Tom Wappel

[Supply, April 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, that is why I looked so carefully at the wording of the motion. I would not have drafted the motion using the same words. I might have used other words and have thought my wording was better. However I do not view the motion's wording as partisan. I do not see an attack in the motion on any government notwithstanding the speeches taking place now. We are voting on a motion, not on the speeches of individual members. I do not see anything in the motion that makes this a partisan issue.

We must look at the issue in broad strokes. We need to protect our children. We cannot get into parsing the issue. We must look after those who cannot look after themselves.

[Supply, April 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I do not disagree with anything the hon. member said. I agree that the rights of children must supersede other rights. Children have no way of protecting themselves. It is up to us to protect them.

Here is what the section says as far as defences are concerned.

Where the accused is charged with an offence under subsection (2), (3) or (4), the court shall find the accused not guilty if the representation or written material that is alleged to constitute child pornography has artistic merit--

The problem is that the chief justice of Canada in her decision in R. v. Sharpe said:

I conclude that “artistic merit” should be interpreted as including any expression that may reasonably be viewed as art. Any objectively established artistic value, however small, suffices to support the defence.

That is plain nonsense. It is a loophole we never intended when we passed the section. It lowers the bar so low an ant could jump over it. We must fix it in the House of Commons, and the sooner the better.

[Supply, April 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Pickering--Ajax--Uxbridge. Unfortunately I only have 10 minutes so I will not be able to deal with all the aspects I would like to.

For the benefit of my constituents and others who may be listening I will begin by quoting the motion that has been moved. It states:

That the government immediately introduce legislation to protect children from sexual predators including measures that raise the legal age of consent to at least sixteen, and measures that prohibit the creation or use of sexually explicit materials exploiting children or materials that appear to depict or describe children engaged in sexual activity.

This is a motion. It is not an amendment to a specific clause of a bill. It is simply an expression of what the mover hopes is the view of parliament. I have absolutely no difficulty whatsoever in supporting the motion. However I qualify my support by rejecting as categorically idiotic any suggestion that the government is dragging its feet, has not protected or is not protecting children, or that anyone on this side of the House is not interested in protecting and looking after children. That is simply not the case. It is a matter of the approach we take to do that.

There are few people currently sitting in the House of Commons who sat on the Horner justice committee in 1993 when it considered the child pornography legislation that is currently in the criminal code. I am one of the few members of parliament who sat on the committee in my capacity as official opposition critic for the solicitor general.

For those who were not here and do not remember the history, the legislation was brought forward by the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney. It was not the first time he had tried to bring in legislation to protect children and had been attacked by numerous forces saying it was too draconian.

If members think the current legislation is not draconian enough they should put themselves in the context of 1993 when people criticized the Conservative government for making it too strict. There was a great deal of opposition even to the inclusion of written material. The proposal was that the legislation should deal strictly with photographic visual evidence and that written material was not a harm to children and should therefore not be prohibited.

I fought against that. We were in support of including written material. Memory has a way of fading and making one seem smarter than one was, but it is fair to say that if I went back to look at the transcripts I would see I had a problem with putting two things into the legislation: advocating or counselling; and the defence of artistic merit. I will get to both those things in a moment.

In any event, members on this side of the House and I hope on the other side will talk about some of the things the government has done since 1993 to continue to protect children. In the meantime the Sharpe decisions of both the Supreme Court of Canada and the Supreme Court of British Columbia have come down. That means we must revisit the issue and decide what we need to do to plug loopholes.

Let us make no mistake. Loopholes have been imposed by the Supreme Court of Canada which were not contemplated by the legislators who passed the legislation in 1993. I say that as a bald fact because I am one of them.

I support raising the legal age for consensual sexual activity between adults. I want to make that clear. I am talking about consensual sexual activity between adults. The motion says at least 16. I am prepared to consider 18 as the age because it is a matter of empowerment and lack of equal bargaining power. Someone who is not an adult does not have the same mental capacity to make rational decisions as an adult. The adult may therefore be able to take advantage of the child.

We can always come up with examples. Someone may have just had his 18th birthday and had sex with his girlfriend who is two days shy of her 18th birthday. We are not trying to come up with the ridiculous. We are trying to protect children. We must therefore come up with broad strokes that are reasonable to protect those who cannot protect themselves: the children of our country.

