That is a very good question: what about the victims? I am not sure who the victims of that particular crime were. Not every crime has a victim.
This guy was going to take a picture of himself and put it on the Internet. I do not know who the victims are here. Obviously it is a crime against society, having a loaded pistol when the police come in.
According to the law, the minimum jail sentence was three years. The judge decided that that was arbitrary and did not meet the test of our law that punishment fits the crime. In fact, she determined that it was what the Charter of Rights calls cruel and unusual punishment. That is the same provision that was used by our courts to determine that capital punishment amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. That is why it is contrary to our law to this day and has been for 50 years.
That is the point here. The other side asks, “What about the victims”, that we do not care about victims over here? I find that rather ludicrous, but it is also part of Conservatives' notion of dividing Canadians. They say, “We are in favour of victims and they are not”. Not only do they say we are not in favour of victims but that we are also in favour of criminals and are standing with child predators or molesters. That is the kind of dynamism the government is trying to impose on sensible, common sense Canadians, but that is ludicrously wrong. In fact, it is so wrong, I need to explain it.
We came to the House and said we would like to carve out part 2, the sexual offences against children provisions, the new provisions on Internet luring, the new offence of showing pornographic pictures to children, as an aspect of the so-called grooming of children for sexual offences. We wanted to take them out, put them on the table and pass them right away. What did the Conservatives say over there? They said no, that we are just wasting time and want to delay things. In fact, we want to fast-track those things.
Why? I can go back to my speech on the day. I said that the New Democrats thought it should be brought in now because it would actually prevent other crimes of sexual assault and predation from being committed. Those provisions, which we support, would prevent crimes of sexual assault before they were committed. If someone were caught in the act of Internet luring, grooming or the other offences, and were arrested, they would not get to the point of sexual predation or sexual assault. They would have been caught before that. The experts and knowledgeable people on sexual offences know there is a process and that one thing leads to another. There is a continuum along which offenders go and this legislation would stop them. This was for the victims.
I want to say, by the way, to those over there who think that no one over here cares about victims, I am not prepared to listen to that. I spent seven years fighting for the victims of the Mount Cashel Orphanage scandal to get redress in the courts. That is what I did for seven years and I do not want anyone over there suggesting that this member or my caucus does not care about victims.
When it comes to justice for people before the courts who are being subjected to an injustice, they too deserve the protection of our law and of parliamentarians. I do not want to get caught up in the Conservatives' black hat-white hat mentality, saying that they are the only ones who care about victims and no one over here does. We care about justice and that the laws we pass give opportunities for justice to be achieved in this country.
There are groups in our society, non-governmental organizations and so-called civil society groups, who are also entitled to have their views heard. They have gone to committee and to the House. They have talked to members of Parliament. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is an important body, a bit of a watchdog over laws that are being passed.
It expressed its concerns as well about the costs, both short and long term, of putting more people in jail, particularly in light of the increasing overrepresentation in Canadian prisons of aboriginal Canadians and offenders with mental health and addiction problems. The association expressed its concerns about that, and they are concerns which we echo.
There is a bad problem in this country with the failure to adequately address the mental health needs of Canadians. The Mental Health Commission is looking at ways of addressing that. The reality is that even though someone may be, as the legal term goes, not guilty by reason of insanity, there are people who end up before the courts because of their circumstances which are, in large measure, defined by their mental health problems or mental health diseases, concerns and afflictions. They end up in jail rather than in treatment. It is because they do not get the treatment they need that they end up in circumstances which put them in jail. That is a concern as well. That is a lack of justice for them.
Through better treatment programs for sufferers of mental health diseases or mental afflictions, we can make our streets safer, which is what the bill says it is about, instead of putting them in jail. Even those with mental health problems in jail do not get the help they need. They do not come out of jail in a position to make our streets safer.
On the issue of costs, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives suggested that the costs of this crime agenda would be colossal. It said that a large part of it would be borne by the provinces which are responsible for implementing whatever is passed on. The provinces and territories would be expected to pay for additional courts, clerks, prisons, crown attorneys, judges, sheriffs, court reporters and so on, as well as the places in which the prisoners would have to be incarcerated. There have been significant objections from a number of provinces as to the passing on of those costs.
There were significant objections from the Government of Quebec. There were representations before our committee in November from Quebec's minister of justice and attorney general, Jean-Marc Fournier. He made a strong and passionate objection to the provisions of the bill, particularly as they relate to the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
This is the last opportunity this House will have to deal with the bill. We dealt with it at first, second and third readings under time constraints. We were told it would go to committee and the committee would have all the time in the world to deal with it, but it rushed through the process. Witnesses in some cases were stuck with very short timeframes to give presentations, five minutes in most cases, to comment on a bill with 200 provisions. Some with 100-page submissions had five minutes to talk about it.
