Debates of May 5th, 2010

Motions for Papers

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

The House resumed from May 3 consideration of the motion that Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Criminal Code

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

When the bill was last before the House, the hon. member for Yukon had the floor and there are seven minutes remaining in the time allotted for his remarks. I therefore call upon the hon. member for Yukon.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure again to rise on this very important bill, a bill that is important for my riding and, indeed, the justice system and all Canadians.

To briefly summarize what I was talking about in the first 13 minutes, I made the point that many Conservative MPs do not have an appropriate understanding of the effectiveness of conditional sentencing and of the success rates of conditional sentencing. As all studies have shown, it makes victims and Canadians much safer because it has a higher rate of reducing future crime. There is a lower rate of recidivism when someone is on a conditional sentence than when they go through incarceration.

People say that incarceration for a number of criminals is just a university of crime. They are with people who are not helping them get on in life or develop good methods and morals. They are teaching them ways to continue in crime, whereas conditional sentences have all sorts of conditions which many people do not understand that help rehabilitate someone and get them prepared for a meaningful life. Everyone, of course, goes back into society after their sentence is finished.

It is hard to believe that the government actually takes this whole crime agenda seriously. It talks about it all the time but it keeps shutting down Parliament and delaying its own crime bills every time it gets close to being in trouble. At the last prorogation there were 19 crime bills. A lot of those bills could have been through already. If the government were really serious about protecting Canadians it would not keep delaying its own bills on crime.

I sat on the justice committee for a number of the bills and virtually all the experts and all the witnesses we saw on a vast majority of the bills showed that a number of the provisions being put forward did not make any sense when they were tested against the reality of what worked, of what the stats showed, of what actually reduced crime and of what protected victims. Therefore, the justice committee had to make a number of modifications. The precursor to this bill, Bill C-9, we had to drastically change because it was so out of whack with reality and with what witnesses and experts said would actually protect Canadians and reduce victims.

I would agree that some violent crimes should not be eligible for conditional sentences, which is why I am willing to let the bill go to committee. However, for a number of crimes that should still be allowed, where judges should have discretion. The government has made no indication and cannot answer the question about the cost of this. There have been disastrous results from the Conservatives' other bills when someone else analyzed the costs. There is no analysis here, especially considering the provinces will have to pay for some of it and they have no idea what would need to be transferred to the provinces.

When we are in this huge deficit, the biggest in history, the Conservatives need to keep raising taxes. They raised the income trusts for elderly people in this country. EI premiums are going up. We are all paying airline taxes and huge interest rates on our income tax. Now they want to put in another bill that will cost a lot of money with no costing whatsoever and no telling the provinces what they will have to pay.

The second point I want to make relates to the appellate courts. If the lower court has a problem with a sentence that does not provide an appropriate conditional sentence, then it is appealed. The appeal courts do not have a problem interpreting the conditional sentencing. Both Ontario and Alberta Courts of Appeal agree that conditional sentences are not interpreted the same way for dangerous offenders purposes, which have totally different consequences and purposes.

Another problem with the bill is that it totally avoids the principles of sentencing and the circumstances of the crime. If the government thinks the bill will get away without a constitutional challenge, it has another think coming. If we defy major principles in our justice system, looking at the principles of sentencing, the circumstances of a particular crime by eliminating one of the options for the judge, then that certainly will be challenged at some time in the future.

The last point relates to policy development. Policy development in the federal system normally starts with experts in a department, such as the Department of Justice, who have years of experience. They find a need in society, work it up, study it around the world, talk about the problems and then they bring forward legislation.

It has been made quite clear to us in committee that on a number of justice cases the government has been working the other way around. The government just tells the bureaucrats what to do. In those cases, Department of Justice officials have not even been able to defend the legislation because they did not develop it. It is indefensible, as the experts explained to us in the justice committee.

I would like to ask Conservative members if they could give me three examples of cases where the courts gave an inappropriate sentence for a violent crime, a conditional sentence, and those sentences were not appealed. Conditional sentences have worked in thousands of cases. I would just like to have three examples of where a conditional sentence was given for a violent crime and the sentence was not appealed.