I have no difficulty in at least considering the pros and cons of increasing the age of consent not just to 16 as the motion calls for but to 18. We cannot drink in the province of Ontario until we are 19. We cannot vote until we are 18. Why should we be able to have sex at the age of 17 with someone who is 47? It makes no sense to me so I am prepared to consider that. That is one of the things the motion calls for: to consider ideas.

A real problem has arisen with respect to subsection 163.1(1)(b). Subsection 163.1(1)(a) deals with visual depictions of pornography. I am not talking about that. All these horrendous examples we have heard of visual depictions are against the law. Some judges in the country are not giving the kinds of sentences I would give if I were a judge, but that is a different issue. The maximum penalties are there. If we give someone a conditional sentence for the possession or making of child pornography we ought to have our heads examined.

However that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about any written or visual representation of children engaged in sex that advocates or counsels sexual activity. Then there are the defences: First, material does not constitute child pornography if it has artistic merit or an educational, scientific or medical purpose. I will not talk about educational, scientific or medical purposes. However I will talk about artistic merit because that is what Mr. Justice Shaw talked about in the British Columbia case when he handed down the second Sharpe decision.

We must be technical because we are passing laws that would restrict freedom in the broadest sense of the word. We must therefore look at things from a legal point of view.

I will quote Mr. Justice Shaw on the issue of advocating or counselling. He was referring to two things Sharpe had allegedly written. I say allegedly because I do not believe he necessarily wrote them. Pedophiles are notorious for trading things. One of the simplest ways of getting around something like this is for people to take someone else's filth, say they wrote it and claim it has artistic merit.

In any event, this is what Justice Shaw said:

[33] While Boyabuse and Stand By America, 1953 arguably glorify the acts described therein, in my opinion they do not go so far as to actively promote their commission. The descriptions may well be designed to titillate or excite the reader (if the reader is so inclined) but these descriptions do not actively advocate or counsel the reader to engage in the acts described.

[34] Nor, in my view, do Boyabuse and Stand By America, 1953 send “the message” that sex with children can and should be pursued. If that were the case, then literature describing murder, robbery, theft, rape, drug use and other crimes in such a way as to make them appear enjoyable would likewise be said to advocate or counsel the commission of those crimes. In my opinion, such literature is not what the “advocates or counsels” requirement is intended to capture.

In my opinion the judge is wrong. He has his opinion. I have mine. How do we deal with the difference of opinion? In my opinion, to use his words, we should change the clause. It should be changed along the lines of what the police officers told us last Tuesday. To the section I have quoted they would add “or a prominent characteristic of which is the description of sexual activity between a person under the age of 18 and an adult, the primary purpose of which is for the sexual gratification of an adult or which poses a risk of harm to a child”.

My 10 minutes is up. That is unfortunate because I wanted to address artistic merit. I hope someone will ask me a question.

[Fisheries, March 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, allow me to say that I will be sharing my time with my colleague on the fisheries committee, the hon. member for Bras d'Or--Cape Breton.

I am very pleased to take part in the debate this evening. I will begin by congratulating the hon. member for St. John's West for bringing this matter to the attention of the House. I also want to congratulate the Speaker for permitting an emergency debate on this very important subject.

What is the subject? Tonight in my speech I am speaking to people like me from urban settings in Canada. What is the topic? The hon. member for St John's West put it succinctly in his letter of March 20, 2002, to the Speaker. I quote: “the negative effect of foreign overfishing on the entire region of Atlantic Canada”. That says it all in one short phrase.

One might ask what I, a member from an urban riding, Scarborough Southwest, am doing speaking on this very important subject. My answer to that is this. Scarborough Southwest is a completely urban riding. My southern boundary is Lake Ontario, but having said that, there are no fishing interests in Scarborough Southwest. However, listening to my colleagues in caucus over the years, I have heard members and colleagues of mine, particularly members from the Atlantic region, talking about the problems with the fisheries, the difficulties their constituents were having and the difficulties the fisheries problems were causing in the economies of their people. Quite frankly, I found it rather difficult to relate to those lamentations because I had nothing with which to compare it. I decided it was time to learn about the subject matter firsthand and I asked to become a member of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

I want to tell the House that in the time I have been a member of the committee I have listened to many witnesses, I have travelled with the committee, I have seen many of the areas concerned, I have talked to the people concerned, and I have learned. I want to tell Canadians that I have learned a number of things, but above all two very important lessons.

The first one is that fish and fishing are critically important to Canadians on our coasts and in particular to Atlantic Canada and especially Newfoundland. Newfoundland's reason for being, as we were told by witnesses, is the fish in and around that beautiful island, for which people have fished for hundreds of years until recently.