The bill was rushed through committee. The Conservatives tried to compress the consideration of the bill into two days, one two-hour day and the other day we were told, “We are here at 8:45, and we will finish it today”. That suggestion came from the government members, which of course was not accepted by the opposition and a great deal of discussion took place over several hours as to why that was wrong. That changed and we did have another couple of days, but it was not very long, and as we pointed out, no amendments from the opposition were accepted.
The bill came back to this House for third reading and lo and behold, some of the amendments that were presented at committee by the member for Mount Royal were presented on the floor of this House by the minister himself. Guess what? They were ruled out of order by the Speaker for a very good reason. They were ruled out of order because they could have been dealt with in committee.
The fact of the matter is that the amendments were not dealt with in committee. For some reason the committee was told that because the amendments came from the opposition, they would not be accepted. Not only were those amendments not accepted, but no amendments were accepted. We had many amendments at committee. There was a whole package of amendments presented to the committee and debated, but they were not accepted. No amendments were accepted.
We have a government that is prepared to be arbitrary in its sentencing. It is prepared to give the Minister of Public Safety ultimate discretion on the liberty of Canadian citizens who are incarcerated abroad. It would give mandatory minimum sentences which have been determined to be arbitrary and in some cases unfair. We see a situation where the approach to drugs, particularly marijuana, would lead to greater criminal involvement, violence involving guns, gangs and criminal organizations as a result of the bill.
This is an approach which has been described as wrong. We have to start being sensible about it. We have to find a way to get away from this war on drugs that has failed in the United States and is failing also in Canada. It is not an easy road. I am not saying there is a simple solution, but this solution would make things worse, not better.
Mr. Speaker, if members opposite are wondering if I am running out of speaking notes, I have lots of speaking notes here.
The bill has generated more objections across the country than has any other piece of legislation that has been before the House since I first came here in 2008. We have received thousands and thousands of emails. People across the country are asking what is wrong with the government when it cannot see that criminality in our country in fact is going down. The violent crime rate has decreased. According to Statistics Canada, we have the lowest crime rate since 1973. That was 39 years ago. We have the lowest crime rate in almost 40 years, but we have a government that is saying it is time to be tough on crime because crime is exploding. It talked about violent crime exploding, drug crime, drug gangs and the proliferation of drugs, but that is not in fact the case. We have a government that is out of touch with reality. It is ignoring principles that have been part of our law.
Mr. Jean-Marc Fournier, Quebec's minister of justice and attorney general, said that for 40 years, “We have demonstrated that this system works. Our approach to youth criminal justice works. We are taking young people who could be headed down the path of crime and giving them an opportunity to be productive members of society. We have done a very good job of it and have had successes”. He came to our committee pleading with the government not to make the changes that are in the proposed legislation.
Mr. Fournier proposed some changes. These proposals were put in the form of amendments by our party, but they were refused. I will mention some of the issues that were brought forward.
He said that maintaining the introduction of the principles of deterrence and denunciation specific to the adult system jeopardizes the distinct character of the youth criminal justice system and doing so appears to fundamentally contradict the teachings of the Supreme Court of Canada. He said that it is not enough to adapt the Criminal Code to young people as Bill C-10 appeared to do; rather, a balanced system truly suited to their situation from beginning to end of the judicial and extrajudicial process must be provided for.
These are words of wisdom. He talked about the fact that the bill would put pressure on public prosecutors with respect to the identity of a young person. Instead of what is there now, a blanket prohibition on making known the identity of young people, the prosecutors would now have to prove the identity of young people should be published because that means there is no option but to do that or be told that they are not doing their job.
In speaking on behalf of the citizens of Quebec, Mr. Fournier said that instead of the amendments to the current legislation, we should strive toward greater flexibility and a broader range of means that would enable stakeholders, the courts and the youth criminal justice system to apply the right measure at the right time for every young offender.
He was talking about flexibility. The bill talks about rigidity. He was very concerned, because Quebec said that its notion of the fundamental principle of rehabilitating young persons and reintegrating them into the community was designed to ensure the long-term protection of society as opposed to an immediate crackdown without sufficient follow-up. He said that these principles had enabled Quebec to post the lowest rate of recidivism in the country for decades.
When the minister spoke this morning he said that we needed to stop the revolving door. Well, the revolving door is what is called recidivism. One goes in, comes out, commits a crime, goes back in, comes out and goes back in again. The only solution the minister has come up with to stop the revolving door is to shut it when an offender is inside. There is no exit. They stay there longer.
What happens then? Do they come out better citizens or do they come out angrier citizens?