Mr. Speaker, Bill C-483 deals with an extremely delicate matter. On this side of the House, one of our main concerns is having a free society, a great place to live where neighbourhoods and streets are peaceful and safe. We are quite concerned about public safety.
This bill affects victims, the families of victims, the correctional system and conditional release under the justice system. It is a very delicate subject.
We have before us Bill C-483, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (escorted temporary absence). This bill has parameters and limits that sometimes are quite broad and other times are narrow.
We are convinced that this amendment of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act has merit. However, there are certain problems because the Conservatives are once again using a private member's bill to develop and spread their repressive ideology. Once again, rehabilitation is not a consideration.
There are certainly cases in which parole and supervision are not options. However, in some cases, people are sincere and should perhaps be supervised. They should be supervised after the first offence, however, before they commit first degree murder. These are people who may have a lengthy record, but they could be rehabilitated and reformed so that they can reintegrate into society. Many people are sincere, but are they in an environment where they are receiving the supervision they need? That is the question.
This is the fourth time in one year that we are seeing a private member's bill designed to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. These are sensitive topics. The government is the one that should have introduced a bill to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.
The system has its positives and negatives. For many years, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have made cuts to human resources, financial resources and infrastructure.
That is why we could have used more than an hour at second reading to discuss this bill in the House. It would have been worth spending more time discussing a reform of the corrections system and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.
Nevertheless, the NDP will support this bill at second reading, because we believe in the principle of having the Parole Board of Canada making the initial decision about whether a detainee should be allowed a temporary absence before being paroled.
However, it is not realistic to require the board to make all of the decisions regarding these absences, which could be granted to 2,880 detainees, to be exact. That is why I said that the Parole Board of Canada will be short of time and resources.
In reality, since the Conservative government took power, it has made some draconian budget cuts to all sectors of correctional services. Corrections officers have been repeatedly trying to update their old terms of employment, since the environment is changing. I wanted to say, “evolving”, but that is not true.
The prison system is not evolving. Serious and violent crime is on the rise, as are all sorts of other crimes. More and more people are being imprisoned for terrorist activities, and there are more and more crimes related to cyberbullying. Crimes are increasingly varied and serious and affect several segments of society.
The corrections system is in constant flux. People who work in the system should be given an environment, the financial resources and the infrastructure to be able to do their job. The same is true for the Parole Board of Canada. Clearly, it does not have the necessary resources to carry out the tasks in this bill.
The Conservatives cannot continue slashing the parole board's budget while asking it to do more. As a result of other legislation passed by the Conservatives, the backlog of pardon applications to the Parole Board of Canada has reached 20,000, and they would like to do more. I do not know how many years it would take to process 20,000 applications. Clearly, the board is not able to keep up with everything being asked of it. If this bill is not amended, it will not work, and implementing it will be impossible.
I talked about the critical importance of rehabilitation. I would like to share a story with you. It took me a while to decide whether to share this story because it is about a family I am close to that lost a loved one who was murdered by a repeat sex offender. Nobody ever took a real interest in that offender, so he ended up committing several crimes. The whole time he was in the system, he never had a chance at rehabilitation. It ended with murder.
That person did not have a chance to use the resources available in the justice system, to get therapy, to get the kind of supervision he needed to reintegrate into society. Not even once. It ended with murder. A family's loved one was murdered. For all intents and purposes, life for the victim's family is over. After something like that, people can never get back to normal. I am not talking about the victim or the prisoner; I am talking about the victim's family. After such a tragedy, family members lose their bearings and life no longer has any meaning.
However, in a modern, industrialized and prosperous society, it would have been quite easy to provide resources for rehabilitation, whether to address recidivism with regard to alcohol, drugs, spousal abuse, sexual offences or cyberbullying. Governments are not coming to grips with the situation.
Rather than coming up with bills containing more repressive measures, we must address rehabilitation and education. It would just be a matter of engaging with people on the ground before it is too late. However, here we have yet another bill that takes away decision-making authority from prison wardens. They do an exceptional job with the resources they have. They are there on the ground and they are capable of making decisions. This power is being taken away from them and given to the Parole Board of Canada, which is already overloaded.
As I said, the goal of the bill appears very noble, but it will be impossible to make it work on the ground. The resources available at the moment make that impossible.
I am asking the government to co-operate. Then, when the bill goes to committee after second reading, I am asking the government to accept the amendments, be they from the NDP or from the Liberal Party.
People who have worked on the ground have suggestions that will make the bill easier to implement, so that the society we live in can be safer for everyone.