Michel Bellehumeur

[Judges Act, June 3rd, 1998]

That it will pocket. A 13.8% wage increase is contemplated for judges.

On the one hand, cuts are made in health and in transfer payments to the provinces for education, but on the other hand, a 13.8% wage increase is contemplated for judges.

Frankly, I think this is not the right time to give them a raise, the same way it is not the right time to give one to government employees. In the committee, judges were compared to senior government officials for the purpose of increasing their wages. In a few weeks or months, senior government officials will compare themselves to judges to get a raise. Where will this all end?

At present, we have good, well paid judges, earning between $165,000 and $210,000, plus a number of paid expenses like the ones the members of this House and the Prime Minister get. Perhaps the Prime Minister is not paid well enough, but we must also look at who is paid for the zero deficit the government has been so eager to achieve and rightly so.

Each of us must do our part. I do not think that it is appropriate to give the judges a raise on top of the one already provided for, because the existing legislation does provide for a raise for them, while many people have not had any raise in recent years. Under the Judges Act, they already have a 2.08% increase. I believe 2% is within the normal range, and reasonable.

But to add onto that, under the bill we have before us, 4.1% effective April 1, 1997 and another 4.1% effective April 1, 1998, is unreasonable in my opinion.

[Judges Act, June 3rd, 1998]

moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill C-37 be amended by deleting Clause 5.

Mr. Speaker, the purpose of Bill C-37 is to amend the Judges Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts.

The Bloc Quebecois is generally in favour of this bill, but has many reservations about certain aspects of it. The motion I am moving calls for the deletion of clause 5 which, in my view and in the view of the Bloc Quebecois, gives unreasonable salary increases to judges, in light of the financial situation and the cutbacks that have taken place in various departments and sectors in Canada and Quebec.

I see no need for a 40-minute speech about this. It is very easily understood and I will give figures to make it clear.

My motion reads as follows:

That Bill C-37 be amended by deleting Clause 5.

If members examine the bill, they will see that clause 5 deals with the determination of judges' salaries after June 1, 1997.

In committee, an attempt was made to convince me that Bill C-37 is not a retroactive bill. An attempt was made to convince me that judges in courts under federal jurisdiction, that is the Quebec Superior Court, the Ontario Supreme Court, appeal courts, as well as the Supreme Court of Canada, were not being given a retroactive increase.

If members read clause 5, however, they will clearly see that the period used to determine the salary goes back to April 1, 1997. The government should be aware that it is now June 3, 1998 and that this bill has not yet been passed. In other words, when it is passed, judges' salaries will be determined retroactive to April 1, 1997.

The poor judges did not have a big enough increase. Under the Judges Act, they received an increase of 2.08% on April 1, 1997 and of 2.08% on April 1, 1998. However, the government in its great wisdom thought it a good idea to ask a committee to look into judges salaries.

A report was released—the Scott report. From it and its study the government is proposing, in addition to the 2.08% for two years, an additional increase for the judges of 4.1% as of April 1, 1997 and 4.1% as of April 1, 1998. Thus, once parliament passes Bill C-37—today or in a week from now, it does not much matter—the judges will have a retroactive salary increase of some 13.8%, if we add up all the percentages.

For someone earning $25,000, 13.8% is not a whole lot. But federal judges currently earn, before the increase, between $165,000 and $210,000. That means that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, because he earns the most and it is the highest court as well, earns about $210,000 today. The 13.8% increase amounts to between $25,000 and $27,000—I do not have the calculations here—in retroactive increases as of April 1, 1998.

I do not think such increases are justified at the moment. Do not get me wrong. I am not saying that the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Superior Court, the Court of Appeal or whatever do not deserve a salary increase. That is not what I am saying. I am saying that, right now, with the state of public finances and the terrible cuts the government opposite is imposing on the most disadvantaged, a salary increase of about 13% for people earning $165,000 to $210,000 is indecent.

While the government will have cut over $30 billion in transfer payments by 2003, it is considering increasing the salary of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada by $25,000 to $27,000. While the government is pocketing approximately $700,000 an hour with the employment insurance plan we discussed last week and again this week, accumulating a surplus in excess of $19 billion—

[Parks Canada Act, May 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, we do not have the same documents. Yet, these are documents supplied by the Table. We did not rise earlier to call for a vote, and it was agreed to on division. If we had had the same documents as you, five members of the Bloc Quebecois would have risen to call for a vote on Motion No. 2.

Given that we were not supplied with the right information, I would like the question on Motion No. 2 to be put again so that the Bloc Quebecois may express its opinion and five members rise to demand a recorded division.

[Parks Canada Act, May 28th, 1998]

Our document refers to Motion No. 5. If Motion No. 2 were defeated, we would have to vote on Motion No. 4.

