Debates of Feb. 4th, 2015

Questions on the Order Paper

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Motions for Papers

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all notices of motions for the production of papers be allowed to stand.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Bill C-32—Time Allocation Motion

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

moved:

That in relation to Bill C-32, An Act to enact the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights and to amend certain Acts, not more than one further sitting day shall be allotted to the consideration of the report stage and one sitting day shall be allotted to the consideration of the third reading stage of the said Bill and, fifteen minutes before the expiry of the time provided for Government Orders on the day allotted to the consideration of the report stage and on the day allotted to the consideration of the third reading stage of the said Bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this Order, and in turn every question necessary for the disposal of the stage of the bill then under consideration shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.

Mr. Speaker, this motion will provide for a ninth and tenth day of debate on this very important bill for victims.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Pursuant to Standing Order 67.1, there will now be a 30-minute question period.

The hon. member for Gatineau.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is very troubling that the government has imposed a time allocation motion for the 86th time, if my information is correct. It is particularly troubling that the government chose to move such a motion for Bill C-32 on the victims bill of rights.

The government spent a lot of time coming up with this bill, following a number of online and group consultations. It took a long time before the government introduced this bill of rights. However, the debates in the House at second reading were concluded rather quickly.

The committee thoroughly examined this bill. No underhanded tactics or anything of the sort were used to delay the process. As usual, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights did its job as best it could with the resources provided within the allotted timeframe. The bill returned to the House, and I find that every time I hear one of my colleagues speak about this bill of rights in the House, it still gives me something more to think about.

The witnesses who appeared before the committee, both victims and victim support groups, told us that this bill requires a lot of improvement. I think that it would be a good idea for the government to hear what members have to say. Again this morning, the member for York South—Weston made me think about some specific aspects of the bill of rights. It would have been really interesting to hear her give a speech about them in the House.

Things were going well and no tactics were used to delay this bill. Why then has it suddenly become so urgent that a time allocation motion be imposed at this stage?

Is the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada not fed up with seeing his government routinely impose this sort of motion on the democratic consideration of bills?

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member. I really understand her perspective on this issue.

The most important thing is that she is right: there were lots of consultations. Throughout the process, we had plenty of opportunities to examine this bill. We heard from over 500 stakeholders on this issue through online consultations and in-person consultations held across Canada before the bill was drafted.

My friend is absolutely correct in suggesting that there has been massive input and examination, including before a parliamentary committee. I want to express my thanks to her and members of committee for delving deeply into the provisions of this legislation. It will have a profound impact on the Canadian criminal justice system, a positive impact I would suggest.

I believe she and members of her party are prepared to support this legislation. Rather than procedural wrangling, rather than dragging out the debate, which is what appears to be happening after eight days of debate on the bill, we want to move it forward in the process, including giving the Senate the opportunity to have its good input and eyes on it and then, most importantly, let us have the legislation take effect in Canada.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is important that we recognize that since the Prime Minister achieved his majority government, he has demonstrated a lack of respect for procedure in the House of Commons. He has, through the government House leader, brought in well over 80 times time allocation on a wide variety of different pieces of legislation, everything from budgets to pensions to the Canadian Wheat Board, and today it is Bill C-32.

Since achieving his majority government, the Prime Minister has brought in closure, and that is what time allocation is, more than any other government in the history of our relatively young nation. He has demonstrated clearly that he does not respect the proceedings of this chamber.

The current minister was a leadership candidate at one point and a leader of a political party. Surely to goodness he would recognize that there is value in allowing for proper procedure and thorough debate, and having a government House leader work in co-operation with other House leaders to make this chamber work more efficiently at getting the job done in a respectful way, so that democracy ultimately prevails inside the House of Commons.

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, democracy is prevailing. Democracy is working quite well.

In addition to having led a federal party in the House, I was also a House leader of that party. I sat on the opposition benches where the hon. member finds himself today. I sat there and I sat through many House leaders' meetings where similar discussions took place.

It is a bit hypocritical, and the member is standing on shifting sands to suggest that this is somehow new procedure and practice that is being used with time allocation. Let me assure the member that his party and the Liberal government, when it was in office, were not shy of using this procedure to move legislation forward. I was here.

That is what we are trying to do. Let us be clear. This is a bill that really is non-partisan, perhaps more than any other bill I have seen, in what it would bring about in terms of the changes to our criminal justice system. Beyond the procedural wrangling, it is interesting to note that there has been indication from opposition parties of support for this legislation.

