Eleni Bakopanos

[Euthanasia, November 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I rise before the House today in response to the proposal moved by the hon. member for Burnaby—Douglas that a special committee be appointed to review the provisions of the Criminal Code dealing with euthanasia and physician assisted suicide, and that the committee be instructed to prepare and bring in a bill.

As my colleagues in the House would no doubt agree, the subjects referred to in this motion raise very complex legal, moral and social issues that Canadians are increasingly concerned about, but remain clearly divided on.

A Montreal woman in a depressed state drowns her six-year-old son before attempting suicide. A Halifax doctor is charged with the death of a terminally ill cancer patient under her care. These are just two examples to illustrate the complexity of this issue.

The hon. member who moved the motion illustrated the human toll which this issue has taken on Canadian families. No one in this House would not be moved by these tragedies.

When we debate this subject we must examine questions ranging from the quality of medical care available to seriously ill and dying people to the moral questions involving a person's power to control his or her own life, and even the value of life itself.

Technological progress in recent decades has considerably improved our capacity to extend life and, in an aging society, the issues of care and treatment at the end of life take on ever greater importance.

Many individuals, professionals, organizations and associations have clearly expressed their concerns on this over the 16 months of hearings held by the Senate Special Committee on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. In June 1995, the committee tabled its report entitled “On Life and Death”.

The stated goals of the committee were to help the public to develop a better understanding of this very complex subject and to set the stage for a full and open national debate. The committee referred to its report as an initial step in the long process ahead for Canadians attempting to find solutions to the problems that it raises.

The issues raised by this motion, that is, euthanasia and assisted suicide, are profoundly controversial. It is clear that the special Senate committee was aware of this. I am sure we would all concur.

The Senate report raised a number of problems which must be carefully addressed. The committee had little difficulty reaching consensus on issues regarding medical and health care practices, such as developing national guidelines to address pain control and sedation, and the withholding or withdrawal of treatment. However, there were no such agreements among committee members when it came to dealing with the more difficult questions of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide.

Even in the case of the less controversial recommendations, I would suggest a great deal has yet to be done before we take any steps to consider amendments to the Criminal Code. Let me illustrate by way of example areas where further work is required.

Having heard and considered testimony from numerous health care professionals appearing individually or on behalf of numerous associations representing doctors, nurses and other professionals, the Senate committee report was unequivocal in its recommendations in chapters 3, 4 and 5 that urged the development and implementation of national guidelines and standards in a number of areas such as palliative care, pain control, sedation practices and the withholding and withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment.

These guidelines which seemingly have not yet been drafted, should help those who, every day, must make decisions or help others make decisions concerning palliative care and treatment.

Moveover, few Canadian provinces and territories have passed legislation on advance directives, generally known as living wills. Such legislation is important in order to recognize and support the participation of patients and their family in the decisions relating to medical care and treatment when they reach the end of their lives.

At such times, when critical decisions must be made, it is useful and less stressful for those involved to make these decisions if they know the patient's wishes.

Until this work is completed, I think it would be premature to look at how the Criminal Code should deal with these issues.

Referring to the motion before us, while it is clear that I am of the opinion we should not be considering any amendments to the Criminal Code at this time, and I stress at this time, I would also suggest that attempts to do so are fraught with difficulties even when one purports to deal with subject matter upon which there is apparent agreement.

A year ago Bill S-13, an act to amend the Criminal Code, protection of health care providers, was introduced in the Senate and was later the subject of second reading debate in that house. The purpose of that bill as stated by the hon. Senator Sharon Carstairs who introduced it was to implement the unanimous recommendations in chapters 4 and 5 of the Senate report dealing with pain control and the withholding and withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment.

Senator Carstairs took great care to point out that her bill did not touch the more controversial aspects of the Senate report, that is, euthanasia or assisted suicide. Yet that bill itself was the subject of controversy and was not fully supported by the senator's fellow members of the special committee who had initially supported the recommendations in the first report.

