Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up where I left off and in the meantime one thing I wanted to bring to this debate, which I did not have a chance to do, is to note that even today we had the crown prosecution in Newfoundland and Labrador recommending a businessman involved in a 2006 spending scandal in Newfoundland and Labrador's legislature be given a three-year prison sentence and be ordered to repay $450,000.
That was coming from the situation we had in the province where some elected members of the day as well as some administrative members had defrauded the House of Assembly of Newfoundland and Labrador, which in turn defrauded the population of the province of several sums of money well in excess of $1 million. People were charged and brought to court for that and sentenced. Many of the sentences have been served, but nonetheless today we see one of the people involved in that case and the extent to which this can go to.
Picking up on Bill C-21 once more, I want to go through some of the notes that I discussed earlier talking about minimum sentences applying solely to a person convicted of the general offence of fraud, subsection 380(1). It does not seem to apply to other related offences and that is what I want to pick up on, that it is one of the reasons why we need to make this a much stronger piece of legislation. These are some of the loopholes that we brought up earlier as well, and I would like to touch on some of this such as fraudulent manipulation of stock markets, insider trading, fraud affecting publication.
In these three cases, however, where the value of the subject matter exceeds $1 million, that would remain an aggravating circumstance and therein lies the strengthening that needs to come back to this piece of legislation. Nonetheless, when we talk about criminal offences to institutions, that was also brought up by one of my colleagues. The institutions exempt are the larger offenders. In this situation it becomes a milder offence for the few that are charged even though they do receive extensive charges.
Clause 3 of the bill adds four aggravating circumstances to the list. That would be the magnitude, complexity, duration or degree of planning of the fraud committed was significant. In the form of sentencing this is a very key aggravating factor. The offence had a significant impact on the victims given their personal circumstances including their age, health and financial situation.
The third aggravating factor: The offender did not comply with a licensing requirement or professional standard that is normally applicable to the activity or conduct that forms the subject matter of the offence. Finally, the fourth one contained within clause 3 is: The offender concealed or destroyed records relating to the fraud or to the disbursement of the proceeds of the fraud, which are prominent in many of the recent cases, which I will not go into because there are far too many to mention.
In addition to these specific aggravating circumstances, the general aggravating circumstances contemplated in paragraph 718.2 of the code will continue to apply. That includes the abuse of a position of trust or evidence that the offence was committed in association with a criminal organization. Moreover, the court shall cause to be stated in the record the aggravating and mitigating circumstances they took into account when determining the sentence. That is contained in 2.2 and that is the aggravating circumstances one must consider when talking about sentencing, which I agree with in this case.
With respect to restitution order 2.4, under the existing provisions a judge passing sentence for any offence under the code may order the offender to make restitution to the victim for damage to property or for bodily or psychological harm. That is very important. The court must give priority to restitution before imposing a fine on the offender. A restitution order is discretionary however, meaning that the judge may decide not even to grant it.
The bill states, “the court shall inquire of the prosecutor if reasonable steps have been taken to provide the victims with an opportunity to indicate whether they are seeking restitution for their losses”.
That is a new subsection within this legislation. In addition, “If the court decides not to make a restitution order, it shall give reasons for its decision and shall cause those reasons to be stated in the record”.
In the few minutes I have left, I would like to talk about one of the issues that came up in this particular legislation, and in other pieces of legislation, which is the victim impact statements. I have always ascribed this to be a very important element when it comes to the sentencing of people convicted of crimes. In this particular bill, clause 4 talks about that.
The code currently provides for a victim impact statement to be filed at the sentencing stage. For the purpose of determining the sentence to be imposed for any offence under the code, the court is required to consider any victim impact statement describing the harm done to, or loss suffered by, the victim arising from the commission of the offence.
Each and every time these frauds take place, we see in the evening news, in all the newspapers, that the impact of this is absolutely immense. So much of this occurs. Thousands and thousands of cases are reported. I would say the vast majority in this House know people, family members, maybe their own parents and children, who were victims of fraud. It is excruciating to go through and it could last for quite some time for those people defrauded of their life savings, their nest eggs, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Of course, in this particular case, we focus on the $1 million mark.
For the purpose of the code, “victim” means a person to whom harm was done or who suffered physical or emotional loss as a result of the commission of the offence. To me, that seems to be a very valid and important part of this legislation.