Mr Speaker, I am glad to speak for the last time on this bill in the House. No doubt I will be speaking about it in many places across the country as people contact me by phone, letter and fax to express their concerns and ask questions about the form it has taken as it leaves the House on its way to the Senate for final approval or amendment.
I would like to touch on three areas in Bill C-41. I want to look at the alternative measures. I want to look at that part which deals with section 745. And of course I want to touch briefly on section 718.2. Perhaps I could start there.
The justice minister took considerable time to dwell on what has been known as the hate category. It is unfortunate that many parts of the bill have been overshadowed by concern for what is in this particular part. We have to examine the bill from the viewpoint of whether it is a good bill or whether it is a bad bill, whether it is good legislation or whether it is bad legislation.
I submit with respect that this is not a good bill and that it is bad legislation. I will attempt to justify my concerns in my address and intervention this afternoon.
The bill does not deal with the cause of hatred. It does not deal with the cause of prejudice or with the cause of bias. It does not deal with those issues which give rise to frustration, anger, stress and fear which I submit humbly is the mother of hatred.
We see the government passing legislation that creates anger, fear and frustration. All we have to do is read the letters we receive on Bill C-68, on Bill C-41 and on the MP pension bill. That is all we have to do to see what the government is doing to contribute to the degree of anger and frustration across the country.
The bill is not attacking the cause. It is not alleviating those fundamental feelings that result in bias, prejudice, hatred which eventually express themselves in human acts, one human against another.
When I was growing up and going to school in Saskatchewan in our community there were people from all ethnic groups. There were ethnic jokes, Ukrainian jokes and jokes against the English and the Scottish and the French. Almost every one of those jokes was a putdown. Although they were humourous they were still putdowns and yet they did not bother any of us because we all knew we stood equal before the law.
After all was said and done we all stood equal before the law and that is what is being destroyed. At least the sense of that is being destroyed; that the government is introducing legislation creating special rights for special status for some citizens. That is what will create a bias. If one grants special rights and special privileges to individuals, one will see other individuals resenting that. They will see the bias and the prejudice occur.
I go back to the example that comes out of the United States where a school teacher went into her classroom Monday morning and said to her students that all the brown eyed children in her class are special, they have a higher IQ and they are smarter. She saw the result. She saw the friendships drop off between the blue eyed children, the brown eyed children and the others. A week later she came in and said she made a mistake. It is not the brown eyed children who are the smart ones, it is the blue eyed children. She sat back and watched what happened.
She saw the prejudice. She saw feelings that produce bias, prejudice, anger and frustration develop within that classroom. I am saying this bill is not eliminating those feelings. It is aiding and abetting those feelings.
If it is creating the impression in the minds of people across the country that people are being granted a special category or a special right, we must all feel we stand equal before the law regardless of our race, our colour, our language and regardless of our chosen style. We must all feel we have the protection of the law and we stand equal before that law, that those who administer the law, and the political forces will recognize that and never deviate from that principle.
When we look at the alternative measures, what do we have? What do they mean? Alternative measures in the bill suggest we will segregate violent offenders and non-violent offenders from the court system and from the penal system. That gives me great concern. There are many cases which ought to be handled outside the criminal justice industry, as I refer to it, and the penal system. I was a peace officer for 14 years and most of the minor incidents which I came in contact with never reached the courtroom because I considered the court to be the last resort.
I am not unmindful of the principle contained here and the power and the strength of it which is expressed in what we call alternative measures. However, it should be directed. There should be a division between non-violent and violent offenders.
The bill does not create that division. One of our hon. colleagues from across the way discussed during report stage that this will allow violent offenders to receive the treatment provided for under the alternative measures. We will see the state, those who administer the law, given the right to allow violent offenders, those who have attacked others, not to be subjected to the court system or to the penal system.
When it comes to non-violent offences such as theft of property or wilful damage of private property or public property where there is no threat to the life or safety of individuals, I can understand looking at the possibility of dealing with that individual, particularly a youth, in a manner as outlined under alternative measures.
When we entered an amendment at committee stage to segregate violent offenders from this alternative, of course there was no consideration given to our amendment and it was defeated by the Liberal side. That is wrong.