In conclusion I would argue that it is premature, as moved by the hon. member for Burnaby—Douglas, to appoint a special committee when there has been in fact one that has studied the issue to review the provisions of the Criminal Code dealing with euthanasia and physician assisted suicide or to consider the possibility of bringing in a bill when, as the Senate report demonstrated, Canadians are much too divided on these issues.

[Access To Information Act, October 31st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on Bill C-217 which would amend the Access to Information Act in relation to disclosure of the results of public opinion polls.

I take offence to the hon. Reform member's contention that the PM's so-called friends are getting these contracts. Once again the Reform Party has proven its non-partisan and different way of doing things in this House.

I wish to make a general comment immediately which is that I firmly believe the Canadian people should be able to get easy access to government information with few limited and specific exemptions. In my opinion easy access to most government information is a cornerstone of democracy.

The government supports the rights that Canadians have to access information about their government, except in certain specific cases where it is required for reasons of security intelligence, law enforcement and confidential commercial information received by the government from companies.

Indeed Canadians would not tolerate a government that did not give them easy access to most of its information. I believe an open government is essential to the trust that Canadians place in their government and to the preservation of the respect which members of the public give us as politicians representing them in this House.

I would like to talk about specific amendments to the Access to Information Act proposed in this bill. I will explain my concerns and my reservations regarding the bill.

In order to explain the concerns and reservations I have about this bill, I must describe the amendments being proposed to the Access to Information Act.

The amended act would require any department, branch, office, board, agency, commission, corporation or other body established by or pursuant to any Act of Parliament or established by or pursuant to any proclamation, order in council or other instrument made or issued by the Governor in Council or by those under his authority that commissioned a public opinion poll, to give notice thereof forthwith to the designated minister and to the Speaker of the House of Commons.

It seems to me that the amendment would apply to crown corporations, the Canada Labour Relations Board, the Canadian Human Rights Commission and various agencies of the federal government. But I could well be mistaken and that is precisely what worries me.

By defining the institutions affected by the proposed amendment as it does, this bill completely departs from the structure of the Access to Information Act. This act applies to the 140 odd government institutions listed in the schedule.

The purpose of this list is to identify clearly the agencies or bodies to which the act applies and thus exclude the others. Departing from this kind of designation risks creating uncertainty about whether the act applies to a given institution and opening the way for legal challenges to settle the matter.

The result of Bill C-217 could be that institutions that were not covered by the act until now, such as Canada Post, would now be included because of this particular amendment adding section 5.1. In short, I find it inappropriate to include in the same law two procedures to determine to which institutions it applies, even if they are in two different parts.

There is another aspect of Bill C-217 which strikes me as problematic also from the legal point of view. The Access to Information Act currently creates a legislative scheme whereby a person can make a formal request for government information specified in the request and pay a small application fee. The information is then provided within a period of time specified in the act unless one or more of the limited and specific exemptions applies and the requester is denied access to some of the requested information.

My point in describing the process is to illustrate that the act does not oblige any department or minister to provide information to the public unless an access request has been received. This is because the act is not meant to replace existing ways of obtaining government information as specified in section 2 of the act. The act is an additional way of obtaining government information by means of a formal request.

Now, what would be the effect of Bill C-217? It would create an anomaly in the Access to Information Act creating an obligation for ministers to report to the House on results of public opinion polls, thereby doing away with the formal request for information scheme.

Even if we admit there is a case for creating a new system different from the one currently found in the Access to Information Act, I believe the proposed legislation could create another problem. The bill requires the minister to provide a report of the results of public opinion polls to the House of Commons or to the commissioner no later than 15 days after their completion. I think it can easily take longer than 15 days to analyze the results of a large scale public opinion poll.

I also have a problem with the requirement that every public opinion research contract be reported to the minister and to the Speaker of the House of Commons, and that reports be tabled in Parliament or with the information commissioner and published in The Canada Gazette . This would appear, in my opinion, to be overkill.

I am concerned with the definition of public opinion poll which I find extremely broad in the bill. It would include quantitative and qualitative research conducted among members of the public using a prepared questionnaire or interview schedule. A good proportion of this research would be very limited public interest.

