how we treat our children. What is the proper approach to dealing with a child who misbehaves or breaks a rule? The Conservative government has a one-sided approach that says to punish that child. Just punish them. That will work for certain children in certain circumstances. I grant that punishment is one aspect of our corrections toolbox. That simply has to be there. With respect, where I think the government is misguided is that punishment is not the only tool and it is not the tool that should be used predominantly.

What happens if a child is dyslexic and misbehaves in school, not because he or she is a bad child, but because that child is actually masking the fact that he or she cannot read?

What happens if children have FASD, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and their fidgeting and inability to follow rules is not because they are bad people but because they suffer from brain damage? What happens if a child has low cognition or a low IQ?

These are the kinds of people who are in our federal institutions. I say with no hubris whatsoever that I have done something that I dare say 90% of the people in this chamber have not done, and that is that I have visited more than 24 prisons in this country. I have to say I was surprised when I walked into my first federal institution almost two years ago. I had never been in a federal prison before.

What I found was that there is no monolithic population. Our prisons are not filled with 100% bad, scary, evil people. There are some people like that in there. For probably between 10% and 20% of people in federal prisons, that is exactly where they should be at all times. The public needs to be protected from those people.

After that, the truth is that the population in prisons is on a continuum and on a gradient. There is every single type of person in that prison. There are people who are illiterate, who have brain damage, who are of low intelligence, who suffer from FASD, who have had traumatic events happen to them, and who are in prison because of their addictions and their mental health.

I went into the RPC in Saskatoon about a month ago. I asked the people who work in that prison, not the prisoners, what percentage of people in that institution committed crimes that are directly related to their addiction, and the answer I got was 70%. These are people who are in a bar, get drunk, get in a fight or something, and this is what happens. I am not excusing any of that. Any kind of breach of the criminal law is wrong and it needs to be dealt with and dealt with appropriately.

The question I ask is, for those people who are in prison, what is best way to make sure that when they come out they will not do it again? That is what I want and it is what the people of Canada want. I certainly know it is what the people of Vancouver Kingsway want. They want to be safe.

They want to know that when they walk in the streets or in that bar on a Saturday night or in the stores or parks or schools that they are safe. That means that those people who come out of prison are not going to hurt them, and 96% of people who enter federal institutions do come out.

What we do know is that simply locking them up for longer and in harsher circumstances will not work for the vast majority of these people. I am not saying this because of morality or compassion; I am saying this from pure cold-hearted logic. It does not work. That is what I will go back to. If the government can produce studies that show where these policies have worked, I would be very interested in seeing those studies and having my attitudes adjusted accordingly. It cannot do that.

This bill does a number of things. This bill makes it harder for people to get parole. It extends the length of time that offenders convicted of offences have to serve. In other words it keeps people in jail for longer.

It requires the active participation of offenders in attaining objectives of a correctional plan, and that is part of their release plan. That is a good thing, except it also fundamentally changes two things in our prison system.

The historic standard as established by the Supreme Court of Canada is that when citizens enter our prisons they lose some important rights. They lose their right to liberty. They lose their right to be in society. That is a profound loss. However, they retain every other right that all Canadians have. That is why people can still vote in prisons. That is why people still have the right not to be tortured. That is why people have the right to health care. The Supreme Court of Canada said that when Canadian citizens walk into prison, they do not stop being a citizen. They will be punished severely by losing their liberty, but they do not lose those other rights. That is a hallmark of a modern, advanced, mature, democratic state. What this bill would do is alter that.

The second thing it would do, which I think is extremely concerning, is that it changes the approach to prisoners, to allow our corrections system to take whatever measures it thinks are appropriate to deal with prisoners, as opposed to the least restrictive measures to accomplish the goal.

Here is what that means. Just like with our children, it means that when a person abrogates a rule or misbehaves we take the least possible measure that is necessary to change the behaviour, not the most extensive one. The bill would change that.

This is because the government is proceeding on what I think is a flawed basis. It is proceeding on what is called the road map that was authored in 2007 by Rob Sampson, who was the minister of privatization under Mike Harris in the Conservative government of Ontario. When he became the minister of corrections, he advocated strongly for the privatization of Ontario's prison system. That is like putting a fox in charge of a henhouse.