As one of my colleagues said, a lot of this bill appears to be a solution looking for a problem. I was a bit more enthusiastic about this bill at the start but when the government cannot answer any of these questions about it, it really puts the whole effort into question.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the end of the speech given by my colleague, whom I thank. I also want to thank him for the work he does. We sit together on the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, and he is a goldmine of information because he lives in the Yukon. He represents a huge area.

Does my colleague know whether there are any studies specifically for the Yukon on the impact this bill would have in terms of the number of inmates who would no longer be entitled to a conditional sentence? Can my colleague tell us how many criminals—because they are the ones who get conditional sentences—would be directly affected if this bill were passed as is? I will come back to this point in a few minutes when I speak on behalf of the Bloc Québécois.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I do enjoy working with my colleague on the aboriginal affairs and northern development committee.

The short answer to his question is that no specific study has been done. It would have a very big effect on my riding because of the number of aboriginal people in my riding. There are even more in the other two territories.

As the member well knows, an inordinate number of aboriginal people are incarcerated in the justice system. It is not working. The numbers are way above the proportion of the population. This bill would keep more people in jail where they will not get as much treatment and rehabilitation as those people who receive conditional sentences. A lot more aboriginal people will be in prisons. A lot more people will be in prisons across Canada who could then become more dangerous offenders and we could have a lot more victims.

The other point is that we have a restorative justice program in the Yukon, aboriginal justice, that has incredible rates, sometimes close to 100%, of people who do not reoffend when they receive conditional sentences. Whereas in the traditional incarceration system, the rate of recidivism is 30%, 40%, 70% and people come out a danger to society.

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

Mr. Speaker, three years ago the Conservative government appointed Canada's first ever Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, Steve Sullivan. Just in the last week, he criticized the government for shortchanging victims of crime and taking money away from the program. This is hardly the message that the government would want to project having spent years pretending to be friends of the victims of crime. His criticism of the government is that it is spending too much money on sentencing and not enough on victims of crime.

I would like to ask the member whether he agrees with Mr. Sullivan's assessment and whether he has observations on what went wrong over there. The government hired Mr. Sullivan three years ago and it clearly is not willing to reappoint him and does not want to go along with his recommendations.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, as the member knows and as he heard quite well in question period, any time an independent officer criticizes the government, they are not reappointed. The government does not like criticism.

I actually have not read that report. The member makes a very interesting point, because the only defence that many of the Conservative speakers make for these bills that do not make any sense to the experts is that they are protecting the victims.

Now, the one thing that would allow the Conservatives to force bad bills through Parliament has turned out to be a fallacy because, as the member just outlined, the government has retracted resources to help the victims of crime.

The point I have made numerous times in Parliament, the second point on the same topic, is that the Conservatives are actually jeopardizing the victims to be re-victimized when they put forward bills that would make Canada more dangerous, by not doing what the experts say and providing treatment such as conditional sentences and restorative justice that have proven track records.

When there is restorative justice or a conditional sentence, all sorts of conditions go along with it. Conditions relate to substance abuse, which is quite often involved in over 50% of the crimes, and rehabilitation, which gets people ready to reintegrate into society. It is that which makes society safer and protects victims. We should be concentrating on that rather than sentencing that has been proven not to be effective in many cases.

Recent studies that have come out cost billions of dollars, money that could have been used to finance removing the root causes of crime, dealing with victims and rehabilitating offenders.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I compliment my colleague from Yukon for a very incisive approach to a very serious problem in the country.

Because we are talking about a justice and crime agenda that the government has laid out, he has taken the trouble to actually look at dissecting the problem and proposing solutions. The member has analyzed exactly what the problem is.

I note with some optimism that both our colleagues from the other two parties, the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue and the member for Elmwood—Transcona, have underscored two very important issues that I would like to have my colleague from Yukon comment on.

First, this is a very large and very diverse country, not just geographically but culturally, and in a large geographic environment like our own, where people develop local, regional approaches to maintaining harmony and co-operation in communities, legislation like this might not be the very best solution.

Second, if we are going to implement legislation such as that which the government has proposed, and as my colleagues from Yukon and Elmwood—Transcona have pointed out, there has been no indication of the resources that will be put in place to achieve restorative justice, rehabilitation and reintegration. I think those are very important issues to keep in mind.

