Chuck Cadman

[Young Offenders Act, February 6th, 2001]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-235, an act to amend the Young Offenders Act.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Lethbridge for seconding this bill which would amend the Young Offenders Act to make the offence set out in section 7.2 a hybrid offence.

The bill was originally introduced in the last parliament as Bill C-260. The Minister of Justice recognized the value of the legislation as she incorporated it in its entirety in the failed Bill C-3 in the last parliament.

I am endeavouring again to introduce this amendment to the Young Offenders Act that is in currently in force since we have no new legislation yet approved.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Corrections And Conditional Release Act, February 6th, 2001]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-233, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (withdrawal of applications for full parole by offenders serving two or more years).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Lethbridge for seconding this bill that would amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

The present act not only permits offenders to make application for parole but allows them to withdraw their application at any time with little, if any, repercussion.

My amendments attempt to protect the taxpayer and the victims. Unless there are reasonable and valid grounds for withdrawal by the offender, the reapplication would be delayed for two years.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Justice, February 5th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, will the Minister of Justice admit that her youth criminal justice act in the last parliament was a fatally flawed piece of legislation from its inception? It tried to be all things to all people and wound up a hopelessly complicated failure.

Will her next attempt truly reflect the wishes of most citizens? Will she lower the age of application from 18 to 16? Will she guarantee that all killers and rapists go to the adult system, or will she just ignore Canadians once again?

[Justice, February 5th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in 1993 the Liberals promised to overhaul the Young Offenders Act and did nothing. Upon retaining power in 1997, the minister said that youth justice was her top priority, and again nothing. Now we hear her in 2001, and as usual the media was informed before parliament.

We anticipate that the minister will introduce legislation today. Does she intend to merely rehash her previous attempt or will she get it right this time?

[Sports, February 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, on November 26 the BC Lions defeated the Montreal Alouettes and brought the Grey Cup home to British Columbia. It was a special time for many of my constituents who watch the Lions practise and scrimmage on a regular basis, since the team office and training facility are located in Surrey North. Fans have waited a number of years for this and, after an incredible late season kick, the Lions delivered the ultimate prize.

While on the subject of kicks, I pay a warm and special tribute to Lui Passaglia who, after gracing the gridirons of the CFL for 25 years as kicker for the Lions, hung up the cleats for the last time. How fitting it was that the final field goal of his long, illustrious career provided his team with the winning margin for the Grey Cup victory.

Congratulations to the front office, the coaches and especially the players of the BC Lions, and a special thank you to Lui for his quarter century of commitment to the game. The Lions will continue to roar, but one thing that will be missed will be the thousands of voices chanting in unison, “Lu, Lu, Lu”, as another three points go up on the scoreboard.

[Petitions, October 6th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I would like to present a petition signed by a number of residents of the lower mainland of British Columbia.

Given the problems related to childhood sexual abuse and recognition of those who suffer from the lifelong ongoing trauma throughout their lives from childhood sexual abuse, the petitioners are asking parliament to declare October 7, National Sexual Abuse Awareness Day.

[Crime, October 6th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians will be much safer under the justice platform released by the leader of the Canadian Alliance yesterday. We have seen far too many broken promises and too many failures of the present Liberal government to adequately address the concerns of our citizens toward providing safer communities and stronger communities.

The Liberals have it all wrong. Instead of being overly concerned with offenders of our laws, we must take a tougher approach to crime in order to provide a safer environment for our families.

A Canadian Alliance government will bring forth truth in sentencing. It will actually do something about youth justice. It will change our prison system so that release is earned and so that drugs are removed. It will repeal the costly firearm law and replace it with a practical firearms control system. We will work in harmony with the provinces and territories to address smuggling, drugs and border control.

It is long past time that Canada regained control over crime. It is long past time we had a government that will actually do something about criminal justice rather than just talk about it. Under the new leader of the Canadian Alliance, we will be offering a clear alternative on justice issues.