We are literally, to use the proverbial term, ragging the puck at this point. Let us move the bill forward. Let us bring this good law to the country and allow the committee to do its important work in the Senate in the way that it already has, where it had, I am told, no fewer than nine meetings. This includes the time that we have had debated here on the floor of the House.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is the 86th time they are using measures to speed up legislation. That is not something to be proud of. The minister himself said that everything was going well. The process was going well, then all of a sudden, here we are with these urgency measures. Why is this so urgent? Why are they doing this?

Is this really a democracy if the government refuses to complete a process that, by the minister's own admission, is working well?

If everything is going so well, as he says, why the sudden urgency? Is this a new way of governing that has become the norm over the past few years under this government? Is the minister unable to see that things are going well and that we can continue to do the work properly, which is what people expect of us?

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, as I said, we are certainly not the first Canadian government to use this procedure.

It is also evident that neither the hon. member who asked the question nor I were privy to these discussions that took place at the House leaders' meeting. However, there has been a clear indication that this bill is starting to drag. After nine appearances here in the House, and a similar number in the committee, we want to move this bill forward.

What is the urgency? The urgency is clear. If the member takes the time to read the bill, and I hope that he has, he will see that these are real improvements in our criminal justice system. The consultations that took place both inside and outside the House clearly indicate that these are positive, proactive changes that victims, in particular, have been waiting for, for decades. Those who work in the criminal justice system embrace these as positive changes.

What is the urgency? The question that I will turn around is, why would we delay further what we know would be a positive and proactive change in our criminal justice system, for which we have seen support coming from the opposition?

The short answer is that we are running out of runway. There are only a certain number of sitting days left in this Parliament. We have new legislation still being presented, like the bill with respect to terrorism. We have a budget that we have to get through.

This is a cornerstone piece of legislation, not simply for the government, but for Parliament. It is important to note and stress again that members on the opposition side say that they are supporting it, so why would we delay it?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but notice the kind of hypocrisy that the government shows about this bill when it took it eight years to bring it forward. The government has been talking about this since 2006, and yet eight days are all we get to talk about it. That is a 365:1 ratio in terms of the amount of time involved.

In addition, if we take the amount of time that we have spent debating time allocation motions, there have been 43 hours of time allocation motion debate. That is far more than the debate for this bill, which the minister himself says is very important, has had in the House.

It is hypocritical and disrespectful of this great chamber to limit the debate on something so important. I, for one, have not had an opportunity to speak. I have not had an opportunity to present my own views. There are serious flaws in this bill that I would love to be able to speak about and portray to the government, but I may not get a chance because the government has decided that the debate is almost over and that it is time to move on before we are done.

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, while I appreciate and respect the opinion of the member opposite, I also hear from victims regularly, front line participants in the justice system, who are anxiously awaiting this legislation to come forward. The member was saying eight years and eight days in the House. There was also committee time, significant opportunity at committee, to hear from witnesses, from members of his party and others, to get their concerns on the record, and to put forward certain propositions and amendments. The time for talk has passed.

Eight years, he says. Yes, this bill has been a long time in the making. There were 500 participants or more who took part in the formulation of this important legislation. This is a bill that would bring about real improvements in the way our criminal justice operates, particularly vis-à-vis victims and their participation, their inclusion, their sense of respect, their right to information and their right to restitution at times. These are the types of proactive changes that many have been working for, not just for eight years but for their entire lives.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I get the sense from the minister that there is a lot of urgency in this matter going forward. In fact, numerous constituents have contacted me with regard to their concerns about restitution for victims. They do not feel included in the system and they do not feel their needs are being met.

Could the minister please share his experience? I know he has travelled right across this country meeting with victims and associations to raise these concerns.

Could he please talk about the urgency of the bill and the need to apply restitution to victims?

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I had the good fortune to travel to the member's province on several occasions, including as recently as this past summer. In every province and territory, I heard from victims, from front line workers, victims services, child advocacy centres, police, essentially everyone, that important adjustments had to be made.

The member references restitution. Sadly, and this is an alarming statistic that I want to have on the record, the cost of criminality in Canada today is over $100 billion. That is a staggering figure, of which over 80% of those costs are borne by victims. That includes missed time and productivity, counselling and, of course, the costs incurred by victims themselves for damages and harm done to them as a result of criminality.

This bill, among other things, would allow victims greater access to restitution, to share the burden that they are forced to share through no fault of their own. One of the important parts of this bill is to buttress our current system of restitution. We are doing so in large consultation with provinces and territories, so that this will happen. We now have in place a victims ombudsman, another innovative part of the package of the solution coming from this government.

We intend to see this bill and other legislation that we are working on currently, some of which is still before the House, that is designed specifically to help victims and their feeling of respect and inclusion in our justice system.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would be interested to know exactly how this is going to improve the lives on a financial basis for the many victims. I have a constituent who was the victim of a random shooting, a young mother, who was left paralyzed from the neck down. There was very little out there to help her and her family move forward.