The road map does not engage in a careful, evidence-based review of Canada's correctional system. It cherry-picks statistics to give a distorted view of crime trends. It ignores the history of our prison system. It ignores the jurisprudence that provides the judicial context to imprisoning Canadians. It was designed to tell the government exactly what it wanted to hear. It was written in haste. It was done in less than six months from start to finish, and it did not hear from all the stakeholders who Canadians would want to have input, if we are making sure all voices that have experience in the prison system are brought to bear on this.

One thing the bill does that is good is that it allows victims to have enshrined in law the right to have input into parole hearings. I say let us take that one step further. If it is good to have victims' input at parole hearings because we want to have their voice reflected, is it not important that we have the voices of all stakeholders in determining prison policy in this country? The government did not do that with the road map and that is a flaw.

I want to tell a story because this is not just about statistics and about philosophy. We had before the public safety committee a number of witnesses who testified when we were studying the provision of mental health and addiction services. We had a young woman named Amber Christie as a witness who had been imprisoned 30 times. I want to quote what she said:

As I sat and reviewed the documentary footage made of Ashley Smith's time in prison, I couldn't help but find myself being able to identify with her. I myself have been in prison 30 times. Of those 30 times, 29 of them were spent either all in segregation or the majority of time in segregation. I can identify completely with the desperate need to have human contact and the loneliness and isolation that you feel being locked in a cell with nothing to do all day. I remember I would look forward to meals because I could read the labels of my drink containers over and over and over again. I was not segregated because of behaviour issues or security issues, but because I was withdrawing from heroin.

I was still unable to have anything in my cell to help me stay occupied, such as a book or a pen or paper. I looked forward to count, when the guard would come and count us and hopefully we'd have a nice guard to sometimes tell us how their day was. It was human contact.

I will pause here to state that this description is all too accurate for too many people in our corrections system suffering from mental illness and addiction. These are the conditions that the government wants to move us closer toward, and it will do absolutely nothing to make our communities safer. In fact this approach would make us less safe as is evidenced by the 29 repeat visits Amber made to prison before she got the help she needed. Here is what she had to say about the conditions in prison that finally allowed her to break free of that cycle of recidivism. She said:

I continued to go through those revolving doors until my last stay in corrections in 2005. For the first time I was sent to Alouette Correctional Centre for Women and for the first time I was not segregated. This happened to be the first time...I was checked into health care, and to my amazement I was sent to a unit.

From there on I got a job in the institution, as it was a work camp, and I reconnected with family outside of prison with the help of a wonderful doctor.... I also received health care when I was in prison, something I rarely ever encountered in other prisons.

...there was a program that was happening all around me that was hard to go unnoticed. There were babies in this prison. ... The way the prison was being run was more like a rehabilitation centre.... It was amazing. Not only was there a library and a gym there, there was a native elder there to talk to. As well, there was drumming and dance every Tuesday night. As a mother myself, I have to say that it helped me to remember the things I was giving up, and I know that the other inmates dealt with their problems....

I was released from prison in October 2005, and I have not been back since. ...this prison changed my life. I had been in many prisons before, but this prison treated me like I was a person and not a number.

That speaks louder than anything else I can say.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is quite ironic to be in the House and listen to the member opposite comparing criminals to children. I have two kids of my own, a two year old and a four year old. I can assure the hon. member that they are not stealing cars, or breaking and entering into people's homes. They are not home invaders. I hasten to say that I do not treat them like I would treat someone who would kill someone, steal cars or invade someone's privacy.

It is truly remarkable to hear about the poor criminals who might have to share a cell with someone after they have murdered or invaded someone's home late at night, as they have been doing in my community of Stouffville. Police have recently issued a warning because breaking and entering late at night is on the increase as are incidences of auto theft. We have the poor victims who find themselves confronting someone at two o'clock in the morning in their home, yet we hear about the poor criminals who are going to have to share a cell with someone. We finally are ramping up our criminal justice system to put the rights of the victims ahead of the criminals.

The members keep talking about the costs associated with balancing the justice system. They like to talk about statistics Canada and how crime is on the decrease. How about Statistics Canada reporting that costs of crime to our economy and to families is over $70 billion a year? Those are 2003 figures. The cost of pain and suffering to victims is $35 billion a year. Those are the real costs of crime.

When the member talks about the cost, why does he not talk about the cost to victims of crime? Only the NDP, the opposition coalition, fronted by the leader of the Liberal Party, but led by two failed NDP premiers, would suggest that somehow Canadians do not want people who commit crimes to be in jail, that we should put the focus on them as opposed to the victims of the crime.