Looking at the bill from a different point of view, my general position is that an existing piece of legislation should only be amended if there is a problem that needs to be fixed, and I stress that. I would even go further and say that the problem should be a significant one if there is to be a bill containing just one amendment. If the problem is not particularly significant, although still valid, then I think the fixing of it should wait for a larger comprehensive review of the act. I am not sure that this amendment would fix a significant problem.

It is my understanding that the act already provides for access to public opinion polls. Section 4 of the act in fact provides that everyone has a right of access to any record under a government institution. In so far as opinion polls constitute such records, they are covered by the act.

If specific poll results are not disclosed to the public, it is because in specific circumstances a legitimate interest that competes with a presumption of access is invoked. It should be noted that the act performs a careful and complex balancing between a variety of interests and I am concerned that amending the act to address a specific and limited aspect of the act would disturb the various balances within the act at the moment.

It should be noted also that the courts have already ruled on the application of the Access to Information Act to public opinion polls. The Trial Division of the Federal Court has in fact made a ruling on the issue of disclosure of results of public opinion research in the case of the Information Commissioner v the Prime Minister, that dealt with a public opinion poll requested in relation to previous constitutional negotiations. The Court ordered disclosure of the information to the person who requested the documents, because it was not convinced that disclosure of the poll results would be prejudicial to the government.

In addition to section 4 of the act and the Federal Court decision, there is a third reason why I would ask what great problem this bill could help solve.

The Secretariat of the Treasury Board has issued guidelines for the disclosure of poll results by federal institutions. Broadly speaking, all departments are requested to make every effort to disclose the results of public opinion polls outside the formal framework of the Access to Information Act and its mechanisms.

That is not to say that the issue does not require examination. Indeed, the disclosure of public opinion polls is one of the issues being monitored by the Department of Justice at this moment in assessing the need for a review of the act.

I do not believe there is a need for Bill C-217. There is already a right of access to public opinion poll research under the current Access to Information Act. There is case law which provides guidance to the government on disclosing such polls. There is a government policy on disclosing poll results.

In addition, this issue is being examined together with other issues related to the whole act.

Given all of this, I do not think it is appropriate or necessary to proceed with an ad hoc amendment on the specific issue of public opinion polls. In addition, I have problems with the fact that the bill would introduce significant new bureaucratic reporting requirements, deviating from the way the rest of the act defines government institutions, which potentially could apply to research of a very limited public interest.

[Gun Control, October 31st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I think the position of the Reform Party and the position of the government on this issue are very evident. The answer is no.

[Justice, October 31st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I, along with all members of this House, I am sure, would like to extend my sympathies to the family and friends of Martin Kruze. He led a very difficult life and he was a very brave man to bring forth this issue.

At the moment the indictable offence of sexual assault has a maximum sentence of 10 years and one of aggravated assault has a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

It is not the laws. The laws are there. It is the application of the laws.

This matter is also the subject of an appeal at the moment.

[Criminal Code, October 31st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in support of the motion to refer Bill C-16, the powers to enter dwellings to arrest act, to the justice committee for second reading of that bill in this House.

Bill C-16 will enable peace officers to enter dwellings for the purposes of arrest in a manner which conforms to constitutional requirements. The bill essentially creates a warrant scheme by which peace officers may obtain judicial authorization before entering a dwelling to arrest someone. The bill also sets out certain circumstances under which such warrants or authorizations are not required.

As we all know, on May 22, 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada rendered a decision which has a significant impact on the way police forces may exercise their power of arrest.

It is a matter of determining whether, under common law, an arrest can take place in a dwelling house with no prior judicial intervention. In the Queen v. Feeney decision, the five majority judges ruled that, because of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, police forces must first secure a warrant for entry to carry out an arrest in a dwelling house.

Given that the Criminal Code does not specifically provide a mechanism for obtaining judicial authorization prior to entering a dwelling for the purpose of arrest, a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Feeney suggested that such a provision be read in pending the appropriate legislative changes. It is to that invitation that Parliament is asked to respond today.