I wonder whether my colleague would step away from his learned approach to this and reflect on the other practical measure here, which is that this is a regurgitation of bills that have been presented prior in this Parliament and in a previous Parliament and were abandoned by the government through prorogation. Is it, in his estimation, a situation where the government is simply not taking its own legislation seriously and that perhaps we are lonely voices in the desert crying out for justice with the government's deaf ears as our audience?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate working with my colleague. He made a number of points and I will not get through them all in the time I am allowed. His first point was about our large geographic country. It is not only large geographically, but it is also very large culturally, with probably more diasporas than any country in the world. This leads to people in different situations. Aboriginal people have totally different cultural systems.

For instance, if we remove restorative justice and force aboriginal people from the high Arctic to be incarcerated when there are no prisons there, they may have to be moved thousands of miles from their family or support system. We are just going to increase the problem and cause more crime. They could never be rehabilitated. We do not have any sensitivity to the various cultures in this country.

That is why I said that this bill is easily going to get a constitutional challenge. The principles of sentencing look at the circumstances of the crime and of the person. When we remove the tools and the flexibility that judges have to deal with these vast differences in Canadian cultures and Canadian geography, it is really not constitutional and it is certainly not as effective as it could be in reducing crime.

The second point he made was excellent. I referred to it in the first 13 minutes of my speech. It came out recently that these bills cost billions of dollars and had limited effectiveness. That money should have been spent on prevention and the root causes of crime, on reintegration of criminals into society, and on rehabilitation. I will use probation as an example. If we remove this, there will be probation, and in probation we do not get that rehabilitation and reintegration. Therefore, we would be more likely to have more victims and a more dangerous society.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak again about Bill C-16, which was known as Bill C-42 barely a few months ago. Two years ago it was Bill C-9.

There are always questions about the administration of justice. How can justice be better administered? How can we ensure that dangerous criminals stay behind bars as long as possible? We will not find positive answers to these questions in Bill C-16.

For those who are watching, I should explain what we are talking about. When an individual is brought before a court for having committed an offence, a break and enter for example, the judge has a myriad of options, ranging from a simple fine to jail time. Somewhere between those two options is parole and absolute discharge.

When it comes to detention, the Conservatives need to stop kidding us. I am sure that the translators, who are wonderful, will put this correctly in English: a conditional sentence is still a sentence. And that brings us to the final types of sentences a judge can impose—a fixed term sentence or a conditional sentence. Since the Conservatives are not familiar with this, I will explain it to them.

In 1996, a number of attorneys general and ministers of justice—including the current Minister of Justice, who was in Manitoba at the time—determined that this was expensive and that some people were jailed too long for nothing.

We must understand one extremely important thing, which I will repeat because the members opposite do not understand: a conditional sentence is a sentence of imprisonment. The Conservatives are saying that offenders serve their sentence at home with their feet up doing nothing. I will come back to that. They are bending the truth, if not totally lying to the public when they say such things. It is absolutely not true.

I practised law in 1985, 1990 and 1995, and from 1996 to 2003. I argued many cases and learned a lot about the system. For example, an individual is brought before a judge, who hands down a conditional sentence. It might be a good idea for certain Conservative MPs to read and consult section 718 of the Criminal Code, which is not being amended by this bill. This section is the basis of conditional sentencing. It reads:

The fundamental purpose of sentencing is to contribute, along with crime prevention initiatives, to respect for the law and the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society...

These words are important and our favourite Conservatives need to understand them:

...by imposing just sanctions that have one or more of the following objectives:

(a) to denounce unlawful conduct;

(b) to deter the offender...

(c) to separate offenders from society, where necessary;

We see that the third objective does not come first.

The fourth objective is, “to assist in rehabilitating offenders”. Those are not my words. That is what it says in section 718 of the Criminal Code. Do the Conservatives want to abolish section 718 while they are at it?

Then there is the fifth objective, “to provide reparations for harm done to victims or the community”. An intelligent judge—and God knows, judges are intelligent—who has read and understood section 718 knows how to apply it. Let us be clear about something once and for all. It is a shame my Conservative friends are not listening to what I am saying.

A conditional sentence can only apply to sentences of less than two years.

Less than two years. Is that clear enough?