Second, I have learned that fishing is important not only to the coastal economy but to the entire economy of Canada and to the people of Canada. After all, if fishing is bad, fishermen cannot make a living and those of us in the rest of Canada come to their aid financially. That is the nature of our federation. If one part needs help, the others help. Clearly if fishermen can fish, then they can earn a living and the rest of Canada does not need to come to their aid. That is what fishermen want to do. They want to fish. They do not want to sit idly by and watch foreigners take our fish.

Our committee just returned from Atlantic Canada where we got an earful. We learned a number of things. Many of the speakers have already mentioned these things, but it is important to restate that our cod stocks, which have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, have been decimated. There has been a moratorium on cod since 1990 or thereabouts, I believe. We heard that there are 7 million harp seals, not 7 million seals but 7 million harp seals alone, and there are all kinds of other species. Those seals need to eat. They are predators. They eat fish. The cod is gone. What do they eat? They eat other fish. If they eat other fish, there are less species that we Canadians can fish.

What are we to do about that? Or are we to hide from that because it is politically incorrect to talk about seals and what to do with them when the predators start taking the very livelihood of our families and our children? We have to grapple with that.

We heard very compelling witnesses, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador. My hon. colleague from Nanaimo mentioned a name. I was struck with one phrase that Trevor Taylor, a member of the house of assembly and the opposition fisheries critic, said. He stated “As goes the fishing, so goes Newfoundland and Labrador”. That is so true. If there is no fishing, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador are gone.

We heard the hon. member for Burin--St. George's talk about the population decline. People are leaving the rock, as they say, to go to other places. There is nothing wrong with their coming to my riding but they do not want to come to Scarborough necessarily when they have been fishing all their lives, when their parents and grandparents have fished and that is all they have known and it is what they are good at.

The minister of fisheries, Gerry Reid, talked about the crisis in the fishing industry and how stocks are being pillaged for foreign overfishing. Allister Hann, the mayor of Burgeo, told us that his town has pretty well folded up because of the lack of fishing. Tony Hewitt, the mayor of the town of Trepassey, talked about what a wonderful town it was, how lively it was and how there was full employment. Auditoriums and various things were being built for the people. The fishery is decimated and the town is decimated. Its population is half of what it used to be because there is no fishing. That is what negative overfishing does to people. This is an issue of people.

What is the problem with foreign fishing? We have a jurisdiction of 200 nautical miles from our shores. I am not going to get into the long history of all of this. I will simply say that some of the richest fishing grounds in the world are centred around Newfoundland. Everyone knows them as the Grand Banks. Most of them are within the 200 mile economic zone.

There are three little areas that are outside of that 200 nautical mile zone. They are known as the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap. They are just outside the zone which means that foreign fleets can go there to fish. Quite frankly in the absence of any agreement, they could pillage that resource. We are not talking about ground fish which stay in one spot. We are talking about fish that straddle inside and outside of the area because they swim. Many of those are the commercial fish that we are talking about in the economy of Newfoundland.

What are the foreign fleets doing and what have they done? This has been proven and demonstrated internationally. They have raped and pillaged the fishery at will. That had to stop and lo and behold we came up with NAFO. NAFO, as has been mentioned by many members, is the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization.

Of course like good Canadians we tried the legal route, which is the correct way to start. We have done everything we possibly can to get the 17 contracting parties to abide by the rules and regulations that we have come up with in NAFO.

Sadly, based on what I and the committee have heard, NAFO is a toothless tiger, plain and simple. There is no punishment. There is no deterrence.

We saw that recently when the Russian trawler was caught by chance for polluting our waters. The hold was opened up. What was in there? A banned species of fish which the Russians had obviously been fishing. What did we do about it? Absolutely nothing. There is nothing we can do about it. We cannot even touch the fish because it was not under NAFO that they were caught. It was under environmental protection. What kind of an agreement is it when a fishing trawler is caught red-handed and nothing can be done about it? It is ridiculous and it has to stop.

It is critically important that we go to NAFO in September, that we lay out the minimum criteria we expect from these nations and tell them that if they do not enforce NAFO regulations, we will walk out. We will extend custodial management. We will protect the fish stocks. We will protect the people of Atlantic Canada. We will make sure that if they do not, we will. I call upon everyone to get behind Atlantic fishermen and look after their interests.