I can assure you that the judicial uncertainty caused by the decision in the Feeney case was of great concern to law enforcement authorities across Canada. In fact, provinces and territories responded to this decision by proposing temporary and singularly different solutions to enable police forces to perform their duties as best they could while taking into account the new requirements of the Canadian charter.

As requested by the attorneys general of British Columbia, Alberta, Canada, Ontario and Quebec in the days following the decision in the Feeney case, the Supreme Court of Canada granted a stay of proceedings for six months from the date of the decision on application of the Feeney decision. Consequently, unless the stay is extended, any amendment to the Criminal Code should be made by November 1997 at the latest to prevent a legislative vacuum after that date.

The Minister of Justice is prepared to co-operate with the hon. members of this House, on both sides of the floor I might add, to meet the deadline set by the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Minister of Justice believes that Bill C-16 contains a system to obtain entry warrants which, on the one hand, is designed to serve the interests of those responsible for law enforcement by giving police forces the power to enter dwelling houses with or without an arrest warrant and, on the other hand, respects the privacy of individuals in their dwelling houses, as guaranteed under the charter.

Members of the public and law enforcement officials could argue that the bill does not go far enough by not giving police officers the same powers of entry and arrest they had before, I repeat before, the Feeney decision.

However, given that Feeney was decided on constitutional grounds, it would not be possible to restore the common law power to enter a dwelling to arrest. To put it plainly, the court has ruled that the privacy interests must be balanced against the interests of the state to arrest in a dwelling house and that balancing of interests must be done by a judge. If the legal framework is flexible enough, there should be a way to balance those competing interests without jeopardizing the safety of Canadians. Bill C-16 does just that.

At the other end of the spectrum, some people would argue that the supreme court has suggested that in all cases the police would have to obtain an arrest warrant which would be accompanied by an authorization to enter the dwelling. From this perspective the police would have to formally charge someone before obtaining an authorization to enter. We do not think that this is needed in order to satisfy the constitutional requirements imposed by the supreme court.

What is constitutionally mandated is that an impartial arbitrator decide whether the entry on private premises should be permitted in order to effect an arrest.

In the view of the Minister of Justice, requiring that someone be charged before a warrant for entry can be issued would result in a rigid and ineffective warrant scheme which would frustrate the proper administration of justice in this country.

The Minister of Justice believes the legislation strikes a proper balance. Under the bill, the police could obtain the judicial authorization to enter a dwelling to arrest a person, without having to formally charge this person.

In other words, the bill will afford the police as much flexibility as possible, given the limits imposed by the charter.

In fact the bill is the product of extensive consultations with interested parties such as the provincial attorneys general, the RCMP, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Association of Police and the Canadian Bar Association.

The legislation contains a realistic compromise between positions that either lack necessary flexibility or are constitutionally flawed.

I would like to take this opportunity to review the different features of this legislation.

The bill primarily seeks to provide a legislative system under which the police can request the judicial authorization to enter dwellings to make an arrest. The system provides that such an authorization is required in the three situations listed below.

First, when an arrest warrant has already been issued, a police officer can request a warrant to enter a dwelling to make an arrest.

Second, when no arrest warrant has been issued, a police officer can request a warrant to enter a dwelling to make an arrest, provided he has convinced a judge or a justice of the peace that there are grounds to make an arrest without a warrant, as provided under section 495 of the Criminal Code.

Third, if a police officer is requesting a warrant for the arrest of a specific person, he can, at the same time, ask the judge or the justice of the peace to authorize, in the warrant, the police to enter a dwelling, particularly if the officer believes the person for whom the warrant is issued is in that dwelling or will be found in it. The authorization will be granted if, when the arrest warrant is later executed, the police officer has reasonable grounds to believe that the person for whom the warrant is issued is in that dwelling.

The bill also addresses exigent circumstances as an exception to the need for an authorization to enter. It is not always possible for the police to obtain a judicial authorization prior to entering a dwelling for the purposes of arrest or apprehension.

In Feeney, the majority of the Supreme Court of Canada acknowledged this fact and reaffirmed the common law power of entry in situations of hot pursuit.

