Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to have this opportunity to speak to Bill C-26. This is a great honour for me given that I have happily agreed, at the NDP whip's request, to become a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. This is both a great honour and a great challenge for me.
I will take advantage of my speaking time to express my opinion about a bill that the committee has studied and to talk about the ins and outs of bills like this one, their impact on society and their usefulness to the courts.
It is very important to understand that the courts are working to help society, to ensure order and to suppress crime using the tools they have been given by, among others, our House of Commons. That is an important notion because the bills that we draft, discuss, debate and study in committee to achieve an outcome are just part of the courts' toolkit.
Of course, simply passing a bill does not solve all problems. Quite the opposite. The goals of a bill can be achieved only if other authorities, including this House, give police forces and other stakeholders the means to engage in prevention and education and if other levels of government are equipped to ensure that the implementation of the law achieves the desired results.
I have to say that I am also very honoured to speak to this bill because I personally believe that it is a good model. This bill should become an operational model for the work of this House and of the various committees my colleagues work on.
I want to emphasize that because the New Democratic Party, as represented by committee members, was disappointed in a number of things. Unfortunately, even though the other members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights agreed to two of the amendments we proposed, seven of our amendments were rejected, including, among others, an amendment that was very important to us and that had to do with actions taken in self-defence, such as in situations involving domestic abuse.
Some of my colleagues have given very eloquent, detailed speeches on this issue, which is very important to us. I will not necessarily go into further detail on the matter. However, I would like to come back to the fact that if there is one measure of satisfaction that all members of this House can express and, more importantly, that we all hear from our constituents, that would be great. Incidentally, I would like to point out that we are all here as representatives of our constituents, first and foremost, and we are accountable to them, to everyone in our ridings, no matter which party we belong to.
Coming back to the main point I wanted to make, when all is said and done, and considering the results achieved, Bill C-26 is a great example of how this House and its committees can work together.
Although by no means ideal—that would be going to far—it is nevertheless a model that all members in this House can follow in order to improve the atmosphere here, which is not always easy. I do not wish to dwell on examples from the past, but unfortunately, the fact is that this government continues to blindly and stubbornly advance its own agenda, while dismissing any informed opinions that differ from its own. I would like to again point out the success of Bill C-26.
I would now like to address another very important aspect that gives us a great deal of satisfaction about the goals achieved while working on Bill C-26. It is important to understand that creating legislation that deals with a subject as complicated as self-defence and the protection of personal or other property is like walking a tightrope.
Defining the limits of actions, violent or not, that in some cases are clearly criminal and in others are not, can be very tricky.
As you know, self-defence is a widely accepted principle. Some of my colleagues, like the hon. member for Toronto—Danforth, have been very clear on this subject—and I thank them for that. In my opinion, this has allowed all of my colleagues to understand that even though self-defence is widely accepted by the public, there are nonetheless some inherent risks involved in its implementation.
The New Democratic Party does not accept and will never accept vigilante justice. It is very, very important to understand that. Likewise, it will never accept the pure repression that this government is promoting. Nuance is very important. Fortunately, or unfortunately—depending on one's point of view—we do not live in a world without nuance, where everything is black and white. On the contrary, the circumstances surrounding a case before the courts can become very important and can affect the outcome tremendously. That is one of the reasons our justice system gives judges some latitude. They are not, however, given full or arbitrary latitude. Our judges have to make their decisions and work within the confines of the law and case law.
I am pleased that this bill will give our courts new tools for building more balanced precedents in matters of self-defence, protection of property and citizen's arrest. It is very important.
However, I am warning this government not to believe that passing this bill will solve all the problems. On the contrary, if we do not give the other stakeholders—such as our courts or police officers—all the tools they need to implement this legislation, then unfortunately, Bill C-26 may very well not meet its objectives.
I repeat: I wanted to put this in perspective. This bill will be only one of a number of methods for achieving the important objective of protecting ordinary people who, in some exceptional circumstances, may find themselves in situations where they could be convicted of a crime.