Mr. Speaker, when Canadians hear the government talk about Bill C-16, they probably think it is a bill about protecting victims. They hear about protecting women from abuse. They hear about protecting children from exploitation. They hear about stopping the spread of deepfake pornography. They hear about tougher measures against coercive control in abusive relationships. Most Canadians would hear that list and say, “Who could possibly be against that?” The answer is, nobody could.
Conservatives support those objectives because we believe victims deserve protection, children deserve protection and families deserve protection. That is the fundamental job of government: protection of its citizens. The problem is that Bill C-16 is a bit like buying a house because the front porch looks beautiful, only to discover later that the foundation is compromised. The government points Canadians toward the parts of the bill everyone likes, while hoping they do not notice the parts that would change everything. Buried inside this legislation is a poison pill that would allow judges to bypass virtually every mandatory minimum sentence in the Criminal Code.
First, we need to understand how we got here. Consecutive Conservative governments had established mandatory minimum sentences for some of the most serious crimes in our Criminal Code. We did that because Canadians expect serious offences to carry serious consequences. Child sexual exploitation, weapons trafficking, armed extortion, drive-by shootings and human trafficking were not treated as ordinary crimes, because the harm they cause is extraordinary.
However, for 10 years, the Liberal government has systematically weakened the principle that serious crimes must carry serious consequences. Liberal Bill C-75 weakened bail laws and pushed the justice system toward release at the earliest opportunity. Liberal Bill C-5 removed mandatory minimum penalties for a range of serious offences, including crimes involving firearms and dangerous drugs.
Time and again, police officers, prosecutors, victims advocates, premiers and community leaders warned that the government was moving in the wrong direction. Time and again, those warnings were dismissed. Today, Canadians are seeing the consequences. Violent crime has increased dramatically. Human trafficking has increased dramatically. Sexual assault has increased dramatically. Organized criminal networks have become stronger and more sophisticated.
Canadians are witnessing the inevitable result of a philosophy that views punishment, rather than crime itself, as the problem, that views the rights of the criminal as more important than the rights of the victim. That is why Bill C-16's “get out of jail free” card is a poison pill that Canadian communities will once again be forced to swallow. The Liberals will say that Conservatives are standing in the way of getting strong laws passed, but I can assure Canadians that Conservatives are standing in the breach, fighting to keep criminals from getting off with a slap on the wrist for serious crimes.
Understanding Bill C-16 requires a deeper understanding of the path that led us here. For years, courts have increasingly relied on what are called “reasonable hypotheticals” when reviewing mandatory minimum sentences. Rather than focusing solely on the criminal who is actually on trial, the court judges have increasingly considered hypothetical scenarios involving people who do not exist and who never committed the actual crimes in question.
That trend culminated in the Supreme Court's Senneville decision. The facts of that case were horrific. One offender possessed 475 files, including 317 images of children, most between the ages of three and six, and many depicting acts of sexual abuse I cannot bring myself to say out loud here in the House. Another offender possessed more than 800 images and videos involving children as young as five years old being subjected to sexual exploitation and abuse. That is hundreds of images documenting the abuse of vulnerable children.
Most Canadians would think that the court would consider those offenders and apply the appropriate mandatory minimum sentence. Instead, the court chose this moment to question mandatory minimums altogether. Judges based their decisions on a hypothetical story of a teenager sending a hypothetical intimate photo to a hypothetical boyfriend or girlfriend, and that hypothetical photo was later shared with a hypothetical someone. The court claimed concern that the same mandatory minimum law could apply, even though the case before them was very real and very serious. Because of that hypothetical case, the court struck down Parliament's mandatory minimum sentence.
The government then had a choice. It could have changed the law to deal with that specific concern while keeping strong penalties in place for serious child sexual exploitation offences. Instead, the Liberals used that court decision as the reason for creating the new get-out-of-jail-free card in Bill C-16. That is why Canadians should look carefully at what the bill would actually do rather than what the Liberals say it would do.
The government wants Canadians to believe that Bill C-16 is a major public safety initiative. It points to provisions dealing with deepfake pornography. It points to provisions dealing with coercive control. It points to provisions dealing with intimate partner violence. All those measures are designed to attract support. However, while Canadians are focused on those headlines, the Liberal government has inserted this poison pill. It calls it a safety valve, a phrase carefully chosen because it sounds limited, reasonable and harmless. The government insists this power will be used only in exceptional cases, yet when Conservatives proposed reasonable safeguards to ensure that outcome, every safeguard was rejected. Canadians should ask themselves a simple question: If the government truly intended that this be used only rarely, why did it refuse every attempt to define what “rarely” actually means? The answer is obvious. The government is presenting Canadians with one bill while pursuing a very different objective beneath the surface.
That objective became even clearer during committee study. Conservatives approached the legislation constructively, because we recognize that there are very good measures that are worth preserving. Our goal is not to destroy the bill; our goal is to strengthen it and ensure that victims remain at the centre of the legislation. We proposed safeguards that would have limited access to the safety valve to offenders with no prior record. We proposed ensuring that sentences would not be reduced below half of Parliament's mandatory minimum. We proposed excluding extortion offences. We proposed excluding aggravated sexual assault. We proposed excluding serious child sexual offences. We proposed excluding some of the most serious crimes that Parliament has already determined deserve firm sentencing consequences. Every one of those amendments was rejected.
Conservatives also proposed stronger notification requirements so that victims of intimate partner violence and coercive control would be informed about release decisions affecting offenders. Those amendments were rejected as well. The significance of those votes cannot be ignored. The government did not accidentally create an overly broad get-out-of-jail-free card but deliberately defended it. It did not overlook the concerns raised by Conservatives. It considered those concerns and voted against them. The result is legislation that speaks passionately about victims while systematically rejecting measures that would strengthen their protection.
Conservatives support stronger protections for women and children, stronger measures against deepfake exploitation and stronger recognition of the devastating harm caused by coercive control. Those objectives are important and need support. Unfortunately, the poison pill at the heart of Bill C-16 undermines all of those goals, because it continues with the same failed philosophy that has contributed to the crime and chaos Canadians are experiencing today.
At a time when communities are demanding greater accountability, the government is creating new opportunities for offenders to avoid consequences. At a time when victims are asking to be heard, the government is focusing its attention on a get-out-of-jail-free card for criminals. At a time when public confidence in the justice system is already fragile, the government is asking members of Parliament to weaken one of the few tools designed to ensure serious crime receives serious punishment.
Canadians deserve better than legislation that says one thing and does another. They deserve a justice system that places victims first, supports police officers, protects communities and recognizes that public safety is a fundamental responsibility of government. If the Liberals truly believed in the good parts of the bill, protecting women and children against deepfake exploitation, why did they insist on attaching a poison pill that creates yet another get-out-of-jail-free card for serious offenders?