Monte Solberg

[Criminal Code, November 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, criminal justice is very important to Canadians. I would submit to the member that Bill C-51 is hardly a burning priority for most Canadians. His minister has had 18 months to bring forward changes to the Young Offenders Act. Could he tell us why, if that is her number one priority, we are still waiting 18 months later?

[Criminal Code, November 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has raised a couple of good points. The Reform Party does believe that prevention is very important and we could and should have a whole debate in the House with respect to that. My colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca did an excellent job of pointing to preventive measures that can be taken.

I also take issue with some of the things that my colleague has stated. I think that the primary purpose of the justice system must be to protect the public.

With some criminals, my colleague must know, it is much more prudent, in fact it is in the best interest of the criminal, to put them in prison where they cannot do harm to other people.

We are simply saying that too often today we see people who are released from prison or who were never put in prison who should have been put in there. That does not mean that we do not believe there should be rehabilitation. Of course there should be. But the primary purpose of the justice system should be to protect the public.

That is the Reform Party position. I am sorry if I did not make that very clear to my colleague.

[Criminal Code, November 4th, 1998]

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

First of all, he mentioned that homicide rates are down. I believe that is a fact and it is important to note that.

I think he will also acknowledge that youth crime has been increasing in this country and a lot of it is violent youth crime. That causes me a lot of concern. While homicide rates are down, I do not think we should allow this whole debate to go to sleep. We need to continue to discuss it.

Following up on that, it points to the fallacy of the government's argument with respect to the gun registry, that somehow guns are the reason we have the level of homicides that we have in the country. The gun registry is yet to be put in place and, if I recall, homicide rates are down to a level equivalent to 1969. That absolutely explodes the fallacy we heard from the government that the gun registry was going to be the thing that would cause homicide rates to go down.

The member asks whether or not I was in the courtrooms. It is a good question. In the case of the Vickers family, to whom I referred to earlier, I was not in the courtroom. However, I have carried on a long discussion with the Vickers family and also with the crown prosecutor through correspondence. I have not talked to him directly, but I have seen his responses to the family with respect to some of their concerns. The crown prosecutor, whom I know personally, is an extraordinarily intelligent crown prosecutor. He presented a very fair case when he was scrutinizing for the Vickers family what had gone on. I am convinced that in this case he was being nothing but absolutely accurate in his depiction of what happened in the courtroom.

I left out some of the details of this case because I did not want to exaggerate what had gone on. There are a number of things that are being alleged that I have not mentioned simply because I do not want to exaggerate what happened in that particular case.

[Criminal Code, November 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely agree with my colleague from Souris—Moose Mountain.

I spoke at a school the other day in Foremost, a little town in my riding. I spoke to the grade 10 social class. We talked about the Young Offenders Act and about the problem of crime.

We know that amongst young people crime is escalating. Some of the crime is extraordinarily violent. One of the most disturbing trends is the increase in violent crime amongst young women. That is an area that the government must address.

One of the things which came out of that school visit was how young people are most often the victims of youth crime. When I go to schools in my riding, or when I speak around the country, I talk about the issue of crime. I ask grade 10 or grade 12 students, or whatever grade they are in, “Do you think that the penalties in the Young Offenders Act are just right, too tough or too soft?” Unfailing they say they are too soft. The reason is that young people are most often the victims of youth crime.

I remember in my province the terrible case of young Ryan Garrioch who was brutally murdered in the schoolyard by another young offender. A young man, just coming of age, lost his life because of youth violence.

The government must start to take this issue more seriously. I believe my friend is right. Crime is escalating. We see it amongst youth. We have to do something about it. It has been five years. I do not understand it. I plead with the government to do something.

The minister has said for 18 months that this is her highest priority. She has done nothing. She has let the people down in her riding of Edmonton. She has let the people of Alberta and the people of Canada down. I entreat her and her colleagues to take this issue seriously. Today many people are being needlessly hurt and in some cases killed. We need to do something about this and I hope the government will get busy and do it right away.

[Criminal Code, November 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to debate Bill C-51, an act to amend the Criminal Code, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. It is an omnibus bill that we will not be able to address in its entirety in the short time we have allotted. However I will take a stab at a few aspects of the legislation.

