Mr. Speaker, I will cover a few fundamental flaws in Bill C-51.
I listened to the eloquent remarks of the parliamentary secretary. If the millions of people who make up the vast audience watching the parliamentary channel were to listen to her, they might think it sounds pretty good, that we should get this in really quick. The parliamentary secretary said that it is important to police, victims, prosecutors and the courts. In Reform's opinion a lot of changes could have been made in this bill that really would have made it important to police, victims, prosecutors and the courts, especially to victims and the Canadian public.
The Reform Party has raised a lot of concerns. We raised them during second reading when we had a good full debate in the House. We raised them in committee and had full discussion on some of our concerns about this bill. We also put amendments in committee which the government did not consider.
The minister had a great opportunity in this legislation to make a clear statement to criminals that the country has had enough with this cat and mouse game. Instead the minister continues the course of inaction in getting tough and sending a message that Canadians have had enough of weak sentences, conditional release for violent offenders, child prostitution and those living off the avails of child prostitution, and organized crime figures spending so little of their sentences in prison for major drug offences and other very violent crimes.
Let me say a few words about the subject of conditional release. I read a litany of concerns expressed by judges and others in the judicial system during my speech at second reading. It obviously was not enough proof for the minister that conditional release is not meeting the expectations of the judges or the public.
We could debate this bill for months just reading the comments made by judges on conditional sentencing. Judges ask why parliament did not put right in the bill originally exactly what they wanted with conditional releases. That is what the Reform Party tried to do in committee. We tried to make it so Canadians and judges would understand what conditional sentencing meant.
The parliamentary secretary tells us there are cases before the supreme court right now and that the government wants to hear what it says before looking at conditional sentencing again. I say to the parliamentary secretary and the minister, is it not time this House of Commons started making the laws and not wait for judges who are appointed by the government to make the laws? It is our job to look at legislation and to look at how it is working.
We believe, as do many Canadians, that the issue is very simple. Conditional sentencing should not be used in the case of a violent offence. Yet it is happening more and more.
By simply amending section 742(1) of the Criminal Code to exempt convictions for serious personal injury offences as defined in section 752 of the code could prevent such travesties as the one involving two gentlemen—and I use that term very loosely—who raped and tortured a Montreal woman last year. Thanks to conditional sentencing they were let out, free to do it again. Is there no sense of compassion with this government or just plain common sense?
I do not know one member of this House who in looking at that case would think that it was ever meant for two men convicted of rape, not only rape but a violent rape. Yet a judge in her wisdom—and I really question that and hope that when this gets through the supreme court we will see some major changes in that—let this happen.
One of the main reasons we will vote against this bill is because the government refuses to look at conditional sentencing. It continues to let this type of sentence take place for violent rape offences and violent murders. It is unfortunate that this government is just not listening.
Being the official opposition, we could be accused of being political in trying to find a weakness in the government. Heaven knows, we would not do that.
Let me just say what a judge said because we all know judges are not political. They may have been at one time but they are not political in their jobs and we all know that. As one judge put it, “conditional sentencing for these types of heinous crimes undermines respect for the law”. That is what the Reform Party is talking about, the undermining of respect for the law.
People who commit these kinds of violent crimes are allowed to get out on a conditional sentence, serving no time in jail, with no training to put them back into society so they will not do these things again. That is why the judge said it undermined respect for the law. That is why we put these amendments in committee, why we are debating this bill in the House of Commons right now and why we will vote against this legislation.
I have quote from another judge who said “Some judges fall on the other side and have been applying conditional sentences far beyond what parliament had originally intended”. We made it easy for them to try to interpret something the way they wanted to hear it. Judges have asked publicly “Why do members of parliament not vote in the legislation and tell us what they want and what is meant by conditional sentencing?”
That is what we tried to get this minister to do at committee. We tried at second reading and we are trying again at third reading. I am hoping there are enough people out there listening and paying attention, enough police officers, prosecutors and victims looking at this and they will write the Minister of Justice and tell her that this bill should not pass without something being done about conditional sentencing.
Let us look at some surveys. The government does surveys. The opposition does surveys. Survey after survey of police officers, lawyers, probation officers and corrections staff indicate that over 90% of the experts in the business felt that sentences imposed by the courts were not respected. Upwards of 69% of this same group felt that the amount of time served should be the same as the sentence imposed. That is a shocking thing.
When somebody has committed a very serious crime and is sentenced to 20 years in jail, the public thinks he will serve 20 years with a little time off for good behaviour. In this country the judge can give them a conditional sentence. They can serve no time in jail at all. That is wrong.
The message the government is sending in Bill C-51 is that a life of crime pays, and the public remain the victims of the cruel hoax that Canada has a system of justice that respects them and not the criminal. Right now the average person out there in the public believes that the system respects the criminal and not the victim. Members on the other side know that. They know about the motion on victims by our House leader and which was worked on very hard by the deputy justice critic from Surrey North. It was put forward in the committee this week. This party is concerned about victims. This bill does very little for victims.
On another note, the Reform Party feels strongly that traffickers and importers of drugs spend at least two-thirds of their sentence behind bars. These people in most cases are members of organized crime and are a blight on society.
There must be a message sent to organized crime. If we could have it our way, we would like the entire section on accelerated parole repealed. Organized crime figures are serious criminals by the Criminal Code's own definition. Why does the government continue to deal with them as if they are petty criminals?
