Practically at 10:10 a.m., as my learned colleague from Hochelaga says. As of October 10, 2010, 4,774 people were serving life sentences in Canada. Since 1986, 181 offenders have gone before the board. The Conservatives claim that not enough is said about the victims, but 181 applications were heard. Many more people could have applied, but some did not because they knew that they, like the Clifford Olsons of this world, would not succeed. There are a number of them.
Of these 181 cases, 146 had their sentences reduced and 35 were rejected. That is close to 1%. But that is not all. Of the 146 inmates whose eligibility date for parole was moved forward, 144 have now reached the revised date for day parole eligibility.
Parole has been granted to 135 people. We will do our job and state the facts: 135 individuals out of 4,700 have been paroled. Just wait, that is not all. Of these 135 individuals, 68—just about half—have never had problems. We need to explain something that the Conservatives will never understand, and that I would like the Liberals to realize. When offenders are sentenced to life, when they are incarcerated for the rest of their days, they fall under the parole system, the Correctional Service of Canada system. Therefore, they are monitored and under the jurisdiction of the Correctional Service of Canada not just while they are in prison, but to the end of their days, until they die.
Thus, 68 individuals have been released, 35 have had their parole suspended but not revoked—I will return to that—and 23 have had their parole revoked. Thus, 23 out of 135, out of 181, out of more than 4,000. Only 23. I will continue. Of the 135 paroled, seven committed non-violent offences, and two committed new violent offences. Naturally, the Conservatives are focusing on those two. Two out of 141, two out of 4,000, committed violent crimes. Naturally, we wanted to find out if the offences were murder. They were not.
Since 1987, no one released through the use of the faint hope clause has committed murder. And that is a good thing, of course. Two individuals committed violent crimes. We asked the Correctional Service of Canada what type of crimes these were. There had been assault causing bodily harm and armed robbery. Clearly, these two individuals returned to prison and will probably stay there for the rest of their lives.
Why did I quote these figures? I did it because the faint hope clause works. The Conservatives have not understood this, but I hope that the Liberals will wake up and ensure that this bill never goes to third reading, that it gets no support and is defeated in the House.
The faint hope clause is a system that works. Generally, the Criminal Code is amended to adapt it, for example, if there are computer-related crimes or an increase in car theft, armed robberies or street gangs. Also, there were Hells Angels and the mafia. So we take measures to amend the Criminal Code. We have a system that works and that works very well. Why amend it? I say that it works very well because the parole board would never release someone convicted of murder if there were a possibility that the person would reoffend. It would never happen if there were a chance the person would reoffend.
There are significant steps that an individual must take before being released. Under the faint hope clause, the individual must first submit an application to a judge in the district where he or she was sentenced 15 or 17 years previously. It is the judge who determines whether the person is eligible to apply. If the Superior Court judge is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the individual is eligible, the judge empanels a jury. Despite what the Conservatives may say, it is not true that it is up to the jury to determine whether an individual is eligible for release. The only thing a jury can do is to determine whether the sentence should be reduced or whether the individual should be granted permission to ask the parole board for parole after one, two, three, four or five years. The jury would determine the timeframe.
The faint hope clause found in section 745 of the Criminal Code has been so clearly defined that I am wondering why we would now want to abolish it. This is not my opinion, but that of reporters, and I would like to cite a passage in support of this argument. Manon Cornellier, a reporter for the newspaper Le Devoir, stated the following in an article published on June 10, 2009: “What if a lack of hope were to destroy a convict's desire for rehabilitation, resulting in more violence and more problems in our prisons?”
It is obvious to us that if we deny the possibility of the faint hope clause to those who have been convicted of murder, they will have no hope of being reintegrated into society. The faint hope clause: the name says it all. The wording is clear. It means that such individuals can think about returning to society after 15, 17, 18 or 20 years have passed, but they cannot do it alone and they would have to be deemed ready to return to society.
I do not understand why the Conservatives want to do this. Actually, I did not understand why until I read that the Prime Minister stated that he was against capital punishment except in certain cases. Then I understood everything. I understood why this bill was being introduced: it is the beginning of the return of the death penalty in Canada. This is extremely dangerous. This door must be closed immediately. The only way to close this door is to vote against Bill S-6. We must vote against this bill because it removes the opportunity for individuals to be reintegrated into society. I have argued many cases and clearly murder is the worst crime in the Criminal Code. A life has been taken. The person responsible should not be allowed to return to society until they understand the seriousness of their actions, before they are ready to return and have served a minimum sentence.
Let us again look at the numbers. I did not make them up. Statistics have been compiled since the death penalty was abolished in 1976. Canada kept track because keeping statistics is one of our strong suits. The average incarceration time for first degree murder, before the slightest possibility of eligibility for parole, is set out in a study by the Correctional Service of Canada. This data does not come from the Bloc, the Liberals, the NDP or the Conservatives. It comes from the Correctional Service of Canada.
The average time served is now 22.4 years. This means that offenders, even if they have the right to apply for parole after 15 or 17 years, serve on average 22.6 years before even being eligible for parole. This means that the Correctional Service of Canada and the National Parole Board are doing a good job. And the government wants to change that? It makes no sense.
It works so well that we have very few cases of repeat offences. Since 1987, two violent crimes have been committed by individuals who have been released and 23 individuals have violated their parole conditions. They returned to prison. Here is what the Conservatives do not get: someone who is handed over to the Correctional Service of Canada for murder is imprisoned for life. I encourage my Conservative and Liberal colleagues to read section 745 of the Criminal Code. It clearly states that someone who is convicted of murder is sentenced to imprisonment for life. As far as I know, a life sentence is not 1, 2, 15 or 18 years in prison, it is life in prison. The individual is under the control of the Correctional Service of Canada for the rest of his life. As we say, he had better stay on the straight and narrow.
I have handled many cases and files that I could spend an hour talking about. The people from the Correctional Service of Canada who came to the committee asked why we were tinkering with a system that worked really well. The Conservatives responded that they wanted to be tough on crime. That makes no sense. Murder is the worst crime and a convicted murderer is sentenced to life in prison. He cannot get out unless he is ready to return to society.
The Conservatives claim to protect victims. But the victim's biggest advocate in this case is the Correctional Service of Canada and its parole board, which, since 1987, has been on the ball. They are good. Everyone released under the faint hope clause has behaved well, with the exception of two people. Two out of 181 is less than 1%.
If the House wants me to speak for another half-hour I would be happy to. In conclusion, I urge the Liberals, who brought in the faint hope clause, to think about this carefully. If Bill S-6 is passed, I guarantee that we will soon see the return of backbenchers' bills aiming to bring back the death penalty. That is unacceptable and we will never go along with that.