As the member for Winnipeg Centre has said, if we can rehabilitate a former Conservative cabinet minister, we can rehabilitate anybody. I think this would apply to anybody from any party, because that was a very sad case.
I followed it very closely at the time. I used to go out to Saskatchewan quite a bit during those periods. It was very sad for the family, the children and everybody. It is just that this case brought excessive amounts of publicity by virtue of who Colin Thatcher was. If it had been another person who did not have his fame, we probably would not even remember the case today.
The faint hope clause review then is not a forum for a retrial of the original offence, nor is a parole hearing. A favourable decision by the judge and the jury simply advances the date on which the offender will be eligible to apply for parole. As stated:
The Supreme Court of Canada has stated that the purpose of this review procedure is to re-examine a judicial decision in light of changes which have occurred in the applicant’s situation since the time of sentencing that might justify lessening the parole ineligibility period. Section 745.6 of the Criminal Code gives the jury broad discretionary power to consider any matter concerning the offender’s situation, and the Supreme Court has provided guidelines for the exercise of this discretionary power, namely that the jury must consider only the applicant’s case and must not try the cases of other inmates who may have committed offences after being released on parole. The Court has also stated that it is not the jury’s role to determine whether the existing system of parole is effective.
The point is to counter the misinformation spread by agents of the Conservative Party and the media, which like to give the impression that prisoners are basically in a revolving door, that they are standing in line at the prison, ready to get out and move next door to law-abiding citizens or across the street. Anyone listening to these steps can see it is very rare that someone will be able to follow through on all of these steps and walk out of prison under this program.
The argument of many here, including the member for Vancouver Kingsway, is that maybe only 1% of 2% will get out, but as long as 100% have hope that someday they might get out, they probably will behave a lot better. They will try to rehabilitate themselves and stay out of trouble. We have it on record that the prison guards actually support that. The prison guards of Canada feel the last thing we need are people in prison without hope, who will resort to doing things they should not do, which might endanger the guards, other prisoners and people who should not be endangered, if this system is not in place.
The faint hope clause was put in for very good reasons, dating back to the days of Pierre Trudeau, and I will get into the history of it now.
A lot of us here today were around in those days. This is not an environment for a lot of young people. We do not see young people being elected to the House. The odd person does, but most start in the city council areas, the school boards and the provincial legislatures and work their way up. By the time we get into the federal House of Commons, we have earned that grey hair.
In July 1976 Parliament voted to abolish capital punishment, and I remember how controversial that was at the time, for Criminal Code offences as opposed to the death penalty for military offences, which was abolished in 1999. The Criminal Code was amended and the categories of murder were changed from capital and non-capital to first and second degree murder.
Mandatory minimum sentences for murderers were introduced. The compromise arrived at between the supporters and the opponents of the death penalty was its replacement with long-term imprisonment without parole. The faint hope clause was adopted in 1976 in connection with the abolition of the death penalty.
Speaking in favour of the abolition of the death penalty and the addition of the faint hope clause in the Criminal Code was the solicitor general of the day Warren Allmand. I could read his quote, but it was well said and made sense, certainly for that period of time. The faint hope clause was added to the Criminal Code in the hope that it would provide an incentive for long-term offenders to rehabilitate themselves and therefore afford more protection to prison guards.
The provision is also said to represent Parliament's awareness of how long persons convicted of murder who were imprisoned in other countries served before allowing them to apply for parole. These countries are our peers. I think most people understand that we are not talking about Third World countries, with systems that are radically different from ours. In fact, we are talking about Australia, part of the Commonwealth, Belgium, Denmark, England, New Zealand, Scotland and Switzerland. Key persons convicted of murder are imprisoned an average of 15 years before they may be paroled.
That is why we have heard many speakers today talk about the chart, which shows these countries, on average, keeping people in prison for 15 years, where in Canada it is 25 years. Canada is higher than all those other countries. In fact, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh pointed out today that people stayed longer than 25 years in prison. It is more like 28.5 years.
The first judicial review hearing under the faint hope clause was held in 1987. People want to know how many people are involved in this. As of April 12, 2009, 991 offenders have been deemed eligible to apply for a judicial review. Court decisions have been rendered in 173 cases and 143 inmates have been declared eligible to apply for earlier parole. Of these, 130 were granted parole, representing just over 13% of those who had been deemed eligible to apply for a review of their parole date.
The most recently published Correctional Service Canada statistics concerning the fate of prisoners released on parole under the faint hope clause, as of April 12, 2009, show that of the 130 offenders who had been released by that date, 101 were being actively supervised in the community. They are not running around on their own. Fourteen of them had been returned to custody because they had not behaved themselves. Eleven were deceased, one was on bail and three had been deported.
These statistics also showed that out of a total 22,000 offenders under Correctional Service Canada jurisdiction at the time, 4,495, or 19%, were serving life sentences, almost all of them for murder.
By comparison, in July 2009, 140,000 people, or 9% of the total prison population, were serving life sentences in the United States.
My time has run out, although I find it hard to believe that was a full 20 minutes. I am sure the clocks are off by just a bit.