The Bloc Quebecois is demonstrating its open-mindedness in all the debates and this issue will be debated in the same way. I appreciate the verbal support of my colleague, the member for Richelieu.
Lost his last election, in 2006, with 38% of the vote.
Supply May 26th, 1998
The Bloc Quebecois is demonstrating its open-mindedness in all the debates and this issue will be debated in the same way. I appreciate the verbal support of my colleague, the member for Richelieu.
Supply May 26th, 1998
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak in the House on the motion put forward by one of my colleagues in the Reform Party on this opposition day.
We have to admit that the current criminal justice system has some major failings, in terms of both its application and its principles. However, I should point out that the Bloc Quebecois vigorously distances itself—and I underscore the word vigorously—from the positions advocated by the Reform Party, which represent in our opinion a vision of things worthy of the best westerns.
The Reform Party places itself at the far right of the political checkerboard, whereas the Bloc is right in the centre, just because of the people it represents. This dichotomy in a matter so complex illustrates the state of Canadian federalism and the impossibility of its being properly reformed. Quebec's expectations are incompatible with the perceptions of the rest of Canada. This matter is simply one more example that two completely distinct societies are living within a single state and this arrangement does not work.
On the subject of the Young Offenders Act, we were right to criticize the initiative of the Minister of Justice, because she was giving in unduly to western pressure on the application of criminal justice to young people, something that is totally unacceptable and simply a way to make political points.
The minister's parliamentary secretary herself said on Le Point on CBC French television that the aim of the reform was to solicit public support rather than to expose the real problems and propose solutions. Need we add anything? I do not think so.
Toughening sentences for young offenders is not the best way to discourage criminals in waiting. There are other much more flexible methods that would ensure a better performance and therefore greater justice within our society. Branding a young person for the rest of his life will help neither him nor society.
According to those in the criminal justice system in Quebec, this message must be brought home. The Young Offenders Act raises problems in its application and not in its present form. If the Young Offenders Act were applied as it ought to be, according to the way it is written, everything would be fine. The proof of this is that the province which applies it best is Quebec, and Quebec is where there are the best results.
We are perpetually confronted by the incompatibility between Quebec and the rest of Canada, the west in particular. We are caught in a vicious circle and, with her fake reform, the minister is endangering the very foundations of the justice system and the efforts expended against youth crime, particularly in Quebec where, as I have said, it is working fine, though not perfectly. Before changing the act, however, I believe that, as the former Minister of Justice said himself, it must be applied as it was intended to be applied, and the other provinces would be well advised to follow the example of Quebec.
Concerning the conditional sentencing of young offenders, the parole system is based on the principle of rehabilitating offenders. This is a principle that is dear to the hearts of the large majority of Quebeckers, and of Canadians I believe.
Commission has followed on commission, report after report, and consultations of all kinds were held on the early parole procedure.
What we can conclude, without fear of being wrong, is that there is a problem with the system itself, not the principle underlying it. There are numerous examples of offenders being released for good conduct after serving one-sixth of their sentence. Several examples could be given, but it would waste the time of colleagues in the House.
Authorities are applying the principle of good institutional conduct, which, by definition, should guarantee the same conduct outside the establishment. This is the crux of the problem. The same conclusions are based on two completely different realities.
We in the Bloc Quebecois have drafted a bill along these lines that will be introduced shortly, so that offenders are not released after serving one-sixth of their sentence. I urge all colleagues in the House to support us in this undertaking.
As for victims' rights, beyond all the considerations we accord the criminal justice system, it must be remembered that those most affected by this issue are still the victims. Before all else, we must think of these people, the innocent victims.
There is a necessary balance to be achieved between the treatment reserved for offenders on the one hand and victims' rights on the other, and finally the general public. If the balance between these three categories is destroyed, nobody wins, not the victims, not the offenders, who also have rights, not society.
Without saying that we support the Reform Party on the issue of victims' rights, we cannot deny that the government's initiative of passing legislation on this thorny issue must be examined more closely.
Member For Notre-Dame-De-Grâce—Lachine May 13th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, yesterday the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine said that President Roosevelt was in favour of assimilating French Canadians. On this basis, the hon. member urged our leader to denounce the monument in Quebec, which, in her mind, is unfair to Liberal Prime Minister Mackenzie King.