This is a bad bill, poorly drafted. I do not think it will achieve the results and provide for a safer society. To me, with respect, it is more of a political statement, a politically correct statement, than an effective piece of legislation.
When the Canadian Police Association appeared before the standing committee this is what it said about the bill:
Bill C-41, with few exceptions, is unwieldy, complicated, internally self-contradictory, duplicitous and, what is worse, in almost all of it completely unnecessary for anyone with any knowledge of it or use for the common law heritage of Canada.
While it would attempt to codify basic sentencing principles, eliminating this most basic judicial discretion, at the same time it would bestow huge new discretionary powers to a whole range of persons within the justice system. The common thread in those new powers is that all are to the benefit of the offender in the sense of non-custodial consequence for criminal actions.
While sentencing reform calls for protection, this bill offers platitudes. Where it calls for clarity it offers confusion and outright hypocrisy. It will almost certainly cause the already skyrocketing criminal justice budget to expand further still.
To continue with this theme, I received a letter from the executive director of the Canadian Police Association, Mr. Newark, dated June 13, 1995. In part, Mr. Newark wrote:
I have taken the liberty of writing to you in the last hope that practicality might intrude on what appears to be a predetermined decision to see this legislation passed. I should add, at the outset as some of you may know, that the perspective of this letter comes from rank and file police officers who work in our nation's courtrooms on a daily basis, and my own personal experience as a trial prosecutor for 12 years.
This bill attempts to codify some, and I emphasize only some, of the basic principles of sentencing which evolved in our courts over the last hundred years or so. It is a classic example of bureaucratic arrogance which assumes that using a particular phrase or sentence will somehow make everything constant and in accordance with "principles" determined as valid within the federal Department of Justice.
When I first saw this bill, which was in 1992 as Bill C-90 from the Tory regime, I was convinced that it must have been drafted by people who had never seen the inside of a court room other than as an academic observer. My subsequent investigation has proved that to be correct which is far from comforting. No matter what one's view of how sentencing should occur, this bill's approach of attempting to redefine principles will result in endless litigation which will add millions of wasted dollars of expense to a system that is now struggling to make more efficient use of existing resources.
Even the much publicized sexual orientation clause is an example of how unnecessary this bill is. Section 718.2 merely directs that an offence motivated by any of the listed factors, including sexual orientation, shall be viewed as an aggravating factor by the sentencing court. Has anyone, ever, cited a case where a court said it was not an aggravating factor? Any such judicial position would be an error of law and it is so obvious that in my time in court I never encountered or heard of such a suggestion
and indeed, to the contrary, all sentencing texts or digests dealing with current practice recognize such motivation as an aggravating factor.
In short this controversial section is completely unnecessary. It has always been my observation that while unnecessary legislation is generally unwise, it is especially so when dealing in criminal law-I would ask that you keep in mind that both our association and the chiefs of police (and, by the way, every crown attorney I've spoken with) opposed the passage of this bill.
Bill C-41 is a badly drafted, inconsistent, self-contradictory bill which is truly the creation of a bureaucracy which unlike elected representatives has no constituency or ultimate accountability.
This letter was written by the executive director of the Canadian Police Association and those are his comments and opinions about the bill.
Also within the letter he indicates this viewpoint is shared by the chiefs of police and the crown attorneys he knows and has talked to and also the peace officers. I find it very strange the justice minister embraces the opinion of the chiefs of police and the Canadian Police Association with regard to Bill C-68, the gun control bill.
The minister has regularly and repeatedly used them as support for pushing through the gun control legislation. However, when it comes to Bill C-41 their opinion is no good. Why is their opinion fine and sound and wise on support of Bill C-68 or portions of it and unwise and unacceptable on Bill C-41? There is an inconsistency here that escapes me. It simply escapes me that the justice minister would use these organizations, their opinions and their support to justify one bill but would completely ignore their scathing denunciation of Bill C-41. I would like to place that on the record.
This bill also relates to section 745 of the Criminal Code. Section 745 of the Criminal Code allows first degree murderers or those who have been sentenced to over 15 years imprisonment the opportunity for early parole or at least to apply for a reduction of their parole ineligibility after serving 15 years. Of course it applies mostly to first degree murderers.