Automatic parole for these types of criminals is abhorrent no matter what the standard. They are not rehabilitated after one-sixth of the sentence. The government is going to go to one-third, but I guess it is the best we can expect from this government.
Think about people who are involved in organized crime. Organized crime by definition means being part of an organization of more than a certain number of people, and those people have made a decision in their way of life to become involved in crime. Crime is their business.
If someone launders a couple of million dollars and gets six years in jail and after two we let him go, is that anything that will stop a lot of people from getting into organized crime and a life of crime? If they know they will spend two-thirds of the sentence in jail no matter how good they are when they get there, they might think twice about getting involved in a life of organized crime.
Bill C-51 deals with the issue of child prostitution. The Criminal Code now provides a minimum of five years for anyone who uses violence or intimidation to get or keep a minor in prostitution. The Reform Party feels that anyone who lives off a minor should receive a minimum one year sentence, and I and the public look at that and think one year is not even enough. Number one, they will not serve a year and number two, they are not getting any time at all on a first offence. The government does not share our view but in fact it seems not too harsh to us at all.
I ask members of this House to look at child prostitution, what this government is saying and what we have asked for. It is very much a minimum.
Just about every member in this House has children. If one of their children was to be lured into child prostitution or lured into the drug areas they would be incensed.
I am sure a lot of members have constituents who have children who have been drawn into the field of child prostitution. How many street children have we in the cities of Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver?
In this bill we tried to make some changes. We could not get the amendments before the committee. The minister said she was aware that it was a problem and she would like the committee to look at it a little further.
Is it not time we told the courts, from the bottom right up to the supreme court, that anybody who messes with our children, who starts to peddle drugs to them or who tries to lure them into prostitution is going to get minimum sentences?
The sentence for prostitution might be one year, but the sentence for drugs has to be heavier. There cannot be any early parole to return these people to the streets. That is not radical. That is what the average Canadian thinks.
It is becoming a bigger and bigger issue in our country. I know that in Vancouver and Toronto drugs are a very serious problem. We do not find that in the polls with taxes, income and health care. That is a day to day thing at home and not something we tell the pollsters when they call. We may not want to talk about the fact that our children are involved in drugs.
It is a shock to many parents. I know this from talking with people in my own constituency who have had the unfortunate situation happen where their children were involved with drugs.
The expense to our country, the expense of getting these people off drugs and back to a normal life, is minute in comparison to what it would cost to keep that person in jail who tried to lure a child into drugs or prostitution in this country.
The Reform Party would have liked the government to send a message to those parasites who live off juvenile prostitutes. Society abhors their behaviour. We have to start somewhere.
On the one hand the government allows the police to use wiretaps to deal with the problem. The government then allows a judge to give the criminal a slap on the wrist for his bad behaviour. This is not good enough. Give on one hand; take away with the other. This is feel good legislation for the Liberals, but it is not taking the problem seriously enough.
We have talked as much as we can on this side of the House on these areas. We hope that the government listens once in a while, looks at this issue and realizes that it has to speed up.
We will have to take the minister at her word. She has said that the issue of conditional sentencing with respect to child prostitution will go back to the committee for consideration. The sooner the minister gets it there the sooner it will be dealt with.
This is a serious problem in our country. It is not a partisan political problem. It is something that members from all sides of this House want to get to work on. I think it is time we told the lawyers working in the justice department and the judges that it is the people in this House who make the laws. We are going to bring in some tough laws to solve the drug problems and the child prostitution problems in this country because they are going to affect more and more people and it will not be very pleasant.
The other side of the child prostitution sector is the government's lack of interest in dealing with johns. Bill C-51 does indicate something about this by making the communication with anyone for the purpose of obtaining an under-age prostitute an offence. This may help police to catch a few johns, but they will probably only get a slap on the wrist.
The Reform Party attempted through amendment in committee to impose a minimum penalty for johns of 30 days for a first offence and 90 days for a subsequent offence. We believe this would reduce the demand for prostitutes as it would not be possible to get a discharge or a conditional sentence or otherwise avoid jail time as one can now. It would have sent a message to these perverted people that society is getting fed up with their behaviour. Again our amendment fell on deaf ears.
Until we get serious with these issues they are not going to go away.
We ask the government to seriously think about what it is doing in these areas.
In summation, Bill C-51 was a golden opportunity to begin a process of equity and fairness in sentencing to deal with organized crime figures who live off million dollar drug deals and to deal with child prostitution and those who prey on those individuals. Instead, the government continues in an inch deep and a mile wide manner of tackling crime in Canada. By the very nature of this omnibus bill we are reminded that this government likes to wait around before it moves on specific problems and then it deals with them by omnibus legislation because it hopes no one will notice or no one will care.
We are going to vote against this bill on those three issues. Other members of my party, including the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, will talk about other reasons and perhaps the same ones I am talking about.
This is serious legislation. It deals with some of the major issues of our young people in Canada today. I hope that Liberal members on the other side are paying attention and that they will convince their minister that she should speed up the process. The government is going to push this bill through even if it has to bring in closure, which will not be the first time in this parliament.
We are going to do what we can to let the Canadian public know that this bill is not good for Canadians. We hope they will get their messages to this Liberal minister so there can be some changes made.