However, an excerpt of Mackenzie King's personal diary published in the March 1, 1997, issue of L'Actualité , stated that Hitler and Mussolini really tried to make various benefits available to the grassroots and that Hitler could be seen as one of the saviours of the world.
If we follow the logic of the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, every work perpetuating King's memory in Canada, including the words written on the monument which is the cause of such humiliation for the Liberals, should be denounced.
The Liberals, who are facing embarrassment over the hepatitis C issue, are stirring up trouble to distract the public from their lack of compassion. Their pettiness is a disgrace to Quebeckers, who take pride in their history.
Dna Identification Act May 11th, 1998
moved:
Motion No. 8
That Bill C-3, in Clause 12, be amended
(a) by replacing line 11 on page 9 with the following:
“12. (1) The Governor in Council may make”
(b) by adding after line 13 on page 9 the following:
“(2) The Solicitor General of Canada shall have each proposed regulation laid before each House of Parliament.
(3) Each proposed regulation that is laid before a House of Parliament shall, on the day it is laid, be referred by that House to an appropriate committee of that House, as determined by the rules of that House, and the committee may conduct enquiries or public hearings with respect to the proposed regulation and report its findings to that House.
(4) A proposed regulation that has been laid pursuant to subsection (1) may be made
(a) on the expiration of thirty sitting days after it was laid; or
(b) where, with respect to each House of Parliament,
(i) the committee reports to the House, or
(ii) the committee decides not to conduct enquiries or public hearings.
(5) For the purposes of this section, “sitting day” means, in respect of either House of Parliament, a day on which that House sits.”
Quebec City Conferences Of 1943 And 1945 May 8th, 1998
“Humiliation”, Mr. Speaker. Not mine, but that of the Liberal members for Pierrefonds—Dollard, for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, for Bourassa and for Shawinagan.
How ironic, to see the hon. member for Bourassa protesting the worthy homage being paid to two of the greatest political figures of this century when, last November 18, he described the statue of General de Gaulle as a “monument to a stupid remark”.
How cynical, to see a Prime Minister falsely accusing the Government of Quebec of using history for political gain. Has he already forgotten his phone call last year to Jacques Chirac to put a halt to their plan to issue a stamp commemorating de Gaulle's “Vive le Québec libre!” Is that not using history for political gain?
According to Mackenzie King himself after the conference, his role in it was no more important than that of the managing director of the Château Frontenac.
It would seem that the very people who accuse the separatists of waking up each morning expecting to be humiliated were a bit quick to feel humiliated themselves yesterday.
Dna Identification Act May 4th, 1998
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise after my colleague in the New Democratic Party and tell him that he is not alone. His motion may be the only one in Group No. 3, but he will not be the only one supporting it, far from it.
I must first say that, after asking parliamentarians to support a number of motions I introduced earlier, in order to emphasize the importance that the House and the government must attach to privacy, I was disappointed that these motions did not receive all the support I had hoped.
Motion No. 7, however, introduced by my colleague, the member for Sydney—Victoria, addresses the same principle, but from another angle that will perhaps appeal more naturally to some of the members sitting to the right of me, and perhaps even further right than that politically.
The motion calls for increasing from two to seven years the maximum sentence for individuals contravening certain provisions of the bill designed to try to keep information collected as secret as possible.
We in the Bloc Quebecois attach considerable importance to the protection of privacy. When it comes to anything to do with information, the Bloc Quebecois takes an extremely hard line. We were, for example, in favour of stiffer penalties for the destruction of information that should be accessible under access legislation. We want the greatest possible transparency, but we do not want this transparency to enable some individuals to obtain information to which they have absolutely no right.
It is important to remember that DNA reveals to us an individual's deepest secrets, his or her hair colour, and certain physical characteristics. For all we know, a few years from now, technology may make it possible to discover someone's personality. This is a very powerful tool, and it is essential that people be discouraged from using DNA data for purposes other than those set out in the bill.
It is therefore with pleasure that I support the motion introduced by my colleague, the member for Sydney—Victoria. I hope that other members to my right and across the way will do the same, in order to underscore the fundamental importance of the protection of privacy in this bill.
