Debates of Oct. 8th, 2014

Rouge National Urban Park Act

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome my colleague from Trinity—Spadina to the House. This is my first opportunity to interact with him here in the House since his election.

He asked if I knew about this, and I have to admit that I did not, because I do not follow Toronto politics closely. I am here, and I follow politics back in my home province of Nova Scotia. It is interesting that he can bring it to the floor and talk about that here.

I am not going to comment on Toronto municipal politics, but I will talk about skepticism. I did say that I was going to put down my talking points and I have, but this is the truth. We have seen cuts to Parks Canada. Twelve hundred jobs have been cut in parks across Canada. If parks are so important, how are we going to protect them, especially when we are seeing job cuts, park hours diminished, and parks being closed for different seasons? This is where my skepticism comes from. People cannot go to Kejimkujik National Park in my home province in the winter anymore. A lot of the communities around these parks rely on them being open year-round. It is unfortunate.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Halifax for her speech. This member has an excellent understanding of her file, and I thank her for that.

This bill proposes to create the first urban park. If there is something we should be the best in the world at, it is creating parks. I would even say that this is in our DNA as Canadians. This bill presents an incredible opportunity.

Aside from the challenges that my colleague mentioned in her speech, what other challenges could we expect to encounter with this bill?

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou for his kind words.

Indeed, it is an incredible opportunity for us to be part of a government—I think that the opposition and all the other parties are part of the government—that will create Canada's first national urban park. What are the other challenges? As I already mentioned, I am a bit concerned about funding for the parks. Is it possible to create a new national park with the cuts to Parks Canada? Will there be enough scientists and employees in the park to support its objectives? I have a lot of concerns.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for Intergovernmental Affairs]

I know that the debate is coming to a close, Mr. Speaker.

The member for Trinity—Spadina and the Liberal Party have been talking about ecological integrity. Their position is that if the Toronto Zoo were added to the park, it would increase the ecological integrity of the park. By allowing people to come to the park and look at the giraffes and polar bears within the park, we would be increasing the ecological integrity of the park.

I want to thank the hon. member across the way for supporting the bill to get it to committee. I appreciate that, but I have a comment.

The farmers in this area have been treated terribly. Their lands were originally expropriated by the Liberal government in the 1970s. Many of them were evicted from their lands. Some were given one-year leases that they have been operating on for over 40 years. This park would give them the opportunity to have some stability for the first time in over 40 years. In the past, they were evicted from their lands for the creation of the Bob Hunter Memorial Park. They were evicted from their homes. Those class one farmlands were reforested.

When the bill gets to committee, I would ask the member to really listen to the farmers and look at the reports. The creation of a 600-metre ecological corridor, which will take 1,700 acres of class one farmland out of production, based on a 20-year-old report, cannot be done without evicting farmers.

While I thank the member for her support, I hope that when the bill does get to committee, she will really take a look at how the farmers have been treated in this area, listen to what they are saying, and look at what would happen to them if we created this zone in that area.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that comment. I have heard the member raise this issue several times in the House.

First, when I think about ecological integrity, I do not see it as necessitating the re-naturalization of farms. For me, that is not on the table. The member talked about other examples of farms in the past that were re-naturalized, but I do not see that as part of the equation here.

The member is very right when he talks about the fact that these farmers have had one-year leases. I do not know about other members, but if I had a one-year lease and I did not know what was coming down next year or what was going to happen, I do not know if I would make a lot of investments in my farm for the long term. I do not know if I would make those environmental and ecological investments. I do not know if I would engage in the best practices when it comes to farming and the environment because I might not be there next year.

There is some opportunity to listen to farmers, but also to talk to them and engage with them.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of a member of any party or any organization suggesting that we close down farms or even shrink the size of them. However, if I recall my history correctly, Bill Davis, who was a Conservative premier of the province, was one of the people who led the fight to expropriate the farms and close them down in favour of the Pickering airport.

Is that yet another reason why the member is skeptical of the Conservative Party's real commitment on this file to preserve these farms?

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am a bit at a loss. Once again, I am not up on my Ontario politics and ancient history. I am here before the House, looking at this bill.

I appreciate the member's intervention. Again, this is why we have members of Parliament from all across Canada. It is so they can bring their first-hand experience to the floor here. I take what he is saying as an interesting addition to this debate.

I do have skepticism on a lot of other fronts when it comes to the Conservative government and the environment. Another good example, in addition to the cuts to Parks Canada, is that on climate change and reducing emissions. We were promised oil and gas regulations. That was eight years ago. Earlier today in question period I asked where those regulations were. There is neither hide nor hair of them.