When will the member sit down with real people in his riding, victims, and find out what they really want? It is a criminal justice system that represents Canadians and puts the rights of victims ahead of criminals once and for all.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, let me tell the member what former victims' ombudsman, Steve Sullivan, said about the government when he testified before the public safety committee on April 20. He said:

—we have asked that the government refocus its efforts and its priorities on trying to meet the real needs of victims of crime. Sentencing and the “get tougher on crime” agenda will not meet the real needs of victims of crime, who are suffering every day, who call our office every day, who have trouble making their mortgage payments because they have lost their job, whose kids are acting up in school because they can't get counselling. These are real challenges that victims of crime face every single day. Obviously we need to have prisons, and we need to have programs for offenders who are in prison.

The government fired its own ombudsman.

I will take no lectures from silly comments like the one I just heard. Clearly the government did not listen to a word I said. It does not understand or comprehend, not a whit, what we are talking about. It reduces to the lowest form of argument, name calling and simplification and straw man arguments, which typifies the government's approach.

We need to have an intelligent, mature, fact-based discussion, something the government is proving incapable of, whether it is on crime, the long form census or any other issue that the government acts ideologically on. It ignores evidence of what real Canadians want, what Canadians need and what they want to say for communities, and it is not a George Bush style approach that will cost them billions of dollars and make them less safe in our communities. That is the Conservative approach.

The New Democrats do not accept that.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, around 1970 a provincial government brought in the criminal injuries compensation fund to compensate victims of crime. To hear the Conservatives talk, we would think are pointing to a Conservative government having taken an action like that. It was Canada's first NDP government, led by Ed Schreyer, elected June 15, 1969, that brought in the criminal injuries compensation fund, a fund designed to compensate victims of crime. The NDP was the originators of benefits for victims of crime.

Therefore, the government has no monopoly when it comes to issues on victims.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I can go further, and I have a modern example. Steve Sullivan, the victims ombudsman, in the last several years in two successive budget submissions, recommended that the government put sex abuse rehabilitation centres in every major urban centre in our country. Why? Because it is a well known fact that the majority of sex offenders have been sexually abused themselves.

If we want to do something to reduce the number of children who are victims of sexual abuse, we should invest in centres where they can get trauma abuse counselling, not only to help them but to cut recidivism in the future. What did the government do? Twice it rejected it and did not put a penny in its budgets to help children who were victims of sexual abuse as recommended by its victims ombudsman. Yet the government says it cares about victims of crime. Really?

All the government wants to do is show the public that it is tough on crime by locking more people up. It is a policy that is ineffective and does not work. The government cannot come up with a single place on earth where that policy approach has demonstrated a reduction in crime. That is not tough on crime. That is dumb on crime.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, some of the themes my colleague touched upon I would have to agree with in many cases. The rehabilitation of individuals and the resources that are not available for individuals to rehabilitate themselves is one thing that needs to be addressed within our system. Given that the system is about to face some rising costs, there are some added pressures in many regards.

Community activism, in many cases, is not being utilized as much as it can. In my area of Newfoundland and Labrador some of the programs have been extremely successful in engaging youth and avoiding crime. There are instances where people have shown lenience toward abominable behaviour.

I want to get one aspect of the bill that he may have addressed, and I apologize if I did not hear it. One of the things the NDP expressed is the establishment of the right of the victim to make a statement at parole hearings. How does he feel about that and does he feel it can be utilized, which I personally think it is a good thing? How can impact statements at parole hearings be utilized within our society that makes our system better and the fact that we do not utilize that aspect enough to help keep our societies safe?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the New Democrats believe we need to stand up for anybody who has been victimized by crime. Offenders need to hear from victims. They need to know the impact of their crimes. Victims need to have their voices heard and we should enshrine in law their right to do so. Otherwise, they are victimized a second time.

New Democrats also support the rights of victims to access information about offenders. We cannot leave offenders in the dark, fighting for every scrap of information. Knowing that an offender is being rehabilitated is an important step on a victim's road to healing and recovery. Mr. Sullivan pointed out that victims of crime do not care if the person is locked up for an extra six months, nine months or a year. What they really want to know is when offenders get out of jail, they will not be victimized again. What victims do not want is for the government to simply focus on punishment.