I ask: What is a human life worth? What is a fair and just penalty for someone who has premeditated and deliberately taken the life of an innocent person? What is a fair and just penalty for that?
When the government removed the death penalty from the Criminal Code we received the assurance that society would be protected by a term of life imprisonment for those convicted of first degree murder and that they would have no eligibility for parole for 25 years. However, at the time I suggest 99 per cent of Canadians were unaware that section 745 was created and placed in the Criminal Code.
Yes, hon. members can say that it was debated here in the House but it was debated before the proceedings were televised. I suggest that very few people were aware that section 745 was placed in the Criminal Code and what it meant. I suggest it was a betrayal if not a deception on the part of the government of the day against the people of this country. My office has received calls and letters from people indicating clearly they were not aware of what the government intended when it introduced section 745 into the Criminal Code.
We introduced an amendment to this bill that would strike section 745 from the Criminal Code entirely so that a life sentence would mean a life sentence. At least that would place a greater sense of worth on a human life and when someone deliberately with premeditation and intent took a human life there would be a penalty to pay. Regardless of whether there is rehabilitation, regardless of whether there is remorse of any sort, the penalty must be paid. We are saying it ought to be exactly what the government promised in the seventies when this change was being considered. We moved to strike that. I oppose Bill C-41 on that basis as well.
In summing up I would like to go back to the business of violence in society which has led to a categorizing of individuals. This bill would have the courts impose a greater penalty for certain crimes. If I am assaulted because someone hates me and if I fit within the categorization in this bill, my attacker will receive a greater penalty. If I do not fit within that category, then my attacker may not receive a greater penalty. That is the crux of this whole concern as far as I am concerned. It is creating status by categorizing groups of people. I think it is wrong.
As I said before, what will create bias and prejudice quicker than anything else is for example by my telling you, Mr. Speaker, that because you have brown eyes you are not as good as I am because I have blue eyes and I do have blue eyes. We must avoid that at all cost. This bill does not avoid that. We are moving to the edge of a slippery slope when we begin by statute to create special rights for groups of people.
If we want to reduce the degree of hate crimes within our country, this bill does not contain the power to do it. How do we eliminate those emotions that give rise to hate and to hate crimes? In all of my lifetime the only way I have found to do that is by understanding and love. Only one thing will replace hate in the mind and heart of an individual from my experience.
I grew up in my family of seven brothers, my mother and my father. I have raised a family of four with my wife. We have gone through the gamut of feelings and emotions, including frustration, anger, bitterness, all of those negative feelings every human being is subjected to. I know that if I do not sit by a warm heater when I am cold I am not going to get warm. If I do not open my mind and heart to the feelings of love from my family, my neighbours and my colleagues, the bitterness even of this place that comes to me from time to time will get the better of me. I see traces of this.
The hon. member from the Bloc spoke about psychological violence. I hope I am not out of place, but I have to ask what kind of psychological violence occurred in the Liberal caucus when their leader, the Prime Minister of this country, used words to say: "You must do as I say and if you do not this is what is going to happen to you". This was said to grown men and women who were freely elected in a democratic election by the people of this country. What happens?
There are two types of violence. There is the physical violence, which this bill attempts to address and I think fails miserably, and there is the mental violence. I often think the mental violence is far worse because it precedes the physical violence. Unless we look as a Parliament at the causative factors that lead to bias, prejudice and hatred, we as elected officials are not going to be successful in dealing with the problem. If we begin to create those things that will frustrate me and frustrate my children by saying that they are not equal in the law with all other Canadians, we are on a slippery slope.
I go back to my childhood days when yes, the ethnic jokes were there and the put downs were there, but we did not mind. Why? Because we knew we stood equal before the law. As soon as that changes-and we can look at countries that do not have laws which allow people to stand equal before the law, where there is special status and special rights and privileges-we will see the anger, the frustration and the hate.
With respect this bill does not address those factors. If the justice minister feels that by introducing a category of groups of people who will receive special treatment at the hands of the court over people who are not categorized within those groups, I think it is wrong. I am also absolutely amazed that the justice minister, who portrays a great degree of intelligence, could bring forward this kind of a document. I cannot support it.
