Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise tonight to speak to Bill C-54. Canadians expect that their justice system will keep them safe from high-risk individuals and that is why our government has introduced Bill C-54, the not criminally responsible reform act.
It is paramount that victims' rights and public safety are balanced off with the decisions taken for high-risk patients who are accused of being not criminally responsible for their actions. Our government's intention is to strike a better balance between the need to protect society against those who pose a significant threat to the public and the need to treat the mentally disordered accused appropriately. Our government has always put victims first and we always will.
The timing of this debate unfortunately is late. Just last week in Manitoba, the Manitoba Criminal Code Review Board made a decision that I was extremely disappointed in when it granted increased community access for Mr. Vince Li.
As most of us will remember, Vince Li was on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba just outside of Portage la Prairie on July 30, 2008, when all of a sudden he started stabbing a young carnival worker by the name of Tim McLean. As the bus stopped and horrified passengers fled, Mr. Li went on to cut up Mr. McLean's body and ate parts of it. Vince Li told a mental health advocate that he heard voices, including the voice of God, telling him that Mr. McLean was an alien who he needed to destroy.
Vince Li was not found criminally responsible and was sent to the Selkirk Mental Health Centre in my riding. It was incredibly disappointing to hear the decision reached, because that decision did not put the victim's rights first and it definitely did not put public safety first, and I will speak to that in more detail.
As everyone knows from tonight's speeches, the not criminally responsible reform act, which we introduced on February 8, would do three main things.
First, it would enhance victims' rights and that includes enhancing the safety of the victims by ensuring that they would be specifically considered when decisions were made about accused persons found not criminally responsible.
Carol de Delley, who is the mother of Tim McLean, said in the Winnipeg Free Press on Monday:
I don't feel particularly safe or comfortable with Vince Li having these outings...I had the assumption before all of this happened that we all have basic human rights. So how come Timothy's aren't being considered here and only Vince Li's are?
She is concerned that now he has free and open access on the grounds at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre as well as escorted leave into Selkirk, Winnipeg, Lockport and the surrounding beautiful beaches on the south basin of Lake Winnipeg, she feels she may come into contact with him because she does not know where he is going. This is why it is important that there needs to be a non-communications order between an NCR accused and the victim as well as notifying victims when a not criminally responsible individual like Mr. Li is discharged so they can make plans as to where they are going to be in the community that day and avoid the happenstance of running into the individual who has harmed a loved one.
It is important that we put victims' rights first because the decision was just made in Winnipeg by the Manitoba Criminal Code Review Board did not at all consider the victim's rights or the family of Tim McLean. Both Tim's sister and mother read victim impact statements at that trial and again their considerations were thrown by the wayside.
The second thing the bill would do is put public safety first. Bill C-54 explicitly sets out that the public's safety is the paramount consideration in the decision-making process relating to accused persons found not criminally responsible.
This weekend at home I heard from constituents across the riding, especially constituents in the city of Selkirk, about how concerned they were that Mr. Li had free and open access to the grounds of the Selkirk Mental Health Centre, beautiful grounds, unfenced, right across the street the new public library is going up, just down the street is Walmart, Canadian Tire and Home Hardware. There is all sorts of activities happening around the mental health centre. He has the ability to roam those grounds and, without being monitored, easily walk off the grounds. Therefore, the public is extremely concerned.
It is not at all comforting for people to run into Mr. Vince Li when he is being escorted in the community. Even when he has a health care worker and a security guard with him, it is still disconcerting to see Mr. Li walk past the front of their home or to bump into him in a shopping mall. Although he has escorted leave, whenever I run across a murderer who is under the control and oversight of a security officer, I do not feel any more safe knowing that security guard is there. It is more troubling to see that level of security required for an individual to be constrained while he or she is out in public.
The third thing proposed Bill C-54 will do is create a higher risk designation to protect the public from those accused who are deemed not criminally responsible. Upon being designated as a high-risk offender by a court, that person must be held in custody and cannot be considered for release by a review board until his or her designation is revoked by a court. There needs to be that higher judicial oversight that does not exist with the review board process. It allows for access to treatment for any accused person deemed not criminally responsible, so it would not affect that. It also needs to propose reforms.
Earlier I heard the concern from the member for Halifax that this was not warranted. The constituents in my community want to see this bill go through as quickly as possible. In the case of Mr. Li, it is already too late. However, our mental health centre is one of the main health centres in Manitoba. It is located in Selkirk. The public is concerned about who else might be found not criminally responsible and end up housed there.
I also heard member for Saanich—Gulf Islands say earlier that this was completely unwarranted, that there was no need for it. I do not think we need to look at all of the cases as to why we need it. However, I want to draw to everyone's attention the situation of Andre Denny.
Andre Denny was detained at a secure hospital in Halifax in 2012 after a court ruled that he was not criminally responsible for a charge of assault causing bodily harm. Under this act, he would be considered a high-risk offender. As a teenager he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. The records showed that after the court verdict, he was agitated, argumentative and paranoid in hospital. Therefore, he was a problem patient. The hospital adjusted his medication, his condition improved and he was granted supervised outings in early February 2012, just over a year ago. Several weeks later, while on a one-hour pass, he failed to return to the hospital. He is now charged with second degree murder in the beating death of activist Raymond Taavel who was killed after he tried to break up a fight between two men outside a bar.
I do not think we need to argue about the need or talk about the conditions of individuals. I know that medication does not always work for some people who struggle with mood and personality disorders. Sometimes medication can amplify the problem or create other violent tendencies. Because of that, we have to err on the side of public safety and consider the rights of the victims and their families so they do not have to endure the long, drawn-out hardship of having these people in their communities, knowing that their loved ones are never coming back because of the very violent acts committed by those individuals who have definitely been found by the courts to have some form of mental health issue. At the same time, a very horrific and heinous crime has been committed and they feel there needs to be some justification for that individual to undergo the proper treatment under close supervision, putting the rights of victims and public safety first.