I will not quote again the words of former victims ombudsman Steve Sullivan, but that is what victims want and that is what their ombudsman said. He is the voice of thousands of Canadian victims. It was his job to hear from them to ensure their voices were reflected in the chamber, and he did so. I would encourage the government to listen to that voice instead of ignoring it.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to follow my colleague, the member for Vancouver Kingsway, in this debate. He raised very important points. I certainly hope the Conservatives opposite, who tend to get only the information that the PMO is willing to give them, consisting of a couple of pages of notes with some lines that they repeat ad nauseam, are actually absorbing the kind of information they are getting from the NDP members who are giving the facts.

The facts are the government manages crime like it manages the budget. We have record budget deficits in our country. The government is applying the same incompetence to the criminal justice system, and I will come back to that in a moment.

What we really have is two debates. The first debate is on Bill C-39. That bill, as we know, has components that we certainly support. These recommendations have been before the government for a number of years. We are glad it is finally acting upon issues such as having victim impact statements inserted into the parole process. That is very important. It is a recommendation that the government has been sitting, but it is finally introducing it. It is an important modification that we support.

There are a number of housekeeping items as well in the bill that we support. The bill could have gone rapidly through the House, but then the government, as it is wont to do, sort of on the back of a napkin, threw a number of elements into the bill that are not helpful. That provokes the second debate on the government and how it approaches criminal justice issues and how it approaches, in a sense, trying to reduce the crime rate, doing the things that other countries have found reduce the crime rate. Instead the government seems to want to stoke the crime rate by removing such important programs as crime prevention. It is absurd. However, I will get back to that in a moment.

It used to be said that people do not vote Conservative except for two reasons: budget management and crime. Those are the only two items.

We would not vote Conservative because we want a better health care system because that is what the NDP has brought to bear.

We would not vote Conservative to support more programs for veterans because the government, as we have seen, guts veterans' programs across the country.

We would not vote Conservative to get a better education program or more accessibility to universities.

We would not vote Conservative to improve the environment or to have fair taxes. With the HST that has been imposed by the Conservative government on British Columbians, the fair system has become less and less fair. Every time there is a middle-class tax cut, user fees go up even more. Every time Conservative governments tackle fiscal issues, the middle class is left with having to pay more through user fees. It is a bit of a shell game. Taxes are cut for the wealthy and they are increased, through user fees, on the middle class.

We would not vote Conservative to get better health and safety protections in the workplace, or to get stronger transportation safety regulations or to get a better quality of life to protect Canadian jobs, to reduce debt loads because under the government's watch the debt loads of Canadian families have increased substantially.

We would not vote Conservative for any of those reasons.

However, the Conservatives promised to bring some fiscal prudence to the management of federal government affairs. Let us look at the top 10 boondoggles from the last few months. There is the HST, as I mentioned. There were corporate tax cuts of $60 billion handed out to Canada's wealthiest corporations, to be transferred to the Bahamas or Panama. We had the G8 and G20—

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I hear absolutely no bearing on the speech that the member is giving as being relevant to the question before us. I ask that you bring him back to order to talk about the bill before us.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member has been speaking for close to five minutes now, so if he could bring his remarks to the substance of the motion before the House, the Chair and the other colleagues in the House would appreciate that.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, but as you well know, the whole issue here is the Conservative misuse of resources, and I will take a moment just to set the case for how badly Conservatives have managed the fiscal direction of the country and how that has an impact on their criminal justice policies as well. I know the Conservative members opposite do not like to hear the facts, but as a financial administrator, which was my profession before I became a member of Parliament, I will say that they are going to have to just accept that facts have to be brought to the table.

We had $1 billion for the G8 and G20 summits. We have had the Senate appointments, of course, the Olympic waste and the overruns in the security budget, and the advertising budget being supersized at multiple times what the advertising budget was supposed to be. We had the absurdity of doorknobs being changed in Prince Edward Island and hundreds of dollars spent on signs advertising that. We had the AbitibiBowater payoff of $130 million and the F-35 fighter jet costs.

Coming back to criminal justice policies, we also have the $9 billion boondoggle on the creation of prisons. That is what the Conservatives say is their criminal justice policy. They have managed very ineptly the finances of the country, but they are saying, “Trust us on crime”. They brought forward this bill that could have received all-party consent immediately, because as I mentioned earlier on Bill C-39, some of the provisions all parties support, but they wanted to throw a few poison pills in it just to provoke more of a debate.

