Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-576, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (personating peace officer). The bill seeks to amend section 130 by adding the following:
If a person is convicted of an offence under section 130, the court imposing the sentence on the person shall consider as an aggravating circumstance the fact that the accused personated a peace officer for the purpose of facilitating the commission of another offence.
I want to acknowledge the good work that the member for Red Deer has done on this. I am sure the pain and suffering for the family would have prompted the member to take some action.
I want to refer to the section that is being amended. Section 130 states:
Everyone...who
(a) falsely represents himself to be a peace officer or a public officer;
or
(b) not being a peace officer or public officer, uses a badge or article of uniform or equipment in a manner that is likely to cause persons to believe that he is a peace officer or a public officer, as the case may be....
is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.
The member for Red Deer ably outlined the terrible circumstances that led him to propose his private member's bill. It stemmed from an incident that took place in his riding in 2009, where a 16-year-old girl was abducted and sexually assaulted by an individual who posed as a police officer.
The individual pleaded guilty to several charges and was given an 18-year sentence for kidnapping. He was also sentenced to six months for personating a police officer but, and this is the piece that is troubling for people, that sentence would run concurrent to his other sentence. Many in the community felt that it should have been made consecutive.
There is one thing each and every one of us takes to heart. As a mother, when my son was young, I used to tell him that if he ever was separated from me, he should go to a police officer. We talked about what a police officer looked like and I showed him pictures. What becomes really important is this element of trust. It is fundamental to our justice system that we look to our police officers to protect us and to be safe people so we can tell young people to go to them when they need help.
The kinds of incidents that we are seeing are, sadly, not isolated incidents, and I will talk about a couple of others. If they were isolated incidents, we could take care of it. What we are doing is undermining the trust people have in our police forces.
The other element of this, before I talk about some specific cases, is this is a really important opportunity to educate people. As the member for Red Deer rightly pointed out, every police officer has certain protocols and procedures that he or she undertakes when stopping people, such as showing identification, having a badge and a number of other things.
It is an important aspect of the debate in the House to remind people that they also have rights when they are being stopped by who they believe is a police officer. They should always be comfortable in taking the step of contacting their local station or calling 911 to verify that the person they are interacting with is actually an officer.
I want to touch on a couple of other instances. One example was in the Hamilton Spectator in October. A man was stopped by a woman and the woman who pulled him over was not dressed in an officer's uniform, but her demeanour and questions led him to believe she was a police officer. The fake officer demanded that the man pay the speeding fine on the spot. He did not have enough money with him and subsequently went to an ATM to withdraw cash. It is also a good reminder that people personating police officers are not just men. They are also women.
In Kelowna in May, police were trying to find out who was responsible for stealing a car by impersonating a police officer and trying to defraud the car owner. The women called to report the theft and also reported that a so-called police officer on the phone had asked for her bank card and personal identification number so he could secure her bank cards. The real police officer who responded to the theft report knew that questioning about bank information was not what police would ask in an investigation and told the woman to cancel her bank cards immediately.
That is a really important reminder. As the article in the Kelowna Capital News reports, the fact is no authentic police officer will ask someone to hand over cold, hard cash on the spot, nor will he or she ask for bank card information.
There is the case in Mississauga where a Mississauga councillor candidate is charged with impersonating a police officer and trying to intimidate a rival candidate to abandon her campaign. Sometimes we have public figures who are, sadly, misusing their position to do something like intimidation.
There was another case in Alberta where a man impersonated a Mountie and used his phoney authority to terrorize two university students. He has been sentenced to two and a half years in jail. Around 4 a.m., he entered a 7-Eleven store, identified himself to the clerk as a police officer and asked to use the phone. The clerk became suspicious and immediately contacted the Lethbridge Regional Police. Here we have an example where somebody who was suspicious about whether or not this person was a valid police officer. The clerk took the steps, and we need to encourage people to do this, and contacted the Lethbridge Police Department to ensure that the store was dealing with somebody who had the authority to be there.
The Globe and Mail talked about an officer is defrauding students. I know many of us have probably seen these emails that go around, asking people to send money because somebody is in trouble. In this case, the police were warning the public to be on the lookout for a man who was pretending to be a Chinese police officer and was defrauding Chinese students. The police allege the man contacted his victims and then, under the guise of conducting a security check or investigation, asked for personal banking information, such as a PIN numbers or security codes.
There are a lot more of these circumstances.
Others have pointed out that some questions need to be raised at committee.
The NDP will be supporting the bill going to committee. I know the member for Windsor—Tecumseh has talked to the member for Red Deer and has told him we support sending it to committee. However, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh said that he had some concerns that the present wording would not likely achieve the desired outcome, particularly as most judges would already consider personating a police officer as an aggravating circumstance.
The member for Windsor—Tecumseh is proposing amending the bill to require the judges to provide a rationale if they did not make a section 130 offence consecutive to any other offence. The reason he has proposed this is it would make the action explicit. When judges made the sentencing, they would explicitly state that they had considered the aggravating circumstances and that there was a rationale for making the sentence concurrent rather than consecutive. Also, he wants to maintain the confidence the public has in the justice system, that there is some credibility. It should be explicitly stated that the judge has considered the aggravating circumstances when making the sentence and it would be part of the decision being rendered.
I acknowledge the good work the member for Red Deer has done on this matter. It is an important matter to raise in the House. When it goes to committee, I am sure there will be opportunities for witnesses to come and talk about the impact on their lives and their families. We will also hear from other members of the House about how the bill can be improved to ensure it has the intended effect, which I am sure the member for Red Deer is interested in achieving. We will be supporting the bill.