My skepticism is well warranted. We have these questions on the environment, we have these issues that we want to have heard, we have ideas that we want to see turned into regulation or legislation and we have not seen them.

I am very willing to take a risk and work with everybody in the House. I believe we all want the best for this park, I believe we all want strong environmental protections for this park and we all want to see it created.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Accordingly the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a committee)

The House resumed from October 2 consideration of the motion that Bill C-247, An Act to expand the mandate of Service Canada in respect of the death of a Canadian citizen or Canadian resident, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Service Canada Mandate Expansion Act

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-247.

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #253

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

(Bill read the second time and referred to a committee)

It being 6:10 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

The House resumed from June 18 consideration of the motion that Bill C-590, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (blood alcohol content), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Criminal Code

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I begin my comments by complimenting the member who brought this private member's bill before us. All of us who are seized with this issue recognize the extreme sorrow and difficult personal circumstances that many members of this House bring to this issue. I recognize that speaking to this issue with a great deal of sensitivity is required. In particular, as these events are televised, there are members of our larger community who are also watching the debate tonight, hoping that some of the tragedies in their personal lives have meaning.

I would also reflect upon this issue as it has presented itself to me in my political life. Many in this House may not know that I was a member of the Toronto Police Services Board, which is seized with this issue of impaired driving, drunk driving, in large part because it is the canary in the coal mine. It is quite often members of the service who get into trouble while driving under the influence of alcohol who are starting to show signs of significant other issues which are impairing not only their ability to operate a vehicle in their private life, but to fulfill their duties in their public life as well.

I can recall going case by case through the process as a member of the Toronto Police Services Board, monitoring and listening to some of the professional standards cases and sometimes appeals. I had to adjudicate to make sure that we eradicated not only drunk driving, but also the additional problems that accompany it from the service.

Personal stories were related to us, not by the victims' families, but the families of individuals who were convicted, who were caught drinking and driving. Those stories are the ones that stick with me. I have heard as a journalist, as a member of the community, and as a citizen of this country the horrible stories of the victims' families and those who have survived these terrible incidents, but the people struggling with alcohol have an equally compelling story to tell and it is something which we also must consider as we look at the bill. Those stories are part of a larger problem that we are not addressing.

One of the reasons we do not have a handle on this issue is that criminal behaviour though it may be, sometimes it is not eradicated through the Criminal Code and the courts. Sometimes we need to treat the underlying issues that are creating the situation.

What concerns us on this side of the House about this piece of legislation is that it is part of a pattern that we are starting to see in the approach to the Criminal Code.

First, this is a private member's bill that is changing it. That creates a patchwork of ad hoc changes to the Criminal Code. The Criminal Code is a very complex document which is interwoven and needs to be sustained as a comprehensive document. When we start amending it with one-off private members' bills, we start to unravel a comprehensive system of criminal justice in this country. We are concerned about that, even though we support the general intent of this private member's bill.

The other issue is we know that punishment for this crime alone has not stopped it. While this bill proposes increased sentences, while we support the notion that exceptionally high levels of blood alcohol content should carry a stronger sentence, and that repeat offenders are the most likely to be the most lethal offenders, and while we share that there needs to be graduated and increased progressive punishment on this issue, we know that increasing the sentences in provinces like Prince Edward Island and others has not been a deterrent nor impacted the rate of offence. While it is an important way to deal with this criminal behaviour, it does not necessarily eliminate the behaviour. The reason is that alcohol addiction which may lead to drunk driving is not just a criminal issue; it is fundamentally a medical issue. The addiction is a medical phenomenon as much as anything else.

This is a private member's bill, and therefore, it stands out by itself. We do not see accompanying it an increase in treatment centres. This concerns us. I would hope that in committee or perhaps in consideration of these remarks the government across the way would consider a different approach on this issue. We do not see anything dealing with the regulatory requirements around alcohol acquisition. We do not see accompanying this bill things which would prevent this disease from taking hold of people's lives which puts them in a situation where, through impairment, they may make the horrible decision to drink and drive. Therefore, we think a more comprehensive approach is a more appropriate way to move forward on this bill.

However, we have seen the cases of highly intoxicated people with a pattern of repeat offence, and public safety and justice require us to take these exceptional steps to safeguard our streets and the innocent people on them, protecting people from those who, through their disease and high level of intoxication, are incapable of protecting themselves let alone anybody else. As a result, we will be supporting the bill.