We have to wonder, when they are willing to put $9 billion in prisons, what they are cutting back on. That is the point that I want to make and why it was important to talk about the fiscal ineptitude of the government, because when we look at the criminal justice system we see the same kind of mean-spirited, inept, incompetent approach on criminal justice issues.

What have they cut back? It has not just been the constant verbal assaults on our police officers and police chiefs that we saw during this incredibly divisive gun registry debate. It is also what they have chosen not to put money into. The public safety officer compensation fund was an NDP motion, voted on by Conservatives. Four years after they were elected, they are still refusing to put in place a public safety officer compensation fund so that when police officers or firefighters die in the line of duty, their families are compensated. It is absolutely appalling, but that is their approach, to say to police officers and firefighters, “We do not care about you”. Four years they have been waiting. Every year they come to Parliament Hill. Every year they get the back of the hand from the Conservative government.

The Auditor General's report is very clear about the kinds of investments that are needed for forensic laboratories with the RCMP. What we have seen is an increase of nearly 25% to 30%, depending on the location across the country, in waiting times for important forensic information that leads to crimes being solved. In the Vancouver area, where I come from, the lower mainland of British Columbia, we are talking about now a half a year wait for important forensic information.

It is criminally irresponsible to say, “We are going to throw a bill into the House of Commons but we are not going to provide supports for our police officers. In fact, we are going to verbally attack them. We are not going to put those additional police officers that we promised on the streets of Canadian cities. No, we are going to cut back on that. We are going to cut back on the forensic lab support”.

Even though more resources are called for, they are saying to the Canadian public, “No, we do not want to put more resources into forensic labs so we can get information back more quickly, so our law enforcement authorities will be able to solve crimes more quickly. No, we are going to take all of that $9 billion and invest in new prisons, not in supporting our front-line police officers, not in solving crimes”.

This is absolutely irresponsible, incompetent behaviour, and that is exactly what the government is doing.

It has cut back on courts. We have seen in my own riding of Burnaby--New Westminster, and this is partly federal Conservative but also partly provincial Liberal irresponsibility, that they closed the local courthouse, so we now have more of a backlog in the court system as well.

The front-line police officers are not getting the support they need. The forensic laboratories are not getting the support they need. The court systems are being cut back, so the criminal prosecutors and judges cannot do the work they need to do.

Perhaps the most reprehensible in all of this dumb on crime approach, incredibly short-sighted for all the key sectors that actually need investment of resources, is crime prevention. We have been saying this morning and as the debate has gone on into the afternoon that the Conservative government has cut back on 70% of crime prevention funding.

What does that mean? Looking at the National Crime Prevention Centre, looking at community crime prevention programs, it means that the programs that actually prevent crime are not being adequately funded.

Is that appallingly stupid? Yes, it is. We know, and international studies have shown this as well in case after case, that to put a dollar into crime prevention funding, $6 will be saved later on in policing costs, investigation costs, court costs and prison costs.

On the $9 billion that the government wants to waste on prisons for unreported crime, we must remember that the crime rate has been coming down, despite Conservative ineptness on this issue, because of demographics. As the population ages, the crime rate goes down. It is the same phenomenon we are seeing in western Europe and in the United States.

In terms of cutting back on crime prevention and putting $9 billion into prisons, when one-sixth of that amount would lead to a much more effective approach to criminal justice issues, a much lower crime rate, and most importantly in this corner of the House, fewer victims, should that not be the goal of the government?

That is certainly a fundamental Canadian value. What Canadians want to see in the criminal justice system is fewer victims. They want to see fewer victims of violent crime, fewer victims of property crime.

Yet this government does the exact opposite of what it needs to do and does it by shovelling money like there is no tomorrow, like there is some kind of magical Conservative money tree out there where they can just take $9 billion and build the new prisons for unreported crime. Forget about crime prevention programs and forget about supports for forensic laboratories to actually solve the crimes. Forget about front-line police officers. Forget about compensating the families when those police officers are killed in the line of duty. Forget about all of that because what the Conservatives want to do is build their legacy: $9 billion in brick and mortar prisons for unreported crime. It is an absolutely absurd, irresponsible approach, but that is what the government is choosing to do.

The Conservative MPs here are not ripping up the talking points forced on them by the PMO. They are not supposed to deviate from that or think for themselves. They are not supposed to think for their community. They are not supposed to think in the best interests of the country. No, they are supposed to take what the Prime Minister's Office gives them and read it verbatim.

Every single one of them knows, if they have been consulting with crime prevention activists in their community, that their goal should be fewer crimes and that is done by investing in crime prevention.