The very title of the bill is reprehensible. It is absurd. It does not apply to hardened criminals or those who commit dozens of break and enters. It applies to sentences of less than two years given for offences such as petty theft, auto theft and joy-rides. These sentences are usually given to young people who do not understand. They are not hardened criminals. Judges want them to consider their actions. We are not talking about thieves who commit armed robbery. That kind of crime buys a minimum of four years in jail because a weapon was involved. Anyone who uses a weapon to commit theft gets a minimum of four years in jail. Is that clear enough?

This bill is worse than backward; it drags us back nearly 30 years. The Conservatives' mentality is dangerous because it would move us backward.

That is not the worst of it though. When the Minister of Justice told the committee that this was what attorneys general wanted, committee members asked him if every attorney general in Canada agreed with him. He had the nerve to say that the majority agreed. The problem is that he did not study the issue. The Minister of Justice just came up with this bill. Initially, it was Bill C-42. Now it is Bill C-16, but it is the same bill. Only its number changed. The Conservatives did not study the issue. God knows that I can say so because I was a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights when we studied Bill C-42. We asked them if they had done any studies suggesting that this kind of bill is useful and necessary and that attorneys general and crown prosecutors want it. The answer was no.

So why are they introducing this type of bill? For one reason and one reason only—to respond to the Conservatives supposed target population, which is asking them to be tough on crime. The problem is that when you are tough on crime, you also need to be smart on crime. You have to understand these sentences and these demands. When the bill is studied again, they will trot out the same numbers again. Numbers can speak for themselves. Hold on tight, you are in for quite a surprise.

I will give the real numbers for those who are listening. I did not make these up; they come from the Department of Justice. Actually, they are from the Department of Public Safety, which is practically the same thing. They work hand in hand. This needs to be heard. The average annual inmate cost—I am going to take my time, Mr. Speaker; you can add this to the time I have been allotted—for persons in provincial or territorial custody—the provinces, Quebec, Yukon, Ontario—including remand or other forms of temporary detention was, listen carefully now, $52,205 in 2005-2006. I will repeat that in case the Conservatives did not understand. It cost $52,205 per year to keep someone in a provincial prison. But the best is yet to come. The cost of monitoring an offender within the community, including conditional sentences, probation, supervision, fines and release was $2,398.05 in 2006-2007. I will translate that into plain language since they did not understand. I will repeat it.

It costs $52,205 per year to keep someone in prison, while a conditional sentence costs $2,398.05 per year. The government's figures show that the recidivism rates for individuals who receive conditional sentences have significantly decreased. I am repeating that because they do not understand. The Bloc is not the one saying this.

However, if we were to adopt this bill as is tomorrow morning, we would have 13,000 to 15,000 more prisoners in our provincial detention facilities. That is many hundreds. I hope they know how to count on the other side. Let us take the lower number, 13,000, and multiply it by $52,000. I hope they know how to count. That money could be invested in rehabilitation programs and we could offer appropriate services to the people who need them.

The worst is that regions like Yukon and the Northwest Territories will pay the price because, unfortunately, those regions have a lot of crimes committed by aboriginals. There is a high rate of imprisonment among aboriginals.

In 1996, the government was smart. This government was not in power in 1996. The government implemented conditional sentences because it had thought it through and had conducted studies. It said this was about actual prison sentences. The offender must be found guilty of an offence not punishable by a minimum sentence.

It is clear that if someone commits murder, we will not waste our time. That is what the Conservatives do not understand. Conditional sentencing applies only to sentences of less than two years for which there is no mandatory minimum term of imprisonment. Possession of a firearm for dangerous purposes carries a minimum sentence of three years. That is not an eligible offence and conditional sentencing would not apply. Let us take, for example, multiple charges of impaired driving. If the court imposes a sentence of more than two years, this does not apply. It applies only to people who are imprisoned for less than two years.

Whether our Conservative friends like it or not, when we see the real figures, we can see that judges have taken their role so seriously that, since 2000, they have tightened up monitoring and imposed stricter conditions for an individual to be eligible for conditional sentencing.

When conditional sentences were first being developed, around 1996 or 1997, people were very concerned about whether an individual would respect all the conditions that were set. It was out of respect for the victims—the Conservatives like it when we tell them these things—that the criteria to qualify for a conditional sentence were tightened to include custody. It is a form of imprisonment. It might be at home or at a detention centre or reception centre. The individual's schedule is monitored. The monitoring system is very important in such cases. The individual is regularly and continuously monitored.