[Daniel Igali, October 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, this past weekend in Sydney, Australia, Daniel Igali of Surrey, British Columbia won the Olympic gold medal in the 69 kilogram class of freestyle wrestling. He is the first Canadian to win gold in wrestling. It was the crowning achievement for this young man from a family of 21 children. He came to Canada from his native Nigeria in 1994 to compete in the Commonwealth Games in Victoria and opted to remain here and pursue his passion.

He became a Canadian citizen in 1998 which allowed him to compete for Canada internationally. In 1999 he won the world championship and set his sights on the Olympics. He has now realized that dream.

I watched all three of Daniel's matches on Saturday. His skill, his power, his agility and his coolness under pressure combined to take him to victory. Upon winning the final match, he spread our flag across the mat and then knelt to kiss it. This emotional display of unabashed patriotism served to remind all Canadians of the freedoms and the opportunities we enjoy that we all too often take for granted.

Daniel Igali, a true champion in every sense of the word, your community and your country thank you.

[Criminal Code, September 28th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, finally Bill C-36 is up for second reading.

It was first introduced in this place back in the spring. At that time the present whip of the Canadian Alliance, the hon. member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast, was the justice critic for the official opposition. He accused the government of pre-election posturing with this series of proposed amendments to the criminal code, a sort of omnibus bill so to speak. At that time he stated that the bill could be passed in a couple of days if the government really wanted it.

As members know, I have been actively involved with my critic responsibilities on Bill C-3, the youth criminal justice act. Youth justice has never appeared to be much of a priority to the government until this past week. It is only when an election looms that the government feels the necessity to act and do something. The government is not too interested in governing for the people. It is much more interested in being re-elected and staying in power.

In Bill C-3 the government absolutely bypassed any reasoned contribution from the justice committee and almost overnight forced the legislation back to the House for report stage debate. The government House leader has been quoted widely about the potential costs of overtime of the House dealing with Bill C-3. However, he has been conspicuously silent about the costs incurred by his compelling our legal staff and clerks to work almost around the clock this past weekend in getting 3,133 amendments to Bill C-3 ready for debate this past Monday. Somehow it was a priority for the government to deal with Bill C-3 on Monday morning, meaning that the amendments had to be filed with journals branch by early Friday afternoon.

We started debate on Monday, but the priority seems to have disappeared as we will not be debating Bill C-3 again for the rest of this week. Talk about a waste of money. I will not even begin to get into the waste of money expended by the justice committee to review the bill and prepare amendments, only to have the government refuse to permit the committee to debate those amendments and present an improved version of the legislation to the House.

The member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast sure called it when he suggested that Bill C-36 was little more than an election ploy. It is an attempt to convince Canadians that the government is really interested in justice issues. We have seen this action with the youth justice bill. It is only back on centre stage because an election is looming. I suggest that Bill C-36 is only getting time now for the same reason.

The Liberals are decidedly weak on their justice platform. They merely need to prop up their image by claiming that youth justice laws would have been enacted except for the tactics of the opposition, specifically the Bloc. I suppose they will claim that Bill C-36 would also have been enacted but they ran out of time on their mandate because of other pressing issues, whatever they may be. As I have already stated, that does not hold water as Bill C-36 could have been passed in a couple of days last spring. It could surely have been passed this fall.

I expect that Bill C-36 will not be passed before the Prime Minister awakes some morning and, as he has said himself, hears his wife tell him to call an election. He will then be able to retire in the spring and have all of next summer to get his golf game back in shape. We did not hear much about his golfing exploits this past summer. Unfortunately, we did not see him do much for Canadians either, other than overtax them and tell jokes.

While there is not much to get too excited about with Bill C-36, I will briefly make some comments and raise some concerns. As my time is rather limited, I am sure there will be other opportunities to discuss the pros and cons of this particular legislation.

A number of the proposed changes to the law concern issues whereby the government made earlier changes to the law but either forgot or failed to properly consider all the aspects of those previous changes. In effect, the government is correcting some previous screw-ups.