Given that the court clearly recognized that hot pursuit is an exception to the requirement that there be a warrant for entry, this legislation does not address this issue which has been dealt with conclusively by the Supreme Court of Canada. The question of what other situations would justify an exemption from the requirement of prior judicial authorization was left open by the supreme court.

This legislation, therefore, contains an non-exhaustive definition of certain exigent circumstances under which entry into a dwelling for the purposes of arrest or apprehension would be allowed in the absence of prior judicial authorization.

The Minister of Justice believes it is important that parliament expresses itself on what exigent circumstances would justify the state entering a dwelling house without a warrant for entry to effect an arrest.

Entry would be expressly allowed in the absence of a warrant where the police have reasonable grounds to suspect that entry into the dwelling is necessary to prevent imminent bodily harm or death. The integrity of a human being is a value sufficiently important that the state can intervene without getting prior judicial authorization to enter.

Entry would likewise be expressly allowed where the police have reasonable grounds to believe that evidence relating to the commission of an indictable offence is present in the dwelling and where that entry is necessary to prevent the imminent destruction of such evidence. We stress it is evidence that will be destroyed, not merely information or intelligence to which the state would like to have access, if the arrest is not effected before a warrant of entry can be obtained.

The legislation also contains provisions concerning consequential amendments. In particular it contains a proposal to amend the Interpretation Act to extend the scheme set out in the Criminal Code to arrests or apprehensions made pursuant to other federal statutes. This is needed because the Feeney decision is concerned with the balancing of interests in cases of arrests in dwelling houses which extends well beyond the application of the Criminal Code.

Other federal legislation provides for arrests on the basis of warrants issued pursuant to the particular legislation. There is a need to remedy the problem caused by the Feeney decision of the supreme court. The proposed amendment to the Interpretation Act extends the Criminal Code regime to these statutes.

Finally, the legislation includes a preamble which states its purpose, and which clearly establishes that the bill is not meant to limit the power to enter granted to police under other acts or under common law.

Given the constitutional limitations set out in Feeney and in other Supreme Court of Canada decisions concerning privacy rights, the Minister of Justice believes the legislation represents a way of ensuring that the appropriate balancing of interests can take place without jeopardizing the safety of Canadians and the proper administration of justice.

The bill creates tools that will enhance the privacy rights of Canadians while providing law enforcement officers with the kind of flexibility needed to do their difficult task.

In closing, the Minister of Justice encourages all hon. members of the House to support the bill. I look forward to working with hon. members to make sure we meet the deadline the supreme court has set.

[Supply, October 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think there was anything in my remarks to indicate that the government finds statistics acceptable. Quite the contrary. I think my remarks were made in the sense that we cannot have only one approach to this grave problem, that there has to be a holistic approach. There is a problem of alcoholism in our society. I do not think any member in the House would accept the fact that anyone should drink and drive and kill someone. I do not think any member would agree with that. Quite the contrary.

What we are trying to do is make sure the process that we engage in has the agreement of the provinces because ultimately the provinces will be responsible for the administration of these changes to the Criminal Code. As I said in my speech, the minister is committed to taking action. She told MADD when she met with them last week that she will raise this matter.

[Supply, October 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating MADD on the excellent work they are doing to draw the Canadian public's attention to the problem of drunk driving.

I want to repeat what the Minister of Justice said recently when she met with representatives from MADD. She said that she was going to raise the issue in the near future, in December, at her meeting in Montreal with all provincial justice ministers.

Parliament has the constitutional legislative authority to create criminal laws. Despite the opposition member's assertion that this government has not shown a leadership role by making changes to the Criminal Code, most recently, in the spring of this year the last Parliament passed amendments to certain drinking and driving provisions of the Criminal Code which have been introduced by this government.

On several occasions we made amendments, changes which clarified that the driving prohibition penalty starts to run only upon an offender's release from imprisonment. In my opinion that is an important change.

Parliament has also clarified that the defence can only introduce evidence of the accused's actual blood alcohol concentration that is different from his or her breath test where the evidence shows a BAC reading at or below 80.