[Parks Canada Act, May 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would just like a clarification because everything is going so quickly. In keeping with the decision of the Chair, I understood that the division on Motion No. 2 applied to Motion No. 5.

[Conditional Sentencing, May 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, Motion M-283 arrives on a day when this subject is being discussed a fair bit, since the Reform Party had tabled a motion addressing conditional sentencing among other things, and therefore the same area of criminal law.

You will understand that I am not going to go back over everything I said this morning on this. This will, however, give me the opportunity to go more specifically into one part of this motion which relates to conditional releases in their entirety.

I can understand the hon. member's questioning this aspect, because there have been media reports in recent days of certain releases which were, all in all, very questionable, and very much so in certain cases.

Overall though, once again, I believe that the Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Party will not be able to agree, because it is not true that the system is rotten and needs to be demolished completely, and the law amended, nor that this act does not reflect reality.

As I said this morning, there is certainly room for improvement. There is always room for new ideas, in order to attain the very precise objective the Bloc Quebecois wants to see, as does the government. Any responsible party shares that point of view, that objective of protecting the public. I think that, if there is one point on which all the members of this House agree, it is the protection of the public.

At the present time, I believe the legislation on parole protects the public. Does it protect enough? Can it be changed? No doubt. Can it be changed to close up the loopholes in the system, and in the act applicable in such cases? Yes, certainly.

This must be looked at as dispassionately as possible, not by dragging out specific cases that make the headlines, dreadful cases that make one nauseated and affect our attitude toward the bill. That is not what is needed. I feel it must be looked at as coolly and objectively as possible, trying to find what we need to make this the best piece of legislation possible.

I would like to devote the rest of my time to parole and to violent crime. There is one incontrovertible fact on the matter of parole. Offenders serving long sentences are more likely to obtain parole than those serving shorter sentences.

At first glance, that may appear horrifying, but I understood looking at the problem more carefully that 65% of judges apparently, after very careful study, take the probability of parole into account in sentencing.

Thus, a judge who knows very well that an offender will be paroled may, in the case of a violent crime, impose a harsher sentence. Judges are therefore influenced by the possibility of parole and release.

This means that a judge about to sentence someone for five, six or ten years will calculate that the individual will be released after serving a third or two thirds of his sentence, whichever case applies. He will lengthen the sentence to ensure that the accused will serve a sentence that is respectable within our system.

It is wrong to say that the longer the time a person serves, the more quickly they are released. The effect of certain amendments was somewhat contrary to the objective set for them, that is, in terms of rehabilitation and return to society.

My proof is the series of amendments made to the law as a result of the passing of Bill C-45, on the famous quick review procedure. I think it was a good example of poor performance or rather the poor application of the intent of the legislator with this review.

We are therefore going to take a closer look at the accelerated review procedure. In a legislative reform in the fall of 1996, the government passed the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. Certain amendments were introduced in Bill C-45, particularly with respect to the accelerated review procedure found in section 125 of the act.

After a few months in practice, the new provisions resulted in numerous irregularities, not to say some rather strange sentences. The result of Bill C-45's passage was that major organized crime drug traffickers were released on parole after serving only one-sixth of their sentence.

As soon as the 36th Parliament opened, the Bloc Quebecois began calling on the government to amend the new accelerated review procedure criteria in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. The Bloc Quebecois member for Charlesbourg introduced a bill along these lines to try to plug the loopholes in the act in order to resolve the problem and particularly to improve the public's perception of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, an extremely important piece of legislation.

Section 125 provides that an offender may be released after serving one-sixth of his sentence if there are reasonable grounds to believe that he will not go on to commit a violent offence. There are a series of exceptions in section 125, but one was omitted, or perhaps there was a misunderstanding, because it seems to me that I asked the question in committee. Whatever the case, the exception applying to drug traffickers is still not included.

I think it would be easy to take care of the problem at this level and to improve the public's perception of the judicial system if the act were amended so as not to release someone found guilty of trafficking, money laundering, or importing or exporting drugs, after serving one-sixth of his sentence. But this is a long time in coming. The government does not seem to be in any rush.

However, we have reason to hope that the bill introduced by the member for Charlesbourg, a Bloc member and our party's critic for the solicitor general will progress and that eventually we will manage to convince the government to make the necessary amendments to have the bill implemented and, especially, to improve people's perceptions of parole.

Earlier, I was saying that I put questions to the committee and I thought I understood that money laundering and drug trafficking were excluded. We must certainly not forget that, in the Smith decision by the supreme court, Justice Lamer rendered a very important decision, establishing some link between drug trafficking and money launderers and violent crime, since we know that there is always violence at the end of the line with these activities, because those who want drugs steal, murder or whatever to come up with the money illegally to buy drugs. Yes, in the end these are violent crimes.