To demonstrate this, for days on end, many of my clients were woken up at 3 a.m. by the monitoring service that called to ensure they were at home in bed. Once that was confirmed, the service wished them a good day and hung up.

They are prohibited from having anything other than a land line phone. When cell phones came on the scene, someone could gallivant all over the place and answer as though he was at home. Now conditional sentences prohibit cell phones, because the individual must be reachable at home. So what happens when someone breaches one of the conditions of his conditional sentence? This is very important.

What the Conservatives fail to grasp is that the person is sentenced, for example, to an 18-month conditional sentence, with certain conditions that are set, approved and signed by the court. The individual who breaches the conditions is arrested and serves the rest of the sentence without being eligible for parole. What does that mean? I will explain it for my Conservative friends. Take the example of an individual who is arrested and is given an 18-month conditional sentence. If he does not respect the conditions on the first week-end, he is arrested and jailed, and has to serve the rest of his sentence without possibility of parole. I can assure you, as I have represented a number of these clients, that the court will be very reluctant and hard pressed to release them under other conditions.

I would like to end by telling my Conservative colleagues that eliminating conditional sentences for 39 offences is not the way to reduce crime. This propaganda must stop. This means one thing and we must realize it. If individuals, if the Conservatives, if the Minister of Justice wish to impose jail sentences rather than conditional sentences, it is because they do not trust the judges. That is extremely dangerous. In fact, we need to realize something: if we are unhappy with a judge's sentence, we can appeal. That is what the appeal courts are there for. The government should stop beating around the bush and just say that they do not trust them. We believe that we must trust our courts and, above all, that we must keep conditional sentencing, which is a good measure, one that works well and reduces crime.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's speech and there are many misrepresentations. Let me deal with a couple of them.

One is his whole inference that we should save this money and use it for rehabilitation. Millions and millions of dollars are spent on rehabilitation. In fact, we introduced new money to ensure youth were kept from crime. My colleague from Niagara West—Glanbrook and three NDP members who share the community of Hamilton were beneficiaries of $2 million to invest in the community to ensure we kept youth from crime.

There is the misrepresentation that this is not about violent crime. In 2006 we presented a bill to end house arrest for violent crime and the opposition not only fought against it but gutted it. So everybody is very clear, as a result of that, criminals remain eligible for house arrest for a long list of property and serious crimes, including, among others, aggravated assault, human trafficking, luring a child, street racing causing death, arson, fraud, counterfeiting, most auto thefts and extortion.

Why would the member not want to protect victims of these very serious crimes and ensure the perpetrators would be off the street so they would not reoffend? He is talking about it being expensive. Let me tell everyone that if somebody burns down a second house, it is very expensive.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague needs to take the time to listen to me. What he just said is not true, and I will explain why. The bill title is not correct: An Act to amend the Criminal Code (ending house arrest for property and other serious crimes). What my colleague does not understand is that people who commit arson are not entitled to conditional sentences. There are minimum sentences of more than two years for arson. As soon as there is a minimum sentence, the offender is not entitled to a conditional sentence.

I do not mind giving a law course. Where the law provides for a minimum sentence, there is no possibility of a conditional sentence. Is that clear enough?

This is true of a number of offences, including the one the member referred to. There are minimum sentences for offences such as setting fire to a vehicle or home.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue speaks knowledgeably and from experience. He said that even after four years, the Minister of Justice and his government still have not bothered to present any studies in support of their bill. That is surprising.

The Minister of Justice just presented us with a document that reflects his ideology more than anything else. Even the member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale said that this bill had been introduced previously. But even after four years, the Minister of Justice has changed nothing. What is more, the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue said that the government had not even conducted any studies yet.

The government wants to convince the House without any evidence. The member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale said that there might be opportunities for members of this House to debate instead of accepting the Conservatives' ideology. That is shocking.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, they have to listen from time to time. It would be worth reading what Julian V. Roberts and Thomas Gabor wrote in “The Impact of Conditional Sentencing: Decarceration and Widening of the Net” in volume 8 of the Canadian Criminal Law Review on pages 33 to 49. I am not the one saying this; it was in the studies the minister was asked to do. One of the studies states:

A 2004 study found that conditional sentencing has had a significant impact on the rates of admission to custody, which have declined by 13% since its introduction.