I would like to hear from the minister just exactly how this recent legislation is going to benefit people like her.

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, this is a shared responsibility. Surely the member, who herself was on the government benches for many years, is not going to suggest that somehow one government or one government agency is going to take full responsibility for this. It is really a tragic situation that she has described.

Within this particular legislation, there are very serious efforts now to bring about greater accountability at the provincial level, to have compensation for victims of crime, to have funds that are aimed at helping with counselling in some cases because the type of traumatic injury she is describing goes beyond just the physical injury.

The efforts here to bring about the type of restitution that would ever fully compensate somebody who has lost ambulatory skills or the ability to restore them to full health, there is no amount of money in the world that can do that.

This bill is not aimed at just one element of victims restitution, but also their inclusion, their right to information, their right to consultation with prosecutors, police and participants in the justice system, throughout the entire experience, from the time that the crime occurs until the final resolution or meting out of a sentence and then even through the parole process.

This bill would go a long way to help assist and offset costs of crime but also to support victims throughout their entire and, most often, unfortunate experiences in the justice system.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for my Conservative colleague. Of course, the current government cannot remain in power for decades on end.

Once the next government is in place, when he and his colleagues are in opposition, and the government, regardless of which party is in power, moves time allocation motions, gag orders, will he applaud that government for using them repeatedly, when it is not his own party?

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, if a future government uses the procedures and processes needed to move bills forward, I will say that sometimes that is unfortunately necessary.

I am not sure I fully understood the member's question. These are quasi-constitutional powers that would be found within the bill. If the member is suggesting that some future government may in fact try to change, alter, or revoke some of this legislation, I frankly would be surprised if that would be the case, but nothing is beyond the realm of possibility, I suppose.

I want to take a moment to come back to the issue of restitution. So far as restitution goes, there will be new enforceability mechanisms. There will be a new ability for the victims, through the offices, in some cases, of either provincial or federal ombudsmen to seek out civil remedies. That is, they could have judgments placed against the perpetrators, the people responsible for the injury or the loss. It is also incorporated in the bill to bring about greater restitution and greater enforcement in terms of recovery of loss.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry]

Mr. Speaker, a couple of New Democrats have talked rather hypocritically about how long it takes to get legislation through the House. It is kind of interesting hearing them talk about how long it takes to get legislation through the House, when time after time they obstruct and delay, on a regular basis, the government's measures on free trade, on safety and security, on criminal justice, and on the economic action plan for this country.

The reality is that the opposition parties, the NDP in this case, particularly, are ideologically opposed to free trade. They are ideologically opposed to the security measures and finding that balance between freedom and security that were taken. They are ideologically opposed to holding those who commit crimes to account. They are ideologically opposed to lower taxes. Therefore, they obstruct and delay at every turn.

I want to ask the minister the following question: When it comes to this piece of legislation in particular, why is it so important that we move this legislation forward, that we make sure we get this legislation passed through the House and the Senate before the next election?

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, my friend from Edmonton is no stranger to the importance of having legislation that protects our citizens, that does more and goes further for victims, and that is, in fact, the short answer.

This legislation will incorporate into one federal statute real, entrenched protections for victims. For the first time, there will be a place where victims can go to seek direction, advice, and support for their rights, not the rights of the criminal but the rights of the individual who has been harmed. They can go to seek support, to seek, in some cases, enforcement of restitution orders, and to seek the ability to seek information, something that should be basic.

Make no mistake about it. This does not aim to criticize or highlight shortcomings of the individuals working hard every day to support our victims, to support those who have suffered at the hands of criminals. This is simply to bring about a standardized approach across the country. There is the old saying about a higher tide elevating all boats. That is what we are attempting to do here. We are trying to bring about a greater experience for those who, sadly, find themselves drawn into the criminal justice system because they have been victims.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, once again I rise to oppose the use of time allocation. Members of Parliament in positions such as mine, those of us who are members of parties with fewer than 12 MPs, or independents, rarely have an opportunity to participate in the debates in this place.

I was hopeful that today I would be able to speak to the bill. I support much of it. However, the Minister of Justice just mentioned that we do have an ombudsman dealing with victims of crime. I applaud the government for creating that position, but the ombudsman for victims of crime, Sue O'Sullivan, herself has had many suggestions that were not taken up in the bill. I have attempted to push them forward in amendments. I would like to speak to them again in this place. However, time allocation is a hammer that comes down all too often on democracy, and it makes a mockery of Parliament.

I would ask the Minister of Justice to allow us time to bring forward the changes that would make the bill better.