Their goal should be a more rapid turnaround and swiftness in justice. That is done by adequately funding the forensic laboratories.

Their goal should be more community policing. The way to do that is to put more front-line police officers in the streets of the city, as they promised years ago and have not delivered.

Their goal should be that when a police officer falls in the line of duty his or her family is taken care of.

Even though they voted on my motion and they said they would bring it in, they have now been stalling for four years in doing that fundamental thing.

What else have the Conservatives cut back on? They have also cut back on programs on drug-impaired driving. It is an absurdity. These are the things they are cutting back on so that they can build nine billion dollars' worth of prisons for unreported crime.

I want to come back to the forensic laboratory. I talked about average wait times of 114 days, and higher in the Vancouver region where it is nearly half a year. How do other countries handle the turnaround for forensic laboratories?

The Forensic Science Service in the United Kingdom has a turnaround of seven days as opposed to nearly half a year. The National Laboratory of Forensic Science in Sweden has a turnaround time of 28 days. The Auditor General's report indicates that even in the United States, which has not been as good at forensic funding as it should be, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has a turnaround of 80 days. These jurisdictions are adequately funding their forensic laboratories. They are putting the resources in place. They are putting the money where it needs to go.

It is absolutely foolish to say that a priority for the criminal justice system as reflected in Bill C-39, with the little poison pills thrown in by the government as justification for the building of more prisons for unreported crime as the President of the Treasury Board said so clearly, is to spend $9 billion to build these prisons. Yet the programs that are being starved for funding or have received substantial cutbacks in funding, such as the National Crime Prevention Centre, have to go hungry while the Conservatives strive through Bill C-39 to build more prisons.

We in this corner of the House are looking for a smart on crime approach. We need fewer victims. We need fewer crimes. We need to ensure that programs for problem youth are present, because we know these youth can be diverted away from a life of crime at an earlier stage. Study after study has shown that. Yet we have seen cutbacks in key youth crime prevention programs and youth program funding, so there is a greater chance for these youth to go to prison, which is a university for crime. Then we see, as the member for Windsor—Tecumseh said yesterday in the House, the government cutting back on other programs, within the prison system, as well.

If our objective is to reduce crime, to have fewer victims, there are two things we have to do. First, we have to make sure that we head off people, particularly youth, who find themselves drawn into a life of crime. We have to stop that cold. We have to make sure there are fewer victims. Crime prevention programs, sadly cut by the government, actually accomplish that. Second, when these individuals go to prison, we have to make sure that we get the rehabilitation rate up as high as possible.

Nobody who is a risk to society should be released. However, we have to make sure that those who come to the end of their sentence have been completely rehabilitated. How do we do that? We do that through the agricultural program in the prison system that the Conservatives cut back. We do that through psychiatric counselling and treatment. In the estimates of the Correctional Service of Canada, up to 50% of those in the prison system are subject to psychiatric counselling and treatment. They have mental health issues, so we have to provide more support there. Instead, the Conservatives have supplied less. In term of education programs, there again the member for Windsor—Tecumseh said very clearly that what we have seen is less support, not more.

In every single stage of the criminal justice system, the mean-spirited Conservative government has slashed and burned all of the programs that reduced the crime rate and reduced the number of victims in society. Instead, the government offers more crime, more victims, and more prisons. What a foolish concept. What a foolish approach.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is truly remarkable. It gives me great confidence in the people of Canada when I hear members of the NDP speak, because in their wisdom, the people of Canada know better than to ever give that group of people the mandate to run this country.

It is truly remarkable that there is a group of people in the Parliament of Canada who would actually suggest that victims want criminals on the street. It is absolutely unbelievable to me.

My seatmate in the House is a passionate advocate for the victims of crime. Has the hon. member ever asked her if she wants to see the person who perpetrated the crime against her family out on the street, or if she feels a sense of sympathy that criminals may have to double-bunk for a couple of years until we build more prisons? I doubt it, because you are too busy talking to the criminals in the prisons who are advocating for better treatment, who are worried about whether they will get certain things. The hon. member should speak to the victims, not the criminals. It is absolutely unbelievable.