For instance, there are a number of changes to the criminal code to include the Nunavut courts. There was a bill in the first session of this parliament, Bill C-57, to deal with the Nunavut courts of justice but the government seems to have forgotten to include these aspects of the criminal code. It certainly makes us wonder how much preparation and thought goes into bills before they reach the floor of the House of Commons.

The Liberal government has also dealt with making stalking an offence in Bill C-27 in the last parliament. At that time it claimed that it was getting tough with stalkers of primarily women, but it is only now that it is open to increasing the maximum sentence for this offence.

One troubling aspect of the bill concerns changes to preliminary inquiries. There are to be additional onuses placed upon the defence to provide disclosure of its case in respect of expert evidence. The defence will be compelled to provide the names of its witnesses. That is something entirely new. I expect the defence bar will have much to say about this provision. Charter applications will also be an issue. It will be interesting to see whether the government will be forced to withdraw from its stand in this regard.

We have seen how the government pays little consideration to the testimony obtained by the justice committee on Bill C-3. I do expect that the government will be more apt to listen to the lawyers. It is not so apt to listen to ordinary everyday Canadians who comprise the bulk of persons interested in Bill C-3.

As my colleague from Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough pointed out in his comments on Bill C-3 the other day, in Bill C-36 the government appears to be trying to limit the use of preliminary inquiries while at the same time through Bill C-3, it appears to be introducing the whole concept into the youth justice system. Talk about sucking and blowing at the same time; the government cannot have it both ways.

The bill will also attract some attention over its amendments to section 690 applications under the criminal code. There has been much discussion about setting up an independent review agency.

The Minister of Justice has retained a right of final decision on applications of wrongful conviction and I support her in this regard. The minister must be held responsible and accountable for these cases. She should not and must not relegate this duty to an independent agency. It will be very interesting to see how lobby groups, et cetera attempt to sway her from this position. Again, it will also be interesting to see whether the government listens to the lawyers and persons of influence when it was not too interested in listening to laypersons pursuant to Bill C-3 on youth justice reform.

Two components of the bill that will attract some public attention are those proposals dealing with home invasions and stalking. The proposal to make a home invasion offence an aggravating factor certainly causes me to smile. A year and a half ago, I moved a motion at justice committee after the premier and the attorney general of British Columbia had written to the minister requesting action on this issue. In that motion I proposed the very course of action that the minister is now proposing, but the government was not interested. In fact, one Liberal member of the committee referred to my initiative as silly and nothing more than political posturing. Now it appears the government is claiming credit for the idea. Somehow I do not believe it will see this as political posturing now.

Although the law currently allows for more severe sanctions, this change will ensure that all of our courts clearly know that parliament wishes home invasions to be considered as serious attacks on the security and the lives of our citizens. This should go without saying, but it appears that some of our courts require an occasional tune-up.

The problem in this area is primarily systemic. Our whole justice system must be readjusted so that our courts use the full extent of punishments available for violent crimes. We have significant maximum punishments available for most offences but these maximums are seldom, if ever, utilized and imposed. This is one of the primary reasons Canadians have become so disenchanted with the criminal justice process. It also says something about the Prime Minister having sole authority to appoint judges to our superior courts.

I note that in the spring the Minister of Justice was quite quick to lay claim to the fact that she is doubling the maximum potential punishment for stalkers. This is the criminal offence of criminal harassment. Stalkers are primarily male so this type of issue is readily recognized and supported by female voters in the country.

I fully agree that stalking is an abominable crime and that we must protect all victims regardless of gender. With all due respect, the government is not being entirely forthright on this issue. The government is still maintaining the dual procedure nature of this offence. The vast majority of offences are proceeded with by summary conviction where the maximum sentence is only six months in jail, a far cry from the 10 years maximum if proceeded with by indictment. If the government really wanted to protect victims, it would change the law to make the offence a strictly indictable procedure. It would indicate to the courts that parliament considers criminal harassment a serious offence.