Dna Identification Act May 4th, 1998
moved:
Motion No. 4
That Bill C-3, in Clause 9, be amended
(a) by replacing lines 22 and 23 on page 5 with the following:
“the convicted offenders index shall be destroyed without delay after”
(b) by adding after line 34 on page 6 the following:
“(3) Subsections (1) and (2) also apply to information communicated under this Act that is in the possession of any Canadian laboratory or federal or provincial law enforcement agency.”
Motion No. 6
That Bill C-3, in Clause 10, be amended by adding after line 34 on page 8 the following:
“(7.1) The Commission shall destroy the stored bodily substances of a person without delay after a forensic D.N.A. analysis of these substances is first performed under this section.”
Motion No. 13
That Bill C-3, in Clause 22, be amended by adding after line 29 on page 24 the following:
“(2) Paragraph 487.09(1)(b) of the Act is replaced by the following:
(b) the person is finally acquitted of the designated offence and any other offence in respect of the same transaction; or”
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to again have the opportunity to speak and to try to refocus the debate on the bill before us today, which is Bill C-3 and the related amendments. It is a change from talking in vague generalities.
The first amendment proposed is Motion No. 4, which talks about the destruction of information in the convicted offenders index. As it now stands, subsection 9.(1) of the bill reads as follows:
(2) Access to the following information in the convicted offenders index shall be permanently removed without delay—
It talks about permanent removal, even in cases where a conviction has been quashed, or absolute discharge given, or in the case of young offenders, but this is getting a bit more technical.
When we raised this in committee and asked why the file was not simply destroyed, instead of being permanently removed, we were told that this is complicated with computers, that they did not really know, that these were files, that it was technical, and so on. I was astonished, as were other witnesses. If we have the technological know-how and scientific knowledge to analyse DNA, which is such a tiny thing, and are able to penetrate to the very centre of human cells to identify people, I cannot believe that we are unable to destroy computer files.
It is with precisely this in mind that the Bloc Quebecois has introduced Motion No. 4. Instead of permanently removing the file and allowing it to float around somewhere in a computer bank, and not really knowing where it might end up later, let us destroy it and put an end to the problem. Let us remove the temptation to put this computerized information to an improper use later on. That was the purpose of Motion No. 4.
We did not come up with this on our own. A number of witnesses who appeared before the committee said “Hold on, now, DNA technology is so powerful and potentially so powerful that something must be done to limit temptation as much as possible”. That is Motion No. 4.
Motion No. 6 is along the same lines:
“7.(1) The Commission shall destroy the stored bodily substances of a person without delay after a forensic DNA analysis of these substances is first performed under this section”.
If genetic testing is done, whether on saliva, blood or hair, the desired information has to have been obtained. Why then keep the hair, saliva or blood? We already have the picture and the information required.
Once again, the purpose of this is to take away possible temptation—because that is always present—so that our bodily substances cannot be misused. Let us not forget that, when a sample is taken for analytical purposes, it is possible to have a number of pieces of information not only about the person from whom the sample came, but also about that person's family, his or her parents, children, brothers and sisters. The closer the other individual is biologically to the source of the sample, the more information can be gathered about him or her.
Motion No. 6 is, therefore, in the same vein as Motion No. 4. Let us take away the temptation, so as to avoid its use for other dubious purposes.
We now move on to the motions in Group No. 2. Motion No. 13 concerns clause 22 on page 24. This clause talks about section 487.09 of the Criminal Code and reads as follows:
Subject to subsection (2), bodily substances that are taken from a person in execution of a warrant under section 487.05 and the results of forensic DNA analysis shall be destroyed, or in the case of results in electronic form, access to those results shall be permanently removed—
I come back to what I said with respect to Motion No. 4. If we have the technology to analyse DNA and see right inside a person, why make a point of not destroying the computer file? It can be done, instead of just eliminating the link between a given individual and his data, which would float around somewhere in the bank. Let us destroy the information in the databank. Let us remove the temptation.
Let us ensure that the right to privacy is sacred and that it will be respected not just today, but in future as well. It must not be forgotten that the bill before us today will be good for five, 10, 15 or 20 years, and is only a precedent that will undoubtedly change as technology advances, and goodness knows it is advancing quickly.
Let us therefore remove the temptation and ensure that the privacy of all Canadians will be respected.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police May 4th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, according to news reports, the RCMP 125th anniversary celebrations will cost $1.5 million for Quebec alone.