Any bill that comes before the House respecting criminal justice should start from the premise that the most important thing the criminal justice system in Canada can do is set out a first principle, that the life and protection of law-abiding citizens and victims must be the highest priority of that system and of the government. Sadly and unfortunately often times we see a criminal justice system that seems to stand that principle on its head. I would argue that too often the rights of criminals come before the rights of law-abiding citizens. We need a complete philosophical change, which I will discuss later.

I will deal with the provisions in Bill C-51 to end the accelerated parole hearing after one-sixth of a sentence for anybody who has been convicted of a crime as a gang member. This raises a bigger issue, the whole idea of having automatic parole. As an Albertan I can say people back home feel very strongly that it is crazy to have a system with automatic parole. Why have sentences when people are released automatically after one-third or two-thirds at the most? It is crazy and unbelievable.

The criminal justice system is full of terms and language that mean absolutely nothing. If people are convicted of two or three crimes the judge might say on the first one that they get two years; on the second one, three years; on the third one, four years. However they will all be served concurrently and the effect is that they spend at most four years in jail. It is really two-thirds of them because people never serve their full sentences. They are out after two-thirds. We have a situation where none of the language we see in the Criminal Code or in any provision that lays out sentencing means anything. It is always a complete exaggeration of the time the person will actually have to serve.

As a fundamental of the justice system when we sit down and consider it, we should have some assurance that it is relatively close to what actually happens. If it says a sentence of five years and the judge metes out a sentence of five years, then there should be some possibility that the person will stay in prison for five years, but that is not the case in Canada today.

It is the same with provisions that allow criminals who are sentenced to a life term to apply to get out of jail, the faint hope clause. When we say life in Canada, it does not mean life. It means 25 years. It is really not life. When people are sentenced to 10 years, they are so-called sentenced to life. That is ridiculous. With the faint hope clause we find out that the 25 years is not necessarily going to be what they serve. Prisoners could be out in 15 years.

When we look throughout the criminal justice system we run into this. It is time we revised all of that. Instead of getting a bill such as Bill C-51, we should go back to the drawing board and set up a system where a sentence that is going to be handed out actually has some correlation to what is served. That makes sense to me.

It is time for a fundamental change to the criminal justice system. And while removing the accelerated parole hearing for members of organized crime may be a positive step, it really is a baby step. It is a tiny step in fixing the overall problem.

I want to focus on the issue of conditional sentencing. I cannot say how counterintuitive this is to most people back home. The government philosophy is that if one commits a crime in Canada, only as a last possible option would we consider putting that person in prison. If it can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that a person is violent and is going to reoffend, then perhaps they might go to jail. Other than that, we see an increased reliance on the whole idea of conditional sentencing.

Conditional sentencing is referred to in Bill C-51. I do not believe this government understands how much that provision is being abused. I want to emphasize that by pointing to a case in my own riding, in the town in which I live, Brooks, Alberta. It is a long tale so I hope members will bear with me for a bit.

People I know in the town of Brooks who run an insurance outfit had hired a woman to do their books for them. They found out that over a period of a couple of years this person had stolen not a little bit of money but tens of thousands of dollars. The woman was eventually found out and she was convicted. We were thankful for that. I think Gwen and Paul Vickers were probably pretty happy to find out that the system worked to that point. The person was convicted.

The Vickers found out that the system broke down in how the judge meted out the sentence. The person found guilty of this crime received a conditional sentence. Her name is Ms. McKennit. Ms. McKennit received a conditional sentence. Tens of thousands of dollars were taken from the Vickers. They did get a good chunk of it back. I do not think they got it all back. Ms. McKennit was sentenced to a conditional sentence which essentially meant that she had to stay at the farm where she lived.

There is a problem with that. The government went ahead and put in place the conditional sentencing without giving money to the provinces so people could follow up and make sure the sentence was actually being carried out. Therefore, we have a situation in the little town of Brooks where one person has to supervise all the people on conditional sentence and parole. There is no possible way they can ensure that this sentence is being served out.

A lot of people question right from the start whether or not it is a just sentence because in effect people are being sent home to watch television or to do whatever. In fact during the day from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. the person does not even have to be at home. They can wander around the community and only have to be at home in the evening. But there is no way to supervise that.