Instead, the government seems to be sending the message that the offence may be serious, but it may not be so serious. It may be indictable in some circumstances, but in most cases it is merely a summary offence. This type of attitude does little to protect our women, who are the vast majority of victims of this form of crime.

Some time ago a Vancouver family came to see me in my constituency office. The estranged husband and father had harassed them for years. The children are now grown. There had been restraining order after restraining order, which he was careful not to violate. The latest order was about to expire, and they came to me for some help.

Let me give an example of how manipulative this man is. The family lives in the central area of the city of Vancouver. Successive restraining orders forbade him to be within a 25 block zone around their home. The supermarket where they do their shopping is outside that zone. The House can probably guess where I am going with this. He would regularly show up in that store when the family members were there to shop. He said nothing to them. He did nothing to them. He was just there. He would also show up at school or social functions. Again, he would say and do nothing. He was just there. Can one imagine trying to function from day to day with this going on?

All the restraining orders had fixed terms of two or three years. Whenever one expired, like clockwork, within 24 hours, he would show up at their door. The family members would be forced to apply for a new order, which required them to justify time and time again why such an order was required.

Unfortunately I could not offer them much help, other than to encourage them to keep the restraining orders in place and support their requests to the police and crown to examine the possibility of criminal charges.

They contacted my office a few weeks ago because the latest order, the current order, was about to expire. They wanted to let me know that the crown was going to try to bring criminal harassment charges, stalking charges, against this man. I do not know the current status, but unfortunately the legislation before us will be too late to be of any profit to them. Had the government not chosen to introduce this harassment legislation in the form of an omnibus bill, thereby clouding it with other issues, we could have had something for these folks already.

My time is limited and, as I said earlier, there will be other opportunities for discussion and debate. I am not interested in holding up the legislation. I have witnessed the dilatory actions of the government, and it needs no lessons from me when it comes to stalling on justice issues.

I look forward to dealing with the bill at the justice committee, but if the rumours of a potential announcement of an election are accurate, it appears once again the government is more interested in politics than in providing security and protection to our citizens. It will be months, if ever, before the legislation actually comes to fruition.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, September 25th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, first I would like to comment on what we are doing here today. The longer I am around this place, the more I become convinced that most of what we do here borders on being a sham.

The public is given the impression that legislation is drafted pursuant to the needs of Canadians. The government presents legislation, and parliament reviews and improves it as necessary. Supposedly that is part of what we are doing today. I seriously question how effective our review and improvement can be under the circumstances.

Bill C-3 was first introduced in March 1999. The justice committee was assigned to review it, and after listening to interested parties of expert and lay witnesses, to consider necessary changes.

Members of the justice committee from all parties, including the government, decided that a number of alterations were needed to Bill C-3. One particular member of the committee decided that rather than put all the substantive amendments forward for consideration, he would filibuster the committee in an attempt to force the government to consider only his wishes for change.

That was his right, Mr. Speaker. Please do not get me wrong. That was his right under the rules. I certainly understand that there are tools and procedures available to opposition parties and members to try to get their point across. However, where the committee, as representative of this place, failed in its duties is when it was given its marching orders, so to speak. A closure motion was issued to the effect that the committee was to be given only 10 hours of further debate, and then it had to report back to the House of Commons.

At that point, with all due respect, the chair of the committee had an obligation to take control of the committee, close down the debate on the filibuster, and move to the clause by clause consideration of the many proposed amendments. Having the committee return the bill to the House without any change whatsoever has in effect left this place without the value of the committee's time and effort of review. The House is in the same position it was in almost two years ago. What a waste of time, especially on a bill that was supposed to be a top priority of the government.

To further compound my consternation over the operation of this place, we then have the manner in which the whole process at the report stage of the legislation has unfolded. The committee reported back to the House on Bill C-3 last Thursday, September 21. Because of the government's scheduling, amendments had to be filed with journals branch by Friday at 2 p.m.

