Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Battle River—Crowfoot.
The member for Saanich—Gulf Islands said that this was a most wrenching debate today and that it was covering a topic that many of us would wish we did not have to address. I have to agree. I do not think I have ever seen so much wiggling and whining from the government side of the House as I have today, its contortions in trying to justify why it is going to oppose this motion. The Liberals can do better than that.
I want to put on record the motion, because we need to understand what we are talking about. When the Liberals start with their excuses, people need to understand that this is actually a simple choice. This is not a complex question of process over people. We have seen the Liberals talking about policy and processes all day and they have refused to put this little girl's interests and the interests of her family ahead of their own commitment to policy and process.
The motion simply says:
That, given Terri-Lynne McClintic was convicted of first-degree murder in the horrific abduction, rape and murder of eight-year-old Tori Stafford, and was moved from a secure facility to a healing lodge without fences and where the government has confirmed the presence of children, the House condemn this decision and call upon the government to exercise its moral, legal and political authority to ensure this decision is reversed and cannot happen again in other cases.
It is a simple request for the government to exercise the authority it has been given and reverse the decision. We know that can happen. The Correctional and Conditional Release Act, in two places, recognizes the minister has the power to do this.
As I mentioned earlier, this has been a day of are we going to put people first here or are we going to put policy and processes ahead of them. I would argue that we need to take a look at the personal side of this and do the right thing in this situation.
Tori Stafford was an eight-year-old little girl. She was walking home from her first day of school unaccompanied. She was picked up and taken out into the country, tortured, raped, murdered, buried there. Terri-Lynne McClintic was tried in 2010 and found guilty of first degree murder.
This young lady had a history of serious issues and abuses in the past. One of the reports talked about how she had microwaved her dog, so this is not a person who engaged in bad practices, as the minister mentioned earlier. She was sentenced to 25 years. In 2012, she had a violent encounter with another inmate. Apparently she was going to a mentoring appointment and decided that she was going to take it out on another inmate. Her only regret was that she had not hurt the other woman more than she had.
Correctional Service Canada has now transferred her from the Grand Valley Institution for Women. We have been misled all day by the Liberals' language. They know that Grand Valley is a combination maximum and medium-security prison. They have not talked about what part of that prison Ms. McClintic was in. She was moved from a maximum to medium prison, and the website for Correctional Service Canada defines the prison that way, to a medium- to minimum-security prison.
Okimaw Ohci is in my riding. I have been there many times. I do not know what the definition of medium security prison is, but this prison has no walls around it and has no fences. It is in the rolling hills southwest of Maple Creek. The things that most Canadians would think accompany a medium-security prison are not present at the healing lodge.
It is surprising that this person has the privileged status of being transferred to this healing lodge. It has been operating in my riding for years. The point of the lodge is to help young women to be reintegrated into society, to learn some of the skills they will need when they go back into society. Programs are in place. There is a horse program, classes, counselling and so on. There are aboriginal ceremonies. I have been part of those. I have also attended some of its open houses and we have eaten together.
It is an open facility. It is called an open campus. There are individual cabins that inmates can spend their time in and they can have their children with them as well. It is a real privilege for offenders to be transferred to a facility like that. It is a surprise to me that this decision has been made. I do not know how it could come about so quickly when this lady has 13 years left in her sentence before she is even eligible for parole.
When this came to light, people in my riding responded and reacted very quickly to it. I had calls from a number of leaders in communities, asking what they could do to get this reversed. They said it was crazy that this person would be moved to this facility.
Neighbouring towns and the administration of Maple Creek have called to express their concern. I have had calls from young mothers in Maple Creek saying that their children play out in their yards, and since the inmates of Okimaw Ohci get day passes into Maple Creek, they are asking if they need to change the way they look after their children. This is a result of the Terri-Lynne McClintic's being in their community.
It has been fascinating to see the contortions the Liberals and NDP have gone through today to try to excuse their inability to support the motion we have put forward. It is my understanding that the Ontario legislature has already dealt with this unanimously and said that this decision needs to be reversed.
We can talk about the human cost. All of us have seen the letter from Tori Stafford's father requesting the Prime Minister do what fathers across this country would like to be done, and reverse this decision and put this lady back into the institution where she was before.
I have been most disappointed by the public safety minister. He gets up in the House and talks about all the policies and processes that need to be in place before he can move forward, and he announces a review. We know that the government specializes in consultations and reviews, but this is not a situation where we need to wait for a review. Canadians have been clear on this. Both the Liberals and the NDP are finding out from Canadians how far offside they are on this issue. Every response I have received is that one would have to be crazy to think this person can be left in an unsupervised setting, given her record and the things she has done in her life. We need to do something. We need to get this decision reversed.
Yesterday we are talking about putting a victims bill of rights into the military code. As I spoke yesterday, the questions from the other side were all about the offenders. For example, they said we needed to find special ways of letting offenders off, to find ways in which they were not treated in the same way, and that we needed to find a different way of sentencing small groups.
Today, when I was listening to the debate, all of the focus of the other side seemed to be on the offenders. That is a constant. There is very little thought about the victims. This morning, I heard one of our Liberal colleagues imply that to reverse this decision would affect the charter in some way. He said that it would be similar to having the RCMP monitoring and harassing MPs, and that somehow there is a parallel between the government taking its responsibility seriously and it just saying that it is going to reverse this decision. He sees doing that as having some sort of great impact on every Canadian's life. We need to have this decision reversed. We need to have it reversed as quickly as possible.
Actually, it is time for the minister to step up. Those of us from Saskatchewan have been disappointed time and time again by the fact he seems to fail to represent Saskatchewan's interests. He is the person who comes from Ottawa back to Saskatchewan and tells us what Ottawa has told him. In this situation, it is time for him to really take some leadership for a change and step forward. As minister, as the person who has been given the responsibility for this, he needs to make a decision and reverse this decision.
I want to talk a little about the authority that the minister has. The other side has left the impression that the government cannot make this change. We know that it is very simple. Under subsection 6(1) of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the minister has the authority to direct the commissioner of corrections in all matters. It is written clearly into the act. There is no room for excuses. There is no room for his saying he cannot do it, because he does have the moral, legal and political authority to correct this issue. That can include issuing a directive that a broad class of offenders, such as those convicted of the murder of a child, not be allowed to be transferred to such a facility. I heard the members opposite suggesting earlier that that was something they thought should be done.
Okimaw Ohci is a minimum security prison. It is a prison where women go to be able to be reintegrated into society. It is not a place for Terri-Lynne McClintic. We need the government to do the right thing here. We need it to reverse this decision and put her back in the institution where she was before she was transferred to southwest Saskatchewan.