This represents a reduction of approximately 55,000 offenders who otherwise would have been admitted to custody. I am not the one saying this; the government is.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for livening up the debate in the House.

He did point out that the cost per inmate would be $52,205. That is the incarceration rate, and if the person were on conditional sentence, it would be around $2,300. If we take the figures he gave, a projected 13,000 to 15,000 more people in the system, and if we do the math, we would be looking at around $783 million. I could be wrong because we just had it done.

We know this bill has been around before. It has been introduced under different bill numbers in past years. No one can tell me the government does not have a projection of the costs. I have been in government before a couple of times. We costed out every legislative initiative before we introduced a bill.

They know what it is going to cost, and we know that a lot of this cost is going to be offloaded onto the provinces, as the member for Yukon said. Guess what. In a lot of cases, the provinces do not even have the facilities available right now. It will take them 10 years in some cases to have the proper facilities to house the inmates.

Where did the member get the figure of an extra 15,000? I certainly do not question his figures, but 15,000 people—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order. The hon. member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will repeat myself for the benefit of my Conservative colleagues. It costs $52,205 a year to keep someone detained. There will be an additional 13,000 people detained. My colleagues will do the math. It is 13,000 inmates multiplied by $52,205.

I did not make this up. I got it from a study entitled, Adult Correctional Services in Canada, conducted by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, and which we can find in the 2005-06 report of the Adult Correctional Services in Canada, Juristat, Volume 28. I hope my colleagues will wait because I have not finished. It gets better.

I can see why a person would want to bend the truth when they do not want to tell the truth, but statistics do no lie. I am not making this up. “Another Statistics Canada study found that adult offenders who spent their sentence under supervision in the community were far less likely to become reinvolved with correctional authorities within 12 months of their release than those who were in a correctional institution”. Those are not my words. That is what Statistics Canada found.

When we are told something that is not true we must stand up and debunk it. That is precisely the problem with this bill. It does not tell the truth and will not solve our problems.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-16 regarding the use of conditional sentencing in our judicial system.

First I want to point out that this is a bill that has changed names, has changed labels and has changed as the government changes its priorities, because the government places a higher priority on political tactics and advantage than on making the House work productively.

Prorogation has been used as a way for the Prime Minister to protect his job and avoid accountability, and as a result many bills that the government allegedly considered important have died on the order paper.

Bill C-16 is yet another example of a piece of legislation that has been delayed because of these kinds of cynical political ploys by the government.

The Conservative government always presents itself as having a monopoly on being concerned about crime and punishment in this country. On the contrary, here I stand, proud of my voting record, my speeches, my remarks in the House and my work within Newton—North Delta to keep citizens safe against the dangers of criminal activity.

Bill C-16 represents an example of how the Conservatives' inability to incorporate other points of view and expertise into their thinking makes their crime agenda full of smoke and mirrors.

Let me provide an example of what I mean. When conditional sentencing was first introduced in September of 1996, four criteria were required before a conditional sentence could be considered by the sentencing judge. One of them states that the sentencing judge has to determine that the offence should be subject to a term of imprisonment of less than two years before conditional sentencing can ever be considered. Thus when the bill calls for a ban on conditional sentencing for offences that prescribe a maximum sentence of 14 years to life, it is redundant because the option never existed to begin with.

Shortsightedness by the government with regard to the bill does not stop there however. The fact is that our prisons are overflowing. Prisons are now applying in overwhelming numbers to allow for double-bunking of prisoners. This is to prepare for the expected influx of prisoners over the next few years due to new legislation that will put more people in prisons for longer periods.

This flies in the face of the concept of rehabilitation. A 2001 prison service directive stated, “Single occupancy accommodation is the most desirable and correctionally appropriate method of housing offenders”.

Whereas budgets across all departments have been frozen until the year 2013, look down south to see that throwing people in prison is a blanket approach that is just not working.

A study released last year by the Pew Center on the States delivers a staggering statistic. It states that 7.3 million Americans, or 1 in every 31 adults, are in the nation's prison system. This is staggering and the burden of costs on taxpayers is astronomical.

This why we have seen at least 26 U.S. states reverse the trend of recent decades by cutting funding for corrections. California, as an example, has changed parole violation rules, and as a result, reduced the number of convicts returning to incarceration.

