Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to this bill, which I am certainly in favour of.
As we have heard from others, there is already a section in the Criminal Code that deals with the crime of impersonating a police officer.
There are two aspects to it. One is where a person represents him or herself as being a police officer and the second is where a person uses a badge, article or articles of the uniform to allow people to draw the inescapable conclusion that the person is a police officer. Those are already offences.
This bill would add a subsection that would require a judge, after a person has been convicted of those offences, to take into account as an aggravating factor if the impersonation had been used as a tool to commit another crime.
When I first read the bill, I thought that is what judges would do in most cases. My initial reaction was whether it was really necessary, but what really convinced me to support the bill was the letter that I received from the member for Red Deer, the proponent of this bill.
He spoke in the letter about the need to reinforce the trust we all must have in our police forces and officers. I want to commend the member both for the letter and his initiative in this regard because it strikes at that point. Occasionally, there will be a judge who may not take this into account, though I think in most cases judges would.
It is a way for this legislature to say, not just to the judiciary because, as I say, it is not so significant there but to the Canadian public, that if someone has committed such a crime and has used it as a tool to commit another crime, the legislature condemns that conduct and is asking the judiciary to make sure it takes it into account as an aggravating factor when a sentence is imposed. That is one of the reasons for supporting the bill.
I do not think we can be too careful about the need for the legislature of the country to be very clear about its support for the criminal justice system generally and for the actors within the criminal justice system. It is very important that we ensure the Canadian public is always onside in the sense of feeling a great deal of confidence in our judges, prosecutors, defence counsel, and certainly in the police.
In a large number of cases, the vast majority of Canadians will only come into contact with the criminal justice system through police officers. Unless people are called as witnesses or charged with an offence, they do not see the other actors. That is not to say the other actors are not important as they are crucial to the system, but the face of the level of confidence that we need in the criminal justice system is the front line police officer.
I had an experience when I was in Japan a few years ago on a public safety issue. I got the opportunity to spend a bit of time there observing the Japanese people, who have one of the lowest crime rates in the world, substantially lower than ours. I am exaggerating a bit, but on almost every corner there is a little structure that the street police use as their base. They are all over the place in the larger cities in particular.
That allows those police officers who staff those small units to have immediate, intimate contact on a daily basis with people who live in those neighbourhoods or who do their business in those neighbourhoods. It is very obvious that the relationship is a comfortable one with the sense that a person could turn to these officers if there are any problems and they will be there to provide service to the citizenry of that country.
We look at how successful that is. It is their key ingredient in keeping their crime rates low. It is the kind of thing we would like to see adopted here and practised. We have been doing this on a fairly regular basis, moving our police officers out of the large, institutional settings, and more and more trying to have them operating out of neighbourhood settings.
My wife was working at the west end of the city of Windsor for a number of years. While she was there, one of the changes she saw in the crime rate, which was a fairly high crime rate, was that they moved just two police officers into the neighbourhood, into a house, and used it as a mini headquarters. It had a dramatic effect over the years in reducing the crime rate, a good deal of the crime rate, by the way, coming over from Detroit. However, because they were having that day to day contact with the citizenry of that area, that was really a great methodology for reducing the crime rate.
If we have someone who would take advantage of that very fundamental, crucial relationship we need between the citizenry and the police officers and raise the mistrust level, then they have to be dealt with quite severely. The section here that is being proposed as an amendment very much goes to that fundamental change that we require in the Criminal Code to emphasize, to have this legislature emphasizing, how important it is to have that relationship rock solid.
We get the rogue police officers using physical force in excess, and that undermines it, but so does this in many respects. Whatever we can do in the way of amendments to the Criminal Code in our practice, funding police officers across the country, will ensure that relationship does not deteriorate. If it does in those first steps, we go to a chaotic society.
I have been in other countries where I have seen the fear in the citizenry because the police are either corrupt or they are abusive with their power. We can never go down the route of undermining them.
We will be supporting the bill. I think all of my caucus is in support of this private member's bill.
We have discussed a little bit with the member for Red Deer about having an amendment to the bill that would be clearer with regard to the judicial responsibility to give reasons if this section is to be invoked. We have been having some discussion about that and we should see that at committee. I expect the bill to go to committee very rapidly and hopefully to be dealt with at the justice committee rapidly as well.
Those are all the comments I have, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the bill.