Mr. Speaker, with this particular bill, we need to acknowledge that the citizens of our country do have a role to play when it comes to complementing that sense of security in our communities. Community policing is one of the ways in which we try to reach into our communities in a positive way to make people feel safe but there are other aspects to it.
At the beginning of my comments, I spoke to how this particular bill is not there, in any fashion whatsoever, to take away responsibilities from our policing agencies but rather is there to complement the services that we are currently receiving. It is there to provide assurances to those individuals who find themselves in difficult positions where they might require to either defend themselves or to protect their own personal property.
Over the years, we have seen more and more citizens take an interest in assisting and providing that sense of security throughout our communities, whether it is with respect to the community streets on which we walk or drive, or our shopping centres, the small store outlets and so forth. I think we can find ample examples in each one of those different types of situations where we will see the average citizen saying that they want and must play some role and be involved in making our communities a better, safer community in which to live.
I was making reference to some specific examples and I will highlight the one that deals with community streets. We have members of outreach groups who walk along the sidewalks in our communities and look for what would quite often be classified as inappropriate behaviour. We have found that it is very effective when three or four individuals walk around communities, especially around community schools. A lot of these groups will identify blocks of time that they believe are most important for them to go out into the communities. For example, one of those timed walks is after school hours. There is a great deal of interest from many neighbourhoods for them to walk around our schools in and around that time because it discourages any sort of inappropriate activity. Quite often, they will see everything from bullying to minor drug type transactions occurring very close to our school facilities. Therefore, by getting individuals, whether it be one person or a group, who are well-identified and live in or are a part of the community, involved in doing things of that nature, it discourages that sort of activity from taking place in the first place. We have citizens who are prepared to get involved at that level.
I was involved with the justice committee for many years out in the area which I represent. Although I stepped down about a year and a half ago or so, I was involved for over 10 years. When I was a full participant, and in fact at one point I was the chair of the group, we had the opportunity to get a number of volunteers who lived in the community to sit on this committee as honorary probation officers.
In that situation, if we had young offenders who might be stealing from a local store, instead of going through a court they would come before a justice committee. The big push was more toward restorative justice. We would try to bring the victim and the young offender together where the victim would have a role to play in terms of what sort of disposition or consequence should be given to that young offender for the offence that he or she caused. I see this as something that is very positive.
When victims sit down with offenders, they see first-hand that there is some justice coming as a direct result of community involvement and the fact that they are being afforded the opportunity to interact with the people who made victims out of them because of an offence, such as a theft or minor assault. This bill provides the opportunity for individuals to take direct action to protect their property and themselves.
Today more and more women are taking self-defence courses. More and more young people are engaged. Sikaran is a wonderful Filipino martial arts program. Kids as young as three and four years of age and adults are being schooled in this martial art. A good number of parents enrol their children in self-defence classes because they want to know that their children can defend themselves from an assault if they ever need to.
A member said that we need to approach this with an open mind in committee. Because of some of the changes to the wording, some might be somewhat suspicious. If someone looks at me the wrong way, raises a hand and makes an obscene gesture and I feel threatened by that, I may think it gives me the right to enter into a physical fight with the individual because I thought I was going to be assaulted. That is why we have to define such words as “reasonable”.
We have to look at specific situations, whether it is a potential physical assault or an individual protecting his or her store. A store owner who sells widgets sees that as his or her livelihood. If someone attempts to take that property, there needs to be some sort of consequence. The store owner should be able to protect his or her property and livelihood.
The vast majority of Canadians support the principle of what is being said here. I would encourage the government, once the bill gets to the committee stage, to approach it with an open mind so the member for Mount Royal and others can be afforded the opportunity to make amendments—