The government has gone ahead with conditional sentencing but has not provided any resources to the provinces to ensure that the provisions of conditional sentencing are carried out. It is an absolutely empty sentence because the one person who is there to supervise cannot possibly do it.

We have seen this situation before. The government effectively downloads in an area that is its responsibility in terms of sentencing but when it comes to administration it is the provinces'. The provinces do not have the money and so the whole thing does not work. It is toothless and completely useless.

It would be bad enough in the case where somebody who has stolen tens of thousands of dollars effectively goes home. That is their penalty. They go home. A real tough penalty. That is bad enough, but what about all those cases, and we see so many of them now, where people are guilty of extraordinary violence and are found guilty of it? Yet the government allows these people to be sentenced under conditional sentencing provisions.

People who are guilty in some cases of violent rape are sent home in the community where they raped the person. That is their sentence. They do not serve one day in jail. How can that be just? That is not just in anybody's books. But this government seems to think that somehow if violent rapists are sent to their homes, it is a just sentence.

I would argue that it is completely wrong-headed. It is contrary to natural law. It is contrary to everybody's common sense. That is not a sentence. The only sentence that is being meted out there is to the victim.

I know my colleague from Abbotsford has spoken often in this House about a situation in his community. A young woman was brutally raped. The man was found guilty and was conditionally sentenced to stay at home in the community. The woman lived in the same community and feared for her life and her safety because that animal was released back into the same community. There was no one to supervise him. He is sitting at home and the victim cowers in fear.

I wonder what goes on over in the justice department when those types of things happen.

There is another situation in my riding. A woman is living in absolute fear because her ex-husband will get out after two-thirds of his sentence. He has written threatening suggestive notes in the past and has had a girlfriend monitoring the woman's home. She is living in absolute fear. She has lived all around the province trying to get away from this man. He will be released very soon. She is deathly afraid her life will be in danger, that this man is going to take her life. I have sent the file over to the justice minister. I have not heard anything. This woman is living in absolute fear that she will be harmed and possibly killed by this man.

I cannot believe that the government sits there on its hands and does nothing when there are so many examples of this going on across the country. We know that in many cases judges use conditional sentencing to sentence people who are violent, who are bound to reoffend. That is so crazy. It is so wrong-headed. It is contrary to everything that Canadians believe in and the government does nothing. I do not understand. I wish somebody on the other side would stand up and enlighten us, tell us how this contributes to protecting the public. I do not see it.

It may save a few bucks by putting people at home. As the Reform Party finance critic I can say that our party is pretty tightfisted on a lot of things, but we would be more than willing to find the money somewhere within that existing envelope of spending where we know there is lots of waste. We would devote that money to putting violent criminals behind bars and to the greatest degree possible we would not let them out until we knew they were not going to commit another crime. That is common sense.

It makes me very angry when I see women in my riding having to live in fear because this government cannot get that through its head. The government does not understand the sense in that. It is unbelievable it allows that to continue.

By way of expanding the debate a little, I want to say how wrong-headed this government is and how its priorities are mixed up. When the Liberals came to power, one of the first things they did was to push through the gun legislation. Some of the members who have not thought it through perhaps think it will somehow help with the crime problem in Canada. Of course we already have had a handgun registry for a long time. I defy members across the way to point to a single crime that it has helped prevent or solve in the last 60 years. Of course every time we make that challenge, they cannot rise to it because there are no examples.

This legislation will cost somewhere in the range of $140 million or $160 million. In B.C. the government is withdrawing funding for the RCMP. The government has a chance to show that it is serious about dealing with the problem of crime. It could take the money that is being spent on a program that ostensibly has never worked in this country because we have tried it already with the handgun registry and it could give it to the RCMP. We could have RCMP on the beat around the clock. They could have their planes in the air and their boats on the water to watch for smugglers of various kinds.

There is a huge drug problem on the east side of Vancouver today. We have third world rates of HIV infection there because drug use is so rampant. What do we have here? We have a Liberal government that has decided it is much more important to medicate itself with the illusion that somehow this registry is going to solve the crime problem. On the other hand, it denies funding to the RCMP who would actually do something about the crime problem. There is a real misallocation of resources.

We know that for five years the government has been under fire over the Young Offenders Act. It is five years since we came to this place. We have made it an issue weekly. We get up in this place and excoriate the government because it has done absolutely nothing about people's concerns about the Young Offenders Act.