However, the national parole board does not make the same interpretation. I invite those who may be listening to reread the Smith decision. It is very interesting and will perhaps influence their decision in the application of section 125 of the law.

That said, members will understand that I do not support the member's motion. There is perhaps room for examination and the need for certain amendments in the law to make it more applicable and surer of meetings its objectives, but, in short, I think we have a good system. There is room for improvement, but we must be reasonable and look very objectively a the problem in trying to find solutions.

[Supply, May 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, to continue in the same vein as the Reform Party member who just spoke, the question is, did the minister come up with the money and did he suggest to the province of Manitoba that it take over responsibility for enforcing the Young Offenders Act.

Given that the parliamentary secretary represents a riding in Quebec, I hope that he is making his point of view known to cabinet or at least to his minister when he meets with him. I remind him—and there is even agreement on the other side about the figures—that an amount of between $77 million and $82 million is owed to Quebec by the federal government for the implementation of the Young Offenders Act.

Before finding money to help Manitoba enforce a law, and since Quebec has been enforcing the legislation for quite some time, I would ask the government to pay its debt of between $77 million and $82 million.

This being said, my question has more to do with the speech made by the parliamentary secretary. If the hon. member was present when the Secretary of State for Latin America and Africa spoke, he may have noticed that the secretary of state mentioned that narcotics are at the root of several problems, that they are largely responsible for crime in Canada. We know about narcodollars, money laundering, etc.

I have a very simple question for the parliamentary secretary. Since Canada is known internationally as the number one country for money laundering—possibly hundreds of billions of dollars annually—what is the federal government waiting for to introduce legislation that would prohibit this and make it impossible to launder money in Canada as in other countries including the United States where it is a lot more difficult to launder money than it is here?

[Supply, May 26th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member's comment is somewhat surprising, since the Reform MPs are the only ones criticizing the administration of justice at the present time.

I have never criticized the justice system of any province, I was merely repeating the allegations by the Reform member who spoke before me, criticizing not only the administration of justice but the very decision of the judge who stepped down, more or less labelling him as incompetent because he waited so long before indicating that he ought to be disqualified.

I have not criticized the administration of justice. On the contrary, I believe that the provinces, all in all, do a very good job with what resources they have available. I am very pleased with what I see at first glance as far as the administration of justice is concerned, in Quebec at any rate.

As I have said, there is room for improvement. What the Reform Party wants, however, does not exist—a kind of machine you would load up with the facts, pull a handle, and out would come the result at the other end. That is not how things work in real life. There are cases where the facts have to be examined, legislation that has to be applied, there are no miracle solutions, and at the present time the legislation is good, overall, although there is room for improvement.

I will not go into specific cases, as they want me to, because that is not the role of a member of parliament.

[Supply, May 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I invite the members of the Reform Party to listen carefully, as I am sure they will have questions to ask me.

First, I think the Reform Party is right to question Canada's criminal justice system. Unfortunately the arguments that lead us to criticize the government over criminal justice are at the other end of the spectrum from those of the Reform Party.

This difference once again illustrates the incompatibility of Quebec's expectations and federalism as proposed by the government opposite and especially as proposed by the Reform Party and the people in the west. I could debate this all day long. I know the subject well and am passionate about it.

It is vital that legislation to do with the criminal system be well thought out. Legislation must not be established on the basis of specific cases or stories from the Journal de Montréal or other gossipmongers in western Canada, but on the basis of a very thorough analysis of the situation. Only then can we draft the necessary legislation, and it must be for the long term and not just to resolve a particular problem or a public irritant.

The Reform Party proposes a motion and attacks three subjects from three different directions. I will deal briefly with each one.

The first, the Young Offenders Act, is another matter I could talk passionately about, because it is important. I have always held and do so still that, a young 14 or 15 year old in trouble with the law for having committed a murder or armed robbery in a convenience store or elsewhere has a problem, but society too has a problem, because this is a societal problem.

As for the Reformers, they criticize the Minister of Justice for not having gone far enough. They are calling for the electric chair, or almost; nothing will ever be enough for them, they want the problem solved once and for all. As far as we are concerned, when a series of amendments were made to the Young Offenders Act in recent years, we suggested that, before these amendments were implemented, the western provinces should first try to apply the legislation as it then stood to determine whether anything could be done with it.

In Quebec, we have been investing in a rehabilitation system for 20 or 25 years, and the Young Offenders Act as it stands works.

There is always room for improvement. As long as a 0.1% rate of repeat offenders remains, not enough is being done. There is obviously room for improvement. However, will it serve society to throw young persons in prison for life, in a different wing from adult prisoners perhaps but sharing cafeterias and dayrooms with real criminals? I think not.