[Petitions, February 26th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from constituents of mine concerning convicted child killer, Robert Latimer.

The petitioners make the point that a lenient sentence or executive clemency for Mr. Latimer would imply to all Canadians that killing a vulnerable person is a lesser crime than killing an able-bodied person. They therefore call upon parliament to uphold the Latimer decision of the Supreme Court of Canada.

[Supply, June 12th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague on this side of the House. I will make a comment with respect to his speech and use my remarks as a vehicle to address comments which have been made erroneously by some hon. members debating today.

The hon. member who just spoke is a member of the subcommittee on private members' business. I am looking at the Hansard for Friday, June 1, which indicates the membership of the various committees. I wonder if the hon. member would agree with me, since he is a member of the committee, that there are six members on the committee of whom two are Liberals and four are opposition members.

A number of speakers, and certainly the most recent speaker, have indicated that the subcommittee on private members' business is dominated by Liberals. I would like the record to clearly show, and the Canadian people to know, that only one-third of the members of the subcommittee on private members' business are Liberals and two-thirds are opposition members. Would the hon. member agree that what I have just said is factual?

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, May 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will not argue with the member as to the information he has given. I have not seen the newspapers and, believe me, I do not believe what is in the newspapers. I can assure the member of that.

It is my understanding that certain misinformation has been provided to people in the province of Quebec. I believe that if the information was put fairly to them, they would not be as opposed as the member appears to say they are.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, May 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the questions of the member, who I know takes a passionate interest in the subject matter and has for many years.

It may very well be, although I am not going to concede the point, that there is not a great deal of support for the bill in Quebec, according to the member, but I heard the justice minister say yesterday that the Barreau du Québec supported the bill. Certainly the lack of support would not be unanimous if that is the case.

In any event, first of all this is a very contentious bill. It is not surprising that there are very polarized views about it. Just because there are polarized views does not mean that we should not act. We are a government. We must act. We made promises to the electorate. We indicated that we would change the bill to make it better, to deal fairly and more effectively with youth.

For the hon. member to suggest that the current system remain in Quebec is the reverse of saying that Quebec should opt out of the new bill. We cannot have that. We cannot have one criminal law for one part of the country and another for another part of the country.

Our system for the entire time we have been a country has been one criminal law for all citizens. All citizens should be treated equally before the law, under the same law, regardless of where they live in the country. That includes youth.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, May 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise you as I begin that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Waterloo—Wellington.

I am very pleased to engage in the debate on Bill C-7 today. I want to do so by taking an historical look at what has happened in the treatment of young people in Canada. The reason I want to do this is that I believe we can learn from history and that we can predict from history. If we examine history, we can get a general feel for where we are going and for what is likely to happen in the future.

I want to remind the members of the Bloc Quebecois in the 10 minutes I have that ever since the first day of Confederation criminal law has been the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government. It is up to the federal government of the country to pass criminal law. That makes us distinct from the United States where, for example, there are 50 states and 50 different types of criminal law. Here in Canada we have one criminal law for the entire country and it has been so since the creation of our country. The various laws governing the treatment of young offenders have all been federal laws and have pertained to all youth across Canada from coast to coast.

In approximately 1911 we passed the Juvenile Delinquents Act. It existed in one form or another for over 70 years. I doubt very much there are too many people in Canada who would seriously argue that the frame of mind in place in the early 1900s insofar as it related to youth remained in place in the late seventies and eighties. Over the course of those 70 years, the ideas about youth and about treatment of young people changed. As a result, there was a movement to modernize, shall we say, the treatment of young offenders.

That movement to modernize culminated in 1984 in the Young Offenders Act, which was developed during the Liberal years in power. It was, however, implemented during the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney.

It became evident rather quickly that there were some problems in the legislation. As time went on, it became more evident. A lot of people started to complain about the Young Offenders Act. Indeed, it became such a problem that during the second Mulroney government mandate between 1988 and 1993, the government amended the Young Offenders Act. Then justice minister Kim Campbell brought in what I would call cosmetic amendments to try to placate voters who complained about what were seen as defects in the act.

One example of the kind of cosmetic amendment I am talking about is, on the one hand, the Conservative government saying it had increased the sentence for violent crimes to five years when the reality was that the sentence remained at three years of incarceration with an additional two years tacked on by way of mandatory supervision in the community. On the one hand the Conservative government pretended that it had increased the maximum sentence to five years in jail, when on the other hand in reality it was three years with two years of mandatory supervision.