For 18 months the justice minister from Edmonton, Alberta has said that her number one priority is the Young Offenders Act. If that is the number one priority, we would hate to see the number two priority because she has done absolutely nothing. Here is the only legislation that we have received of any kind to deal with criminal justice in a long time. And these are very, very minor changes for the most part. If her real commitment is to fix the Young Offenders Act, what is she waiting for?

We know that Canadians from coast to coast want that act dealt with and they want it dealt with now. We propose three big changes over and over. This is not the Reform Party's wonderful idea. It comes from the people of this country.

People want young offenders, ages 15 and 16, who are guilty of a serious crime dealt with in an adult court. That makes sense to me. They want to see them dealt with in an adult court because regular people understand that the highest priority of the justice system is to protect the public, not to protect the criminals. I submit that is exactly what happens when these young people are allowed to be sentenced under the provisions of the Young Offenders Act. They barely get a slap on the wrist. We are saying if they do a serious crime, if they are charged with rape, murder, armed robbery or serious assault, those sorts of things, then by all means let us get them into the adult court.

Second, on the other end of the Young Offenders Act authorities need to have some power to deal with young persons who are 10 or 11 years old who steal cars or start fires. There was a 12 year old in Toronto who was suspected of rape a couple of years ago. All the police could do was catch him and release him, only to have him mock them on the front page of the Toronto Sun because he knew there was nothing the police could do. The authorities need to have power to deal with these people, not so they can go to a federal penitentiary, break rocks into gravel and make license plates, but so they can at least get some counselling.

Finally, why are we protecting the names of young people who are found guilty of serious offences? Why are we doing that? We believe that the criminal justice system is there to serve the public, not to serve the offender. If there is somebody guilty of a serious crime, a dangerous criminal, should we not know their name? I think we should.

That is a common sense proposal. I know my Liberal colleagues across the way have heard it.

I suggest that this government has its priorities standing on their head. The real issue is that we have a criminal justice system that is there to serve the public and that puts the rights of law-abiding citizens and victims ahead of the rights of criminals. That is completely missing in this legislation.

I encourage members across the way to put some pressure on the Minister of Justice, who is from Edmonton, and tell her that not only Liberals feel strongly about this, but remind her that the people of Edmonton and Alberta feel extraordinarily strongly about it.

[Employment Insurance, November 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the government is already $4 billion over budget this year. That is where it can find some savings.

The government will do anything to stay in power. We have the finance minister who is saying payroll taxes are a cancer on job creation. Yet the government raises payroll taxes. He said this spring that the EI fund belongs to workers and employers. Now he is setting out to raid it.

When will the minister quit this cynical, political manipulation of the government's finances and put jobs ahead of his own political ambitions?

[Employment Insurance, November 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, enough rhetoric from the minister. The C.D. Howe Institute is saying that the government's CPP tax hike will cost 200,000 jobs. He can offset the impact of those hikes by cutting EI premiums by the $7 billion recommended by the actuary.

Will the minister obey the law, cut the EI tax hike by $7 billion and preserve 200,000 jobs?

[Employment Insurance, November 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is hard to believe that is coming from the Dr. Kevorkian of Canadian health care, $7 billion in cuts from that minister.

Recently the finance minister has been arguing that we should forgive billions of dollars of foreign debt and at the same time he is getting set to confiscate billions of dollars from Canadian workers.

I wonder if the minister can tell us why he has so much compassion for foreign governments and so little compassion for Canadian workers and small businesses.

[Employment Insurance, November 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, arrogance is not a mistake and it is not a slump. It is a character flaw. When the Prime Minister says he wants to confiscate $350 in premiums from workers and $500 from employers, that is a calculated decision, it is arrogance. It is not a mistake and it is not a slump. If the minister really wants so desperately to redeem his reputation, why does he not allow people to keep their money?

[Government Expenditures, November 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, let me tell the minister what we are offended about. We are offended about the $4 million going to the millennium arts project and the $3.2 million going to the Senate. I am sure that is what Canadians want to hear.

A few weeks ago we had the finance minister saying we have to be concerned because we have worldwide turmoil. We have to be prudent.

Does the minister think it is prudent to give $4 million to the millennium arts project and $3.2 million to the Senate? Is that what the minister thinks?