Conditional sentencing is a means to assign the proper sentence that fits a particular crime, making the distinction between those who are a danger to society and those who can be rehabilitated without costing taxpayers.

We, as a party, recognize that conditional sentences, when used as a part of plea bargains, have begun to cause concern within the Canadian public, which is uncomfortable with house arrest for a range of more serious offences. Conditional sentences need to be used appropriately. Therefore, while the intent behind the bill does not have merit, there are far too many unknowns before we can proceed on this legislation.

As an example, we do not have any kind of statistics or indepth data in front of us to determine how judges are implementing these sentences across the country. Conditional sentences were created with the intention of strengthening public safety, not weakening it, and we want to ensure that remains the case.

At this point, we have to be strategic on a number of levels in order to introduce the most logical, efficient and effective piece of legislation possible. We must ensure that the punishment fits the crime and that we are assess criminals with the lens of rehabilitation, rather than strictly in terms of incarceration. We must consider the cost to taxpayers and how this kind of legislation will burden the provinces, which have jurisdiction of the country's correctional facilities. Most important, we have to remove blind ideology from these debates in the name of the common good, rather than achieving political advantage.

For all those reasons, I am comfortable in voting in favour of sending the bill to committee stage so we, as parliamentarians, can get better information on the subject matter. When it comes to crime, punishment and the safety of our citizens, politics should never come above the facts.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up a little further on the statistics that the speaker for the Bloc mentioned. He pointed out that we were talking about a cost of $52,205 per inmate. If we are projecting another 15,000 inmates in the system as a result of the bill, we are looking at roughly $783 million.

Who will pay for that? A lot of this cost will be provincially based and the provinces do not have enough cells to house the prisoners they have right now. The $52,000 is the cost per inmate per year under the current system, but if we have to spend hundreds of millions building new facilities to house the inmates, and it might take a number of years to do that, what will they do in the interim? Will the government delay bringing the bill into force for five or six years before it is actually implemented?

What does the member think of the cost implications and does he think the government has these figures? No government introduces legislation without knowing what it will cost. The Conservatives know, but they are not telling us.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona putting forward the $783 million figure in the House. As I said earlier, the government has already frozen the budget in corrections until 2013. Maybe this is because it is playing politics with the legislation.

By prorogation and other means, this bill has never gone through. It has been introduced under different labels, names and numbers. The tendency of the government is to play politics in the House instead of fixing the system and spending that $783 million on rehabilitation.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am impressed by the fact that some people in the House are engaging in the debate and are actually talking about statistics and studies that either address the issue or undermine the government's position on the issue.

My hon. colleague will be interested in reflecting again on a couple of the main issues. One of them is the government's sincerity on this. We have already been given an indication on this. We have seen it because we have been in the House and we have lived it. The government presents legislation and then says that we do not agree with it because we are bad and it is good. Therefore, it rams it through, tells the public it is tough on crime and then allows the bill to lapse with prorogation. Its sincerity and seriousness is always up in the air.

Second, instead of supporting the legislation with statistics, arguments and studies that support the issue of what to do in society when there are offenders and instead of looking at issues like how much we should invest in the process of arresting offenders, how much we should invest in the process of bringing those to justice and then how much we must invest if we actually incarcerate them for a particular period of time, the government comes up with zero answers.

Will my colleague reflect on those two main principles and tell us whether in fact the government is serious about—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. The hon. member for Newton—North Delta.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Eglinton—Lawrence has been in the House since 1988. He understands the politics played by Conservatives time and time again. As he said, through prorogation and by playing politics, they have delayed this. There is no sincerity whatsoever when it comes to being effective on crime.

They leave the perception with public that they are tough on crime, but when it comes to effectiveness, there is no such thing associated with the Conservatives. We are sending the bill to the committee stage so the Conservatives can listen to other experts and other members of Parliament from the opposition and come up with a bill that will work, that not only will allow us to put the people who lure children and commit serious crimes in prison, but also allow us to use conditional sentencing for less determined crimes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a few questions for the hon. member. Could he point to any examples in the country where an offender on a conditional sentence, which is a sentence two years less a day, has created a problem? Could he tell Canadians if he is aware of such a problem?