Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on the observation made by my colleague from Ottawa—Vanier when he referenced an article from The Globe and Mail on the weekend about the Chief Justice. The article was on the issue of mentally ill offenders, and it said:
At least once a year, their status is reviewed by expert panels. After treatment, most of them return to society and resume normal lives. But under a federal proposal, it will become more difficult for those designated as high-risk offenders to be released.
Chief Justice McLachlin points proudly to a 1990 Supreme Court of Canada decision, R v. Swain, as the key move that created a new template for giving mentally ill offenders regular reviews.
“It said you can’t just lock up a person who has been found not guilty by way of their illness, and throw away the key,” she says. “That was the breakthrough.”
Endorsing the review-board system, she says: “The interesting thing is that the hearing process is staffed heavily by psychiatrists and I think it is well-supported by the medical side of things, by the police and by judges.”
At the ‘intake’ end of the system, however, Chief Justice McLachlin says offenders are too often warehoused...
The Chief Justice of Canada, who will likely be tasked with reviewing this legislation at some point in the reasonably near future, has said that the system actually works very well as it is.
Essentially, this is a reaction to an egregious set of facts and ultimately an attack on those who are the most vulnerable in our society, namely those who are mentally ill, dressed up in the name of victims. The ultimate irony of this entire process is that the victims who deserve every sympathy that we can afford them will actually be potentially victimized once more because of the system that the hon. Minister of Justice is proposing.
My simple question is to the Minister of Justice. Why will he not listen to his Chief Justice, who thinks that this is the wrong direction?