In any event, along came the 1993 election. In the 1993 red book we said the following:

The Young Offenders Act will be reformed to increase sentence lengths for certain violent crimes, allowing for full treatment and rehabilitation of young offenders. We will ensure that treatment and rehabilitation services are available to all convicted young offenders. A Liberal government will restrict the charges for which a young offender could be transferred to adult court, but at the same time will develop the category of “dangerous young offender,” designating a youth who could be transferred to adult court, receive an adult sentence, and be kept in an adult facility.

Obviously there is a question that has to be asked. If that is what we promised, what did we deliver? Indeed, it is a fair question. What we delivered was this: Bill C-37 provided for amendments to the Young Offenders Act which came into force in December 1995. The amendments focused on harsher remedies for violent young offenders while encouraging alternative sentences for non-violent offenders. That, however, was only phase one of a two phase process. The second phase implemented by the justice minister of the day was to ask the justice committee of the House of Commons to fully review the youth justice system.

That second phase began during the first mandate of the Liberal government and indeed was completed by the justice committee. That was between 1993 and 1997. Once the justice committee completed that study, it then had to be studied by the justice department. The department considered the study and began the drafting of legislation.

Along came the 1997 election campaign. This was one of the issues that was dealt with in the 1997 election campaign and we on this side promised to improve the Young Offenders Act. The result of that promise was the youth criminal justice act.

It turned out that it was apparently too tough for the Bloc Quebecois. There were some arguments about what was going on in the province of Quebec, which we heard many times. On the other hand, it was too lenient for the then Reform Party. I would say that is probably not a bad thing. It is therefore a middle of the road approach: too tough for some and not tough enough for others. It is probably a fairly good middle of the road approach.

In any event, we asked the justice committee to consider the legislation. During a period of time between 1997 and 2000, the justice committee did that. It reported, there was a filibuster by the Bloc Quebecois and the bill was stalled. The bill continued to be stalled until along came the election of the year 2000. We won again, thankfully, and as a result we reintroduced the act in February 2001.

Let us remember, then, that there was a two-pronged promise in 1993 to toughen up the existing act and to study the Young Offenders Act. In 1997 we had the results of the study by the justice committee and then we introduced this legislation. It got stalled, then we had the election, and we have reintroduced it again. The subject matter has been studied for many years. It is now time to pass it. We will not be able to please the Bloc Quebecois. We will not be able to please the critics. Our role in government is not to dither but to get on with the job, so we are going to pass the legislation, or at least that is the hope.

What will we be able to learn from history? I think we will be able to learn that the treatment of young offenders changes with time and with societal values. That means it is not static. That means that after we pass the bill, in future years society may decide to treat young offenders in a different way and this bill may become anachronistic.

Second, we can learn from history that anything drafted by human beings is not perfect. That is not a startling statement, but we should remember it. This bill is not perfect. The bill before this one was not perfect. Nothing we do can be perfect. All we can say is that we have done the best we can given the circumstances and given our knowledge.

Third, we can learn from history that it takes time and experience to expose the faults of any legislation.

Fourth, we can learn that it has taken 17 years for the problems in the Young Offenders Act to be exposed, studied and hopefully dealt with in the youth criminal justice act.

Fifth, we can learn that the problems with this new act, and I am sure there will be some, will be exposed, studied and corrected over time, but probably not in less than a decade. In the meantime, we can only do our best to try to enact corrections to the problems we have found in the Young Offenders Act. I believe this act does just that and I believe, therefore, that it deserves the support of the House.

[Criminal Code, April 23rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to say a few words with respect to the bill at second reading.

The first thing I want to say is that I applaud the government for its initiative in bringing forward the bill. I believe it is very much needed and, as many of the other speakers have said, it is critical that we bring it forward as soon as possible.

In my brief remarks I cannot possibly deal with all aspects of the bill which has 73 pages and many clauses, but I will say for those who are watching or listening that a piece of legislation like this one contains amendments to an already complex act, the Criminal Code of Canada. It is very difficult when reading a bill like this for one to understand it without proper study because we have to flip from one section to another. We have to read a section as it currently exists to understand why the amendments are being made and how they will benefit society.

I want to focus on two or three particular issues and offer some advice to the justice committee that will be studying the bill. I know the members of the justice committee and that members on all sides of the justice committee are interested and careful members who will give the legislation, as they do other legislation, the consideration it requires.

