Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand in the House today to participate in the debate on Bill C-10, the Conservative government's omnibus crime bill. Sadly, I only have 10 minutes to make my remarks, which is wholly inadequate for offering an in-depth analysis of each section of the 110 page bill.
However, since this is second reading, the stage in a bill's passage during which all members are charged with providing feedback to the government on the principles of the legislation before us, I am confident that I can at least do that within the allotted timeframe.
I will begin by stating what ought to be obvious. All members in the House, regardless of political party, agree that serious crime requires a serious response. There is absolutely no debate here. However, we also need to remember that the iconic statue of justice holds a scale in her hand for a reason: justice requires balance. It is that balance that is lost in the bill that is before us today.
My NDP colleagues from Windsor—Tecumseh and Vancouver Kingsway have already articulated the fact that the bill puts wedge politics and ideology ahead of facts and evidence. It is a point that bears repeating.
It is absolutely true that we have three years of evidence now to prove that the violent crime rate in Canada is falling dramatically. We also know that there is not a single empirical study in Canada, or any other democracy for that matter, which proves that incarceration is an effective deterrent.
On the contrary, by imposing mandatory minimums on young offenders and therefore sending them to jail for longer periods of time, we will be creating more recidivists, not less. A government policy that turns young offenders into hardened criminals surely must be seen as completely undermining the goals of any criminal justice reform.
Equally absurd is the part of the bill that mandates less jail time for a child rapist than someone being charged with growing pot. The omnibus legislation would impose a one year mandatory minimum for sexually assaulting a child, luring a child via the Internet or involving a child in bestiality. All three of those offences carry lighter automatic sentences than those for people running medium sized grow-ops in rental property or on someone else's land. A pedophile who gets a child to watch pornography with him or someone who exposes himself to kids at a playground would receive a minimum 90 day sentence, half the term of a man convicted of growing six pot plants in his own home.
I do not think there is a single constituent in my riding of Hamilton Mountain who would agree with either that approach or that outcome. However, that is what we get when, instead of looking at the Criminal Code as a whole, exploring reforms systematically and ensuring that the same sentencing principles are applied in all sections of the code, we have a government that simply lumps a whole bunch of pre-election promises together in an act of political expediency. Ideologically, the government may want to be seen as being tough on crime but effective criminal law reform requires us to be smart on crime. Bill C-10 fails that test completely.
The Canadian Bar Association would concur with my assessment. The association made a specific comment on the minimum sentencing provisions of the bill by pointing out that they fail the mentally ill, aboriginal people, visible minorities and the poor. Mandatory minimum legislation will simply clog the courts and fill Canadian prisons with vulnerable segments of the population. As a result, the Bar Association is calling on the government to reverse course and to allow judges leeway in applying mandatory minimums so that they are not imposed when it would be cruel or inappropriate.
The CBA is spot on. It leads me to ask my Conservative colleagues why they are so intent on imposing a straitjacket on Canadian judges by so aggressively pursing mandatory minimum sentencing. Justice requires the ability to differentiate between similar offences when they are committed under completely different circumstances. I am not saying that judges are perfect. They are human and might on occasion make mistakes. However, they enjoy the confidence of the vast majority of Canadians. They are highly educated and highly trained and, therefore, are much better equipped to determine appropriate sentences than any of us here in the House. I suggest that we allow them to do their jobs.
There is a particular irony in the timing of the proposals contained in the bill with respect to mandatory minimums. While I appreciate that their genesis lies in the tough on crime and drugs approach adopted decades ago by the United States, the Conservatives are choosing to emulate that agenda at precisely the time that it is being discredited south of the border, even by Republicans, as an exorbitantly expensive failure.
I will begin with the obvious. I want to reiterate the succinct statement made by my colleague the member for Kings—Hants:
If putting more people in prison for longer periods of time created safer communities, American cities would be the safest in the world, because nobody incarcerates more people than the Americans.
U.S. conservatives are now recognizing their folly. Even Newt Gingrich, the right-wing Republican former speaker, is on the record now acknowledging that longer prison terms have not been effective deterrents. In an editorial to The Washington Post he wrote:
Our prisons might be worth the current cost if the recidivism rate were not so high, but, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, half of the prisoners released this year are expected to be back in prison within three years. If our prison policies are failing half of the time, and we know that there are more humane, effective alternatives, it is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners.
He then went on to praise Texas as a state that has reduced its prison population while keeping the public safe. He wrote:
Several states have shown that it is possible to cut costs while keeping the public safe. Consider events in Texas, which is known to be tough on crime. Conservative Republicans joined with Democrats in adopting incentive-based funding to strengthen the state's probation system in 2005. Then in 2007, they decided against building more prisons and instead opted to enhance proven community corrections approaches such as drug courts. The reforms are forecast to save $2 billion in prison costs over five years.
The Lone Star State has already redirected much of the money saved into community treatment for the mentally ill and low-level drug addicts. Not only have these reforms reduced Texas's prison population - helping to close the state budget gap - but for the first time there is no waiting list for drug treatment in the state. And crime has dropped 10 percent from 2004, the year before the reforms, through 2009, according to the latest figures available, reaching its lowest annual rate since 1973.
Canada should heed the experience south of the border and it should heed the advice of Gingrich, who himself entered into this debate primarily because of the exigencies of rising budget deficits.
Here in Canada, we appear to be on the brink of another recession and instead of investing in people and jobs, the Conservatives announced that they are seeking $4 billion in annual savings. Clearly, the government is not seeing the forest for the trees.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer is estimating that this new crime bill could double the annual prison costs from $4.4 billion to $9.5 billion in five years. That is an increase of $5.1 billion, while they are looking for savings of $4 billion in program costs elsewhere.
I would urge the government to put this question to Canadians: Do they support the doubling of prison costs at the cost of reduced benefits in other programs? Or would they rather see that money continue to be spent on health care, job creation, employment insurance, adequate pensions, and education for their kids?
I think the Prime Minister knows the answer and that is why he is not going to the Canadian people to offer them that choice. Instead, he is paying a private consultant $90,000 a day to find savings in other programs just so he can pay for his ideological priority of building more jails. It is absolutely absurd.
Let me end where I started. I talked about the scales of justice and their symbolic call to all of us to strive for balance. I would therefore be remiss if I did not acknowledge that there are parts of this bill that I do support.
I do support the initiatives to protect children from exploitation including sexual assault. In fact, two of the new offences that this bill targets came from NDP private members' bills relating specifically to communicating for the purposes of luring a child. As I said before, we part ways when the government's solution focuses simplistically on creating additional mandatory minimums.
I also agree with putting victims rights into law. I would argue that this is long overdue.
I supported legislation in the last Parliament that blocked Karla Homolka from getting a pardon.
However, the additional changes proposed to the pardon system in this bill are neither rational nor evidence-based and they fail to put public safety first. That, to me, must be the basis for evaluating the entire omnibus bill. Failing that test, I cannot possibly vote in favour of the current bill.