To return again to the notion that mandatory minimum sentences and stronger sentences act as deterrents, we are very skeptical as to whether that will be the impact of the bill. We have heard the conversations and debates on the other side of the House suggesting that a stiffer penalty is all that is required to eliminate certain forms of crime, but it just simply is not true. There is no evidence to support this argument.

We also know that the best way to deal with alcohol addiction, the disease of alcoholism, is not to criminalize the behaviour but to treat it medically. I can tell members that in the city and province I represent, treatment beds are as scarce as scarce can be. They are as scarce as a national housing program.

Part of what we need here are those housing programs, which would provide support as people get out of jail and out of shelters and out of addiction. We need to treat those issues so that we do not end up with impaired people operating vehicles or committing any other crime. We need that second piece in this legislation to give us confidence that the government is truly serious about dealing with the tragedy of operating a vehicle while impaired.

I started my comments by talking about the situation faced by police service boards across this country and how people with extraordinary complications in their lives find themselves behind the wheel drinking and driving. The stories we heard were quite clear: the lack of treatment is fundamentally what is in front of us.

If we really want to prevent impaired people from getting behind the wheel, the answer is not the sentence that lies behind being caught and convicted. It is stopping them from being alcoholics to begin with. It is stopping that level of impairment from taking hold in their lives to begin with. It is this proactive approach that saves not only the lives of the innocent people who might be killed through impaired driving, but also the lives of the people who are seized by alcoholism.

However, we just do not see a comprehensive approach nationally that would support some of the provincial and local efforts. This private member's bill, as a single gesture, is important, and we support it, but unless it becomes part of a comprehensive approach that is proactive in nature and medical in essence, we are not going to solve this problem, and there will be more tragedies.

With those remarks and that analysis, I will resume my seat. I will support this private member's bill, but I do so with reservations.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak today in support of Bill C-590, an act to amend the Criminal Code (blood alcohol content). This private member's bill was tabled by the member for Prince Albert on April 9 and it addresses minimum penalties for the crime of impaired driving.

As much as there has been improvement in this area of the law over the past 40 years, more has to be done. Impaired driving cases are familiar to all Canadians. Everyone knows a family member, a friend or someone in their community who has been touched by this crime.

Over the past decades, we have managed to lower the number of persons who are killed in collisions involving alcohol-impaired driving. Lives have been saved by the efforts of families, individuals, schools, service organizations, police and legislatures.

I would like to recognize the really great work of the people who volunteer for Operation Red Nose, in the month of December, who volunteer to drive until the wee hours of the morning to keep impaired drivers off the road.

However, even with the improvements, the sad reality is that impaired driving remains a pernicious and persisting crime. It is the single most committed crime at 12% of crimes, according to the Statistics Canada 2011 Juristat on impaired driving.

Impaired driving is said by prosecutors to take up about 40% of provincial court trial time. The great tragedy is that hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries every year from impaired driving are, each and every one, avoidable.

With the arrival of the motor car at the turn of the 20th century, it soon became clear that death and injury from crashes were part of the new motorized driving reality.

In 1921, Parliament enacted the offence of driving while intoxicated, in recognition of the reality that driving while intoxicated greatly increased the risk of a crash.

In 1951, Parliament added to the Criminal Code the offence of driving while impaired, in recognition that it was not only someone who was intoxicated who posed a higher risk of a crash.

In 1969, Parliament repealed the driving while intoxicated offence and followed some other western nations in setting a blood alcohol concentration above which it is an offence to drive.

The over 80 offence rested upon the development of technology to measure blood alcohol concentration, which is converted using a blood-to-breath ratio into a blood alcohol concentration.

Over the years, Parliament has acted many times to improve the impaired driving provisions in the Criminal Code, which brings me to Bill C-590.

The bill could be seen as taking the step in the right direction. The bill is also in the spirit of one of the recommendations of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights that was made in the committee's 2009 report, entitled “Ending Alcohol-impaired Driving: A Common Approach”.

The report was in favour of setting higher penalties for individuals who drove with a blood alcohol concentration which was over 160. Currently, a reading above 160 on an approved instrument is an aggravating factor for Criminal Code sentencing purposes.

Bill C-590 proposes two things.

First, it would create a new offence of driving while over 160 that would be a straight indictable offence. The mandatory minimum penalties would be even more severe than a case where someone drove while over 80. On a first over 160 conviction, there would be a mandatory minimum penalty, or MMP, of a fine of $2,000 and imprisonment for 60 days. On the second offence, there would be an MMP of 240 days imprisonment.