Will the problem be solved by publishing the name of a 16-year old who has committed murder? Will branding him on the forehead ensure public safety? No. The law must be enforced.

The provinces have sufficient latitude under the existing legislation to help these young people return to society as anonymous citizens, earn a living, have a family, in a word re-enter society—that is the basic idea—and become anonymous citizens.

In this respect, Reformers should listen to what the experts are saying, in Quebec. While political scientists may be caught up in their own views, there are also criminologists, sociologists, those enforcing the Young Offenders Act, those involved, to whom problem cases are referred and who enforce the law.

I referred briefly to the ACFAS earlier. These experts, who have gained renown across Canada and even in the United States, have made it clear that, in Quebec, enforcing the Young Offenders Act has paid off. As I was saying, Pierre Noreau, a political scientist at the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscaminque, said “Twenty years ago, Quebec chose to equip itself with a system for handling troubled youth that is more sophisticated than in most other provinces”. This is the secret of our current success.

Having heard what the Reform Party members have had to say, there is absolutely no way we will ever be able to reach agreement with them on the Young Offenders Act. We have two different ways of looking at the problem. The Reform position is incompatible with ours. Increasingly, as the government takes a position on the Young Offenders Act, it is getting in line with the Reform Party view, the view of the western Right, and its position is becoming increasingly irreconcilable with the Quebec position.

It is unfortunate, because the separatists, as we are labelled here, used to be able to talk to those the other side, the federalists, on a matter of great importance, and to reach an agreement on it, for the good and the protection of society. The Reform Party is not the only one to be concerned about this issue, we too are concerned about it. But our solutions are different.

The second point deals with parole for violent offenders. The parole system is part of a theory of criminal justice based on offender rehabilitation. That is the initial premise, and the basis of the legislation. If they are against it, they need perhaps to address the initial premise, the objective of the legislation, which is to rehabilitate the offender and reintegrate him into society.

Some offenders are harder to reintegrate than others. Some, certainly, cannot be rehabilitated. I am told that pedophiles do not respond to treatment. Is this true? Is it false? I do not know. I am a lawyer, not a doctor. I am told that, regardless of the treatment or drugs used, a pedophile cannot be cured. This problem must be viewed in a different perspective from other offences. The whole parole system must be structured accordingly.

Since Bill C-45 was passed, the formula used to expedite the release of some offenders after they have served one-sixth of their sentence has been of concern to the public. Obviously, people cannot agree or be pleased with what is going on, particularly when they see individuals such as Lagana and others like him, major drug dealers and big time money launderers—according to the media, and this seems to be confirmed in the legal files—released after serving only one-sixth of their sentence.

Considering all the problems created by drugs and the money they generate, we cannot be pleased to see these individuals released after serving only one-sixth of their sentence.

The Bloc Quebecois does not just criticize. It proposed an amendment to the act, to try to solve the problem. We think the problem has to do with how the parole board defines non-violent criminals. I could give a presentation on a supreme court decision in the 1980s or 1990s, the Smith case, in which the court associated drug money and any money from crime with violent crimes.

Money laundering does not seem like a violent crime, but where does the money come from? It comes from crime. After weighing the facts, the supreme court judges reached the conclusion—and I respect their very legal rulings—that it was violent. The legislation could perhaps be amended to bring it more into line with the Smith ruling and deny such people parole.

My final point is the victims bill of rights, which, as I mentioned earlier, is a provincial concern. Certain provinces are undoubtedly more advanced than others. I was delighted when the deputy attorney general of the province of British Columbia appeared before the committee and told us everything that was being done in British Columbia for victims.

It is perhaps not enough and more perhaps needs to be done, but under no circumstances must the federal government interfere. If the federal government has money, British Columbia said it should hand it over to the provinces, who are responsible for implementing the legislation. They will invest this money where it is needed.

I could go on for hours, but my time is up.

[Supply, May 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would appreciate it if the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Justice would explain the numerous contradictions between the statements of the current Minister of Justice and those of her predecessor, who both represent the same Liberal Party and promote the same policies.

I will only quote a few short statements from the predecessor of the current Minister of Justice. During Oral Question Period, the then minister said “We must not amend the Young Offenders Act. Amending the act will not solve the problem of juvenile delinquency”. The former Minister of Justice also said “The idea is not to stigmatize these young people for life by publishing their names in the newspapers, which could prevent them from continuing their education and getting a job. Rather, we should follow Quebec's example as closely as possible in dealing with young offenders”.

How does the parliamentary secretary to the current Minister of Justice explain that the minister did a complete turnaround and yielded to the pressures of western Canada, among others, on a very simple issue, by publishing the names of young offenders, which squarely contradicts what the Liberal Party used to suggest?