The hon. member talked about police officers. Which party do police officers and the brave chiefs of police decide to run with when they run for office? They come to the Conservative Party because they understand that the Conservative Party reflects the values of police. It respects the values of Canadians.The member for Oxford and the former commissioner of the OPP who is running in Vaughan understand what the NDP do not understand, which is why the NDP will always be a rump in the House. They understand that Canadians want a balanced justice system. Canadians want a government, and they finally have one, that puts the rights of victims ahead of the rights of criminals. When will the member finally understand that it costs Canadians--

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order. I will just remind the hon. member to address his comments through the Chair. I will have to cut him off there to allow time for a response from the member for Burnaby—New Westminster.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely shameful not only that the member has not listened to anything, but that he is attacking police officers and he is again attacking crime prevention programs. It is absolutely absurd. Admittedly the member's intervention was kind of garbled and I know he is new to the House and has not found his feet yet, but to try to pretend there is some justification for the slashing of crime prevention programs that create fewer victims in this country is misinformed, to say the least, and disingenuous at best.

This is the Conservative litany. The Conservative members have got their notes from the Prime Minister's Office. They are unable to deviate from them. They have not been able to bring a single fact to this whole debate. Why? Because the PMO one-pager did not have any facts. It did not talk about the slashing of crime prevention. It did not talk about the incredible disrespect for our police officers and firefighters by the government's refusal to implement the public safety officer compensation fund. It did not talk about the Auditor General's report and the slashing of the forensic laboratory funding that every other country in the world funds. The one-pager did not talk about any of that. That is why--

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order. Questions and comments, the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my question has to do with the asymmetry in the media's coverage of crime.

A while ago I spoke to a gentleman who is now the head of the YMCA in North America. He got his start in my riding many, many years ago. He told me how he got started with the YMCA. There was a shopping centre in my community that was known to be a kind of marketplace for drugs at the time. A few people, including this individual, got a group together and sort of befriended the young people who otherwise may have been lured into drug trafficking or drug taking. They would have coffee with them or would get together for a game of basketball.

These kinds of things do not get reported in the media. We do not see on the front page of the Globe and Mail, “Youth worker has coffee with young person”. What we see is that a bank was robbed or that some other crime was committed. We tend to devalue the capacity of crime prevention, which is a quiet way of doing things, a quiet initiative. We tend to devalue that as a way of combatting crime.

I would like to hear my hon. colleague's comments on that.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question, which was a much more coherent, fact-based question than the rants we have heard from the other side.

The member has raised a very important point. I was a financial administrator before I became a member of Parliament, and I had to make every dollar count. That is how most Canadian families do their work.

Here we have crime prevention programs that make every dollar count. For every dollar invested in a crime prevention program, six dollars are saved in policing costs, court costs and prison costs later on. It is one dollar to six dollars. Every dollar invested saves six dollars.

The government foolishly, recklessly, irresponsibly, rather than building on those crime prevention programs to reduce crime, to have fewer victims, is doing exactly the opposite. It is slashing and burning the crime prevention programs, and then borrowing $9 billion to build new prisons so it can cut the ribbons when they open. It is absolutely irresponsible. It is exactly the wrong thing to do.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, let us talk about facts. The government still has the problem of explaining how when crime rates are going down it wants to spend $2 billion on more prisons to imprison more people. It does not make any sense.

What is missing from this bill is mental health diagnosis and treatment, literacy and education programs, drug and alcohol treatment, and work programs. By the way, the government also cut the prison farm system which also helped to make our communities safe.

Here are a couple of facts for the government, and on which I would like the member to comment. The total spending on drug interdiction activities will hit $34 million this year, up from $100,000 in 2005-06. Meanwhile, total expenditures on substance abuse programs is actually going down, from $11.8 million in 2007-08 to $10.1 million in 2009-10.

With everybody acknowledging that 80% of prisoners in our federal institutions have an addiction, a figure even the other side will acknowledge, what are the member's comments on a government that would reduce spending on addictions treatment—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member is certainly one of the bright lights in this Parliament because he actually brings facts and research to bear, which is the responsibility of all of us to do. I am chagrined to see one-half of the House, the other side, not bringing a single fact. Those members just bring their one-pager, whatever the Prime Minister tells them to say, rather than bringing a single fact to bear on this issue. It seems they are incapable of a fact-based approach.

Another example is addiction programs. I talked about the cutbacks to psychiatric care and the disrespect to police officers, the steadfast refusal to bring in a public safety officer compensation fund. There are cutbacks to crime prevention and cutbacks to forensic laboratories. Now addiction programs are being cut back 20%. It speaks for itself how the government approaches—