The second thing that Bill C-590 would do is to raise the MMP where an offender caused a crash involving a death or bodily harm while driving impaired or over 80 or when the driver refused to provide a breath sample knowing of the death or bodily harm.

Right now, in these cases, the MMP is a fine of $1,000 on a first offence, 30 days imprisonment on a second offence and 120 days imprisonment on a subsequent offence.

For a first offence that causes a death or bodily harm, Bill C-590 would set an MMP of $5,000 and 120 days imprisonment. For a second offence, it would be 240 days imprisonment.

It would be advisable to consider at committee whether there should be a higher MMP for causing death than for causing bodily harm. I understand that the current MMP was set for the purpose of avoiding situations where a person who drove impaired and/or over 80 and/or refused to provide a breath sample could be given a conditional sentence of imprisonment.

Where there is an MMP, no conditional sentence is available. However, the MMPs for the cause of death or bodily harm scenarios are the same as the MMPs for impaired and/or over 80 and/or the refusal where there is no death or bodily harm. In death cases, the courts are clearly giving sentences measured in years and are not giving the $1,000 MMP. It may be helpful to hear from witnesses, and to see whether there needs to be any adjustment to the MMPs.

I am pleased that Parliament is being given the opportunity to respond to one of the recommendations in the 2009 report of the standing committee. We can establish MMPs that will have a deterring effect and that will have an effect on public safety because they incapacitate the high blood alcohol concentration drivers and the drivers who kill or injure in offences of impaired driving, over 80 driving or refusal to provide a breath sample.

I ask all parliamentarians to join me in supporting Bill C-590.

I would like to put my notes down and just tell the House a bit of a story.

It is a story of a nurse from Newmarket who had spent 25 years of her nursing career at what was then York County Hospital, who at the end of her career had determined that there were other opportunities for her to provide service and had dedicated the end of her career to serving people who were AIDS patients. She was providing personal service as a private duty nurse to those people.

It was Friday, February 8, 1991, when that nurse left Newmarket to drive to Kleinburg to a special patient. Somewhere around the Ansnorveldt road, a driver who was driving over 85 miles per hour came across five lanes of traffic and hit that nurse head-on.

She did not survive. It was my mother's birthday. Things need to change.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, drunk driving is a public safety issue that deserves more of our attention. That applies to our assessment of whether the legislative measures in this bill can help eliminate this scourge.

It goes without saying that enhancing road safety involves several factors, from the quality of physical infrastructure to Criminal Code provisions penalizing drunk drivers.

I would like to go over some key numbers that illustrate the devastating impact of this scourge on families in Quebec and Canada. Some 5.4 million Canadians say that they have a family member or friend who has driven drunk or caused an accident. We know that with this type of statistic, when people talk about a friend or an acquaintance, they are sometimes talking about themselves, but because they do not want to incriminate themselves, they say they know someone. That number is still astronomical.

Nearly a quarter of the Canadian population has a family member or close friend who has been a victim of a drunk driving accident. According to Transport Canada, alcohol was a factor in nearly 30% of traffic accident fatalities from 2003 to 2005.

Unfortunately, my riding, Trois-Rivières, has troubling statistics on this too. According to a study that looked at June of 2013, the Trois-Rivières police service made about one arrest a day, 28 that month to be precise. Impaired driving is still the leading criminal cause of death in Canada.

These statistics show how important it is to examine this issue. I support moving forward with the bill introduced by my colleague, the member for Prince Albert, so that the committee can look at it, study its impact on sentence length and ensure that the provisions comply with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canadian criminal law.

The Criminal Code of Canada has very strict laws and sanctions for impaired driving. Specifically, several Canadian provinces have in place a three-tier system based on blood alcohol content. The first tier is zero milligrams of alcohol for young and novice drivers. The second tier allows for administrative sanctions in some cases for a BAC over 0.05 milligrams. Lastly, drivers with a BAC over 0.08 milligrams are liable to sanctions under the Criminal Code of Canada.

Furthermore, new provisions were added in the Criminal Code and came into force on July 2, 2008. This means that there are now nine distinct offences related to impaired driving. Unfortunately, despite the introduction of more coercive measures, the Canadian Police Association recognizes the challenges faced on the ground in terms of combatting this scourge.