Parliament also, despite the member's assertion, extended the period for a police officer to apply for a warrant to obtain blood in certain accident situations from two hours to four hours. Get the facts right.

As we know, each province has the constitutional legislative authority for such matters as highway traffic, driver licensing and motor vehicle registration within the province. The provinces have legislated in these areas with regard to drinking and driving. Also in the provinces, the enforcement and prosecution of Criminal Code offences has been assigned to the attorney general of each province.

Therefore in my view there are important intergovernmental consultations that should take place in order to come to a full understanding of the drinking and driving problem. There are legislative ways to further the progress that has been made to date.

The Minister of Justice, as I said earlier, will be meeting her colleagues and will be bringing up her suggestions for amendments to the Criminal Code.

The statistics on drinking and driving in relation to driver fatalities and criminal charges suggest that there have been important changes since the early 1980s regarding drinking and driving which, incidentally, has been almost overwhelmingly a male dominated crime apparently.

The recently released results of a public opinion survey commissioned by the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving which occurred here in Ottawa this week confirmed that progress has been made in changing public attitudes about drinking and driving behaviour.

However, notwithstanding the progress on this problem, as many members of this House are well aware, the most tragic consequences of drinking and driving remain a virulent blight on Canadian society. I agree with assertions of the hon. member about this.

The Traffic Injury Research Foundation of Canada is responsible for recording data for Transport Canada on driver deaths as a result of traffic accidents. The data come from information provided by the police and coroners and, since 1987, the data base contains data provided by all provinces and territories.

The good news is that, since 1987, the percentage of drivers with blood alcohol levels exceeding 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood is steadily declining. In 1987, drivers with blood alcohol levels over 80 represented 43% of driver deaths as a result of traffic accidents. In 1995, this figure was 35%. But this is not really good news, and I want to be clear about this. We do not want to see the level stay at 80.

The tragedy of accidents resulting in the death of drivers with blood alcohol levels over 80 does not end there. Some of these drivers are also responsible for the death of their passengers or other people not even in the car with them. Some drivers with blood alcohol levels over 80 survive the accident, but their passengers or other people not in the car are killed. It is tragic.

When injuries are taken into account, the human suffering over the years reaches staggering proportions, and intelligent people naturally feel they have to do something.

But the important question is this: What should we do? The causes are complex and the solutions to this serious social problem are not simple. Drunk drivers come from all walks of life, so we cannot simply adopt stiffer penalties and expect that just by doing that people will stop drinking and driving.

We have to adopt a whole package of measures, a holistic approach. For example, fines or prison terms are enough to prevent most of us from drinking and driving, but they seem to have less effect on certain persons with an alcohol problem, even if the penalties are heavier. So we feel that forcing people to follow a treatment and other measures might be more effective.

The Traffic Injury Research Foundation has recently released a brochure discussing the drinking and driving problem. It notes that for a drinking driver the risk of accident increases exponentially with an increase in the BAC level. I think we will all agree on that.

Not surprisingly, drivers with a very high BAC level are disproportionately responsible for fatal road crashes where alcohol is involved.

TIRF lists a number of measures that could be taken to further reduce road crash fatalities. Most of these measures relate to provincial governments. TIRF notes that many provinces have begun to implement some of the measures TIRF endorses.

One idea is to have graduated penalties that are linked to blood alcohol blood concentrations. TIRF notes that some sentencing judges already appear to do this when they render sentences in these cases.

Adding several other elements might help to better understand the problem of drunk driving. According to the Department of Justice, the Department of Transport is preparing a report on a survey done by police officers in co-operation with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. It should help us identify initiatives to assist police officers investigating crimes related to drunk driving.

In August 1997, the Department of Transport commissioned another study from the Addictions Research Foundation; it will survey the literature on the effects of various blood-alcohol levels on the ability to drive and deal with the issue of using lower blood-alcohol levels in imposing administrative penalties, including suspension of the driver's licence, or in the case of criminal penalties in certain countries. This information will likely be very useful when the legislative options will be reviewed with the provinces.