It is only now, on Monday morning, the day of the debate at report stage, that we can even see the amendments proposed into groupings as assigned by the clerk. After years of delay and after months and months of waste, we are provided with a bill without the benefit of committee recommendations. After years of delay and after months and months of waste, we are now in a type of overdrive to process the legislation almost overnight. Regardless of any individual political perspective, I would argue that the public is definitely not well served by this process, at least in the way it has unfolded with Bill C-3.

It truly amazes me that this place can be mired in quicksand and be going absolutely nowhere, and that it takes an imminent election to force the government to move. What disappoints me the most is that even when the government does move, it exhibits little consideration, if any, for our citizens. Although I do not wish to jump to any conclusions, my intuition tells me Bill C-3 will be passed virtually intact, with little difference from the questionable version of the supposed new youth justice law as presented by the government back in March 1999.

I may be proven wrong, but debate in this place at this stage will likely have little, if any, influence on the legislation. Regardless of the arguments presented by interested Canadians and by members of this place, it appears that it was always the intention of the government to merely go through the motions. There was never any real intention to listen to or even seriously consider other viewpoints calling for substantive change. This legislation, if it passes from this place in its current form or with little change in substance, will be a travesty to Canadians.

Just to address some of our amendments that are proposed in this grouping, our Motion No. 35 would eliminate a presumptive offence. Under our amendments we are doing away with the whole concept of presumptive offence, serious violent offence and the interpretation problems of the government's legislation over just what will be determined to be a violent offence.

Under our proposals there are to be just two categories of offence, namely violent offences and non-violent offences. Violent offences are defined as those within a list of named offences. The list has been taken directly from the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

Violent offences will be those that federal legislation already uses to determine safety concerns when considering how to treat adult offenders. By following this list we are being consistent, we are being all inclusive, and we are being transparent so that Canadians citizens, our courts, and offenders will know why and how our youth justice process will operate.

There will be no guessing. There will be no extensive legal argument. If an offender is charged with a specific offence on the list, that offender will be processed in a predetermined manner. The courts still retain all the powers and discretion to apply specific circumstances to each specific case. If the offence is not on the list, the offence will be classified as a non-violent offence.

Our Motion No. 44 would similarly eliminate the definition of “serious violent offence”. There would be no presumptive offence designation; there would be only non-violent and violent offences, as I spoke to before. We have a “serious violent offence” designation, but only if the crown attorney makes application and the court sees fit to endorse the information. We have an overly restrictive list of presumptive offences. Under our proposal, violent offences are specifically listed. No interpretation will be necessary.

Again Motion No. 49 speaks to the whole issue of violent offence and presumptive offence. Leaving the terms undefined will not ease the difficulty; it will just put the problem into the courts to be interpreted. This will be costly and will delay justice once again as the legal argument is made and the appeals have to be heard. It is the responsibility and obligation of parliament to present laws that do the job. We should not put off these problems on to the courts.

Our proposals at least attempt to clarify what will be a violent offence and what will be a non-violent offence.

The present definition within the legislation states “An offence that causes or creates a substantial risk of bodily harm”. That definition will keep lawyers and judges busy for years to come and is open to various interpretations. Just like conditional sentencing, it will bring criticism and dissatisfaction from our citizens when it is limited in scope.

Easy questions of fraud upon the elderly will obviously be determined to be outside this definition, but many of our seniors may well be hurt much more seriously on being defrauded of their life savings than if they were hit over the head and robbed of their cash on hand.

What happens to the offence of sexual assault? Will an offence be determined to be violent if the victim does not fight her aggressor? Will it be a violent offence if the purse snatcher is successful in grabbing the purse from a senior citizen without knocking her over? Where will the line be drawn between what is a violent offence and what is non-violent?

The definition proposed by this amendment clearly lists the offences to be included within the category of violent offence. We avoid these interpretation difficulties, we avoid the cost and time of legal argument, and we bring greater certainty to our laws.