In addition to the human cost related to this phenomenon, the average cost of impaired driving accidents in Canada from 1999 to 2006 has been estimated at $1.9 billion per year. This estimate does not include any of the social costs that result from those offences.

With respect to Bill C-590, it would be interesting to explore whether reducing mandatory minimum prison sentences for impaired driving causing death is the right thing to do here. It would be useful to debate this, because these mandatory minimum sentences are shorter than existing sentences. Reducing mandatory minimum sentences for impaired driving causing death could prove counterproductive. According to the jurisprudence, minimum penalties tend to become the default penalty. In other words, minimum penalties become the norm, rather than being reserved for the least serious cases or those where there are mitigating factors.

Accordingly, it would be entirely reasonable to expect defence lawyers to ask for the minimum penalty, unless the Crown can prove that the defendant's crime deserves a punishment that will serve as an example.

The federal Criminal Code is not enough to address the risks to road safety caused by impaired drivers. The duty to enforce the law in this area is shared by the federal, provincial and territorial governments.

There are a number of solutions that we can implement incrementally to deter impaired drivers from getting behind the wheel and endangering others. One of the deterrents that can be implemented is random breathalyzer tests for blood alcohol concentrations.

In Ireland, the Road Safety Authority believes that random breathalyzer testing has led to a 23% reduction in the number of highway deaths. That is something that could be considered. This last measure is just one of many options available to us to effectively fight delinquent behaviour.

To introduce an effective measure that will eradicate this scourge, we have to consider the fact that drunk driving is the manifestation of social problems that coercive measures alone cannot address. By adopting this approach, we could transform our legislative framework and make it preventive as well as punitive.

Preventing impaired driving must be based on campaigns that look at much more than just drunk driving and also raise awareness among drivers of the link between alcoholism, violence and risky behaviour.

Impaired driving is above all a social problem. We have to consider ways to prevent risky behaviours and create public policies with the ultimate objective of reducing risky behaviours in our society—including impaired driving—rather than creating a legislative framework that depends solely on coercion. Alcoholism does lead to crime, but we must remember that coercion can make it worse.

Preventive social policies, such as those that seek to address the socio-economic determinants of alcoholism, produce more effective results in the long term by taking a holistic approach to the problem, which requires the intervention of health professionals, social workers and members of police forces.

In closing, I support the bill introduced by the member for Prince Albert. I believe that sending it to committee will provide the opportunity for more in-depth analysis of how to achieve the desired results.

We should also be looking to technological advancements for solutions. For example, I am thinking about car locks that are opened with a number combination instead of a key. They make it more difficult to open the door if the driver has had one too many and is not fully coherent. Opening the door requires some thought, and the door is prevented from opening if it is not unlocked within a given time frame.

The Criminal Code, new technology and international experience in this area should all be part of our collective thought process as we determine how we can put an end to this problem, which has disastrous consequences for families in Quebec and Canada.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Resuming debate with his five-minute right of reply, the hon. member for Prince Albert.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank all of my colleagues for their suggestions and good advice on this piece of legislation.

This legislation came about because of a guy by the name of Ben Darchuk. Ben Darchuk was the owner of Ben's Auto Glass. He was killed by a drunk driver, a drunk driver who was also under the influence of drugs. Ben had a family. He had a business. The impact on his family, his business, and the community was immense.

It seemed to me that we needed to do something to take guys who are over twice the legal limit off the road. It seemed to me that we needed to have some teeth in a piece of legislation so that when these people hit the courts, they would not just go through that revolving door; they would actually have consequences for being over twice the legal limit.

This bill would not fix everything. There is more we need to do to address drinking and driving. There are more ideas out there on prevention and maybe on the criminalization side of things too. I am open to all of those ideas. There is no question about that.

The goal, at the end of the day, is to get these guys off the road, to get these guys out from behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. It is a very simple goal.

It heartens me, and I am happy to see, that my colleagues are going to let the bill go to committee. This is great, because the committee can do great work on this piece of legislation. It could improve it, and in fact, I hope it does improve it.

I appreciate the constructive criticism from members of the House. I appreciate the professionalism my colleagues showed toward this piece of legislation. They took partisanship out of this legislation and focused on what we are trying to accomplish here today.

I am excited and happy to see the bill go to committee. I know that the committee will do the great work that I know committees can do. We can all take comfort in knowing that when this piece of legislation passes, we will have made a step forward that will probably save even more lives. At the end of the day, that is what we want to do. We want to save lives.

I would like to thank all of my colleagues for their support on this piece of legislation.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

(Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a committee)