It is important to note that the Department of Transport has been involved for several years with the provinces and other partners in non-criminal type initiatives implemented under the strategy to reduce impaired driving. There is no question that measures outside criminal law have a major impact on the problem. In fact, it is through the combined efforts of governments, public and private sector institutions, families and individuals that we have been able to make progress in this area. It is most likely that initiatives based on criminal law cannot in themselves ensure further progress.

I take offence to the opposition member's allegation that the members of this side of the House have not had the courage to recognize this great Canadian tragedy or that the government has done nothing, as was stated. We have and will take action. The minister has already reaffirmed the government's commitment to the representatives of MADD she met with last week. I am sure all members of the House will continue to encourage the minister and the government to take action.

I will repeat what I said earlier. We have a commitment to take action.

[Fair Wages And Hours Of Labour Act, October 28th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, first I would like to commend the hon. member for raising the question and most important for the leadership role he has played in his own riding to establish a comprehensive and collaborative crime prevention approach through partnership in his community.

The best way to reduce crime in Canada is to prevent it. Crime prevention is a priority for this government, for the minister and indeed for all Canadians. A recent poll stated that over 80% of Canadians consider that the government has an important role to play in crime prevention.

We believe that crime prevention starts with understanding the various problems faced by the different communities, helping them identify their needs and involving them in finding solutions.

Unlike our friends on the right and some of the opposition members I might point out we believe that to reduce crime we must support measures that alleviate the underlying risk factors that contribute to criminal behaviour, factors such as poverty and unemployment.

As promised in the Speech from the Throne, the government is developing a new initiative that builds on the work of the National Crime Prevention Council which this government established. This initiative will target community level prevention projects, as the hon. member stated, getting money into the hands of those who know what the problems are and how to best deal with them.

The program will obtain resources for activities based in the communities or initiated by them. To help communities develop programs, we will provide them with material resources and promote crime prevention measures. We will also ensure they get the training they need and we will support innovative projects.

Effective crime prevention operates at the local level but requires partnership at all levels. The government and the minister intend to pursue this initiative in co-operation with other orders of government, the private sector and other partners in social development and a justice system. I thank the member for his question.

[United Nations Day, October 24th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, on this United Nations Day, I would like to draw attention to the work of the UN, particularly in the areas of health, education, human rights, the environment, peace and security.

The United Nations is the cornerstone of Canadian foreign policy and we have historically been one of its strongest supporters.

Lester Pearson's contribution to our modern peacekeeping efforts is legendary and Canadians are proud of our peacekeeping missions.

We are working with the United Nations to increase worldwide support for the treaty to ban landmines, a landmark agreement which the Minister of Foreign Affairs should be commended for initiating.

Canada is currently a candidate for the non-permanent seat on the Security Council. If successful, we hope to play an even greater role at the United Nations over the next few years toward increased peace and security internationally.

Our credentials and reputation in this regard are respected world wide.

On this United Nations Day, we must support Secretary General Koffi Anna in his efforts to make the UN more efficient so it can face the challenges of the 21st century.

[Division No. 16, October 21st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question.

We consider these reforms a fair compromise between normal concern for victims and the safety of society and the search for a criminal justice system that reflects a whole set of values.

Section 745.6 was intended for exceptional cases.

With the amendments we have made, offenders who commit multiple murders after January 9, 1997 will no longer be allowed to apply for judicial review. In addition, the two changes we made to the system, including offenders currently in the system provided that they had not already applied when the amendments came into force, were judicial screening and that the jury considering the application must be unanimous.

In the Bernardo case even though the murders were committed before the amendments came into force, the judicial screening and the unanimity on behalf of the jury will apply.

No one can ignore the pain that the Olson and Bernardo cases have inflicted on the families of the victims. The difference between the government's approach and that of the Conservatives and Reform is that the government wanted to do more for the victims and their families and to acknowledge the pain they feel. We are not going to stop only with the focus on section 745. We are doing more in terms of the families of the victims and the government will be speaking to that in the future.