Can the Solicitor General tell us what the total bill for the RCMP celebrations will be? How much will be spent in Quebec and, in particular, where will that money come from?
Dna Identification Act May 4th, 1998
moved:
Motion No. 3
That Bill C-3, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing lines 30 to 33 on page 2 with the following:
“(2) The Commissioner shall ensure that the National DNA Data Bank Authority maintains a record of every person who accesses the national DNA data bank established under subsection (1) and any DNA profile contained in that bank.”
Motion No. 5
That Bill C-3, in Clause 9, be amended by adding after line 34 on page 6 the following:
“9.1 (1) The Privacy Commissioner shall every three years after the coming into force of section 5, carry out a complete investigation in respect of the National DNA Data Bank established under that section to ensure compliance with any provision of this Act in respect of that bank.
(2) Section 37 of the Privacy Act applies, where appropriate and with such modification as the circumstances require in respect of an investigation carried out under subsection (1).”
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak today in this House to this important bill, which has required a lot of attention and a lot of work. It concerns fundamental issues in a free and democratic society.
Motion No. 1 is very simple. It aims to include criteria, a set of principles in the preamble to the bill. We must not lose sight of the function of DNA. It can be used to identify not only an individual, but his family as well. We can identify parents, find out about them, children and brothers and sisters. It is something very private. There is nothing more personal than a person's DNA.
The purpose of Motion No. 1 is very simple. It provides principles or yardsticks according to which the bill must be applied. Among other things, it states that DNA profiles may be used only for purposes of identification, and not for any other purpose. There are a number of things that can be done with DNA already, and more will be possible as the technology progresses.
We wish to avoid the improper use and disclosure of DNA profiles, for the same reason, to avoid the wrongful use of a very powerful technology.
Before passing this bill, let us set up principles for now and for the future, because it will have repercussions not just for now but also later on. As the technology evolves, the principles will be more and more defined, but the more that can be defined today the better. This is very important. So that was Motion No. 1.
Motion No. 3 is equally important. The bill was discussed in committee for hours. The motion is intended to strike a balance between protecting society, fighting crime, and protecting privacy. Let us keep in mind that these are two fundamental principles in our society, and that a balance must be struck.
Motion No. 3 concerns clause 5. It states as follows:
“(2) The Commissioner shall ensure that the National DNA Data Bank Authority maintains a record of every person who accesses the national DNA data bank established under subsection (1) and any DNA profile contained in that bank”.
This is to prevent people from consulting the bank for a just any reason, and consultations will be recorded. Abuse can be avoided by having knowledge of who consults the bank, for which individual, and how. People will hesitate to consult the bank needlessly, knowing that records are being kept.
I will now read Motion No. 5, because it is just as important:
“9.1(1) The Privacy Commissioner shall every three years after the coming into force of section 5, carry out a complete investigation in respect of the National DNA Data Bank established under that section—”
In Canada, there is a government agency called the office of the privacy commissioner, whose role is to ensure that people's privacy is respected. Therefore, why not give that government agency the power to see if the national DNA data bank is fulfilling its mandate, respecting people's privacy, and not being misused?
Keeping track of any consultation would allow the Privacy Commissioner to look at the file, to see if there were too many consultations or if these consultations were unjustified, for what reasons, and so on. In such cases, the Privacy Commissioner would have the authority to impose sanctions on those who do not respect privacy which, as we know, is an essential value in any democratic and free society.
This is what I had to say on Motions Nos. 1, 3 and 5 in Group No.1.
Dna Identification Act May 4th, 1998
moved:
Motion No. 1
That Bill C-3, in Clause 4, be amended by replacing lines 12 to 23 on page 2 with the following: “use of DNA profiles;
(b) DNA profiles are uniquely private and personal information that may be used only for purposes of identification;
(c) the improper use and disclosure of DNA profiles can lead to significant harm to the individual, including stigmatization and discrimination in areas such as employment, education, health care, reproduction and insurance;
(d) forensic DNA analysis provides information not only about an individual, but also about that individual's parents and children, thus implicating family privacy;
(e) DNA profiles are tied to reproductive decisions which are among the most private and intimate decisions that an individual can make; and
(f) safeguards for access to, collection, storage, and use of bodily substances, DNA profiles and other information contained in the national DNA data bank are needed to protect the privacy of individuals with respect to personal information about themselves.”