The legislation requires consideration because, as some other speakers have said, there are a few fine lines here that we have to decide on which side of the line we will come down. From my perspective we should come down on the side of the line that deals with the safety of society as a whole.

With that opening, allow me to remind everyone that the criminal code was developed many years ago, long before there were telephones, never mind cellphones; long before there were international drug cartels; long before there were automobiles; long before there were airplanes; and certainly long before there were motorcycles.

It is a problem with law that it is often difficult for the law to catch up with the criminal. The criminal mind is able to come up with solutions on how to beat the law faster than we can come up with how to avoid crossing the constitution but at the same time making sure we protect society.

The bill is a valiant attempt to do that, but we must remember that the criminal element is always moving, is always working to try to beat us at our own game. We cannot allow legislation like this to be stalled year after year in debate or stalled for other purposes because we need to combat this type of crime as quickly as we can.

When I heard that the government had announced the legislation I was having coffee and watching a morning news program. Immediately there was a person on the screen, a lawyer, who criticized some portion of the legislation. In particular, she criticized the fact that it could be that three people would be deemed to be a criminal organization. I said to myself yes, so what. I could not understand the criticism. If three people decide to conspire to commit a series of offences, that is a criminal organization. What is the problem? Why would the lawyer be upset about that?

I went specifically to the legislation and on page 29 is the clause that deals with the definition of a criminal organization. As we must all remember in this place, we must never rely on the television. We must never rely on newspaper reports. We must rely on our own eyes examining what the legislation says. This is what it says:

“criminal organization” means a group, however organized, that is composed of three or more persons and that has as one of its main purposes or main activities the facilitation or commission of one or more serious offences—

By the way, serious offence is deemed to be an offence for which a person can receive a punishment of five years in prison or more. It is a fairly serious offence. It continues:

—that, if committed, would likely result in the direct or indirect receipt of a material benefit, including a financial benefit, by the group or by any of the persons who constitute the group.

It does not stop there. It goes on to say:

It does not include a group of persons that forms randomly for the immediate commission of a single offence.

It is not a criminal organization if three or four young people get together, decide they want some chocolate bars, knock over a local convenience store and grab a few boxes of chocolate bars. It is specifically exempted in fact from the section.

A criminal organization is three or more people getting together and conspiring to commit serious offences for their own personal gain. I cannot understand why anyone would criticize that section, and I want to put that on record.

I also commend the government on consecutive sentencing, which in some circumstances is a touchy issue. Private members' bills have dealt with consecutive sentencing, which has caused some problems on the floor of the House among the parties and individual members.

The government has specifically provided that the sentences received for certain offences committed by people who conspire in these organizations will be served consecutively to any other sentence they may receive for the particular offence.

I will give an example. Five people decide to become bank robbers and commit a series of bank robberies. Each of those bank robberies is an individual offence. It is also a criminal organization because there are five of them. They got together and decided to commit serious criminal offences.

When they are caught and convicted they may very well be sentenced to a term of imprisonment for the bank robbery or bank robberies. In addition, if they are convicted under the criminal conspiracy provisions in the bill of being an organized gang, they will receive the term in addition to and on top of the bank robbery convictions. They would not be served at the same time but consecutively. I think this is the correct approach. It is the right approach and I commend the government for bringing it in.

As well, there are certain provisions of the criminal code which provide that for certain heinous offences prisoners must serve a minimum of one-half of their sentences before they become eligible for parole. There is a list of those offences in the criminal code.

I commend the government for ensuring that the commission of an offence under this act is one of those. If people are convicted of certain offences, either helping to commit the offence or being part of the offence itself while it takes place, then a conviction and a sentence will require offenders to serve at least one-half the time they have been sentenced to before they become eligible for consideration for parole.

I think this is a good thing. It is important. It sends a message that society views these crimes as serious. We intend to make sure that the time is served to the extent that at least half the sentence will be served before the prisoner becomes eligible for parole.

The final point I want to talk about in the brief time I have is forfeiture of property. We already have forfeiture of property. I draw to the attention of the justice committee subsection 462.37(2) in which the judge is allowed to seize property which is not necessarily directly from the crime but can be inferred as being from the crime or crimes.

The problem is the judge must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt. I believe that is entirely too high a burden to put on the crown and on the people of Canada. I would ask that the justice committee consider amending it so that if the judge is satisfied on a balance of probabilities the property can be forfeited.

I appreciate the opportunity to give my two cents worth prior to consideration of the bill by the justice committee.