Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1998, May 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Quebecois members will oppose the motion.

[Astronomie Québec Magazine, May 7th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, who is concerned—and rightly so—about the dumping of American magazines in Canada, is certainly not indifferent to the problems caused to Astronomie Québec by the French edition of the Sky News magazine, which is funded by a federal museum.

Since the Museum of Science and Technology did not deem important to comply with the request made the standing committee on heritage to negotiate an arrangement with Astronomie Québec before publishing its own astronomy magazine, how does the minister intend to compensate the Quebec publication, whose excellence has been recognized for decades in the Francophonie?

[Amateur Sports, April 26th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, last week the coach of the Canadian Hockey Association women's national team, Quebecker Danièle Sauvageau, was cavalierly dismissed.

A few months ago, the Canadian Handball Association's had done the same when, without any warning, it terminated the training in Montreal of the women's team, which was made up almost exclusively of Quebeckers.

Also during the past year, Synchro Canada required the swimmers on the national team, again mostly Quebeckers, to report to the national training camp in Toronto a year earlier than planned.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that discrimination toward Quebec athletes is not an isolated phenomenon in the wonderful world of sport.

We are calling upon the Minister of Canadian Heritage to take the necessary steps to ensure that those in charge of amateur sport in Canada treat all athletes with fairness and respect, whether they are Canadians or Quebeckers. If the minister has the future of Quebec athletes at heart, she will not allow any more similar incidents to occur.

[Workplace Safety, April 23rd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the first hour of debate on Motion M-455, moved by the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, which reads as follows:

That, in the opinion of this House, the Criminal Code or other appropriate federal statutes should be amended in accordance with Recommendation 73 of the Province of Nova Scotia's Public Inquiry into the Westray disaster, specifically with the goal of ensuring that corporate executives and directors are held properly accountable for workplace safety.

Let us first look at the facts surrounding the Westray mine tragedy and all the proceedings that led to the commission's report.

On May 9, 1992, an explosion occurred at the Westray mine, killing 26 workers. On May 15 of that same year, the Government of Nova Scotia appointed Mr. Justice Peter Richard to head a commission of inquiry established under the Public Inquiries Act. Mr. Justice Richard was also appointed special investigator under the Coal Mining Regulation Act.

The commission had a very broad mandate, so as to shed light on the explosion and all the related circumstances. In fact, Nova Scotia's premier at the time, Donald Cameron, was very clear about that mandate:

Mr. Justice Richard's inquiry will not be limited to the events of the early morning of May 9. Nothing and no person with any light to shed on this tragedy will escape the scrutiny of this inquiry.

The commission's work thus began immediately, to prepare for the public hearings set to begin on October 19, 1992.

Curragh Resources Inc. and Westray's management challenged the validity of the order in council establishing the commission of inquiry, and this, as members can imagine, led to numerous legal proceedings. Because of these delays, the Richard report was tabled only five years later, in November 1997.

The report, entitled “The Westray Story: A Predictable Path to Disaster”, contains 74 recommendations. It concluded in general that this tragedy could have been avoided if minimal occupational safety standards had been met.

As we know, the employers' obligations in terms of occupational health and safety fall under provincial jurisdiction. So, before determining if the employers were negligent or made a mistake, it is important to find out what their obligations are pursuant to the relevant legislation.

In Nova Scotia, mining is regulated by three pieces of legislation, the Mineral Resources Act, the Occupational Health and Safety Act and the Coal Mines Regulation Act. Mr. Justice Richard reviewed all of these provincial acts and concluded that their main purpose was to ensure the safety of the workers.

Unfortunately, we have seen many examples of occupational safety in the workplace taking second place behind the bottom line, especially in the mining industry, where the very nature of the work involves a lot of risk. So, it is the duty of company officers to ensure that the work is done in the safest possible conditions. We need only think of the tragedy that occurred in the 1980s at the Balmoral gold mine in Abiliti, killing eight workers.

Frédéric Le Play, a 19th century French sociologist, wrote “The most important thing that should come out of a mine is the miner himself”. Mr. Justice Richard therefore concluded that Nova Scotia should revise its legislation on occupational health and safety in order to make coal mining safer.

Our main concern today is recommendation 73 of the report. It is addressed to the federal government and deals with Criminal Code amendments on the responsibility of directors for safety in the workplace.

The commissioner made this recommendation because of the criminal proceedings undertaken while Mr. Justice Richard's public inquiry was underway. On April 20, 1993, the RCMP announced that charges were being laid against Curragh Resources Inc., as well as Gerald Phillips and Roger Parry, two members of the mine's management. !gerald sur le net They were charged with criminal negligence and homicide under sections 220 and 222(5) of the Criminal Code.

Since the court found that those charges were too vague for the accused to be able to put up an appropriate defence, other charges were laid, based on infractions under provincial laws on occupational safety.

This is why Mr. Justice Richard made recommendation 73. If we are to understand clearly the meaning of the motion before the House, we should first have a look at recommendation 73 of the Westray mine public inquiry:

The Government of Canada, through the Department of Justice, should institute a study of the accountability of corporate executives and directors for the wrongful or negligent acts of the corporation and should introduce in the Parliament of Canada such amendments to legislation as are necessary to ensure that corporate executives and directors are held properly accountable for workplace safety.

The current effectiveness of the provisions of the Criminal Code dealing with the accountability of corporate executives with regard to workplace safety is of concern to us. This is why we believe this issue should be looked at from a general perspective and not solely within the context of the Westray mine. In our view, criminal proceedings against Westray mine officers, which have proved fruitless so far, were affected by the climate created by the public enquiry. Therefore, the study should ensure that the provisions of the Criminal Code complement the provisions in the various provincial statutes dealing with workplace safety.

We support the member's motion. An in-depth and thorough review of the issue must take place before any legislative changes are introduced. Recommendation 73 clearly proposes that a study take place prior to making any such changes. We believe, and I hope my colleague who is sponsoring this motion will agree with me, it would be more appropriate for the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to undertake this study.

This is why I am proposing the following amendment:

That the motion be amended by adding after the word “amended” the following: “, following a study by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights,”

In our opinion this amendment clarifies the motion and is in keeping with recommendation 73. With this amendment, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights would be charged with carrying out the study referred to in recommendation 73 by the commission of inquiry. We could then have clear reason to amend the Criminal Code.

[Young Offenders Act, April 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, this flexibility is just a charade. In actual fact, the effect of this bill will be a gradual and inevitable undermining of the foundations of the Quebec system for young offenders.

Does the government realize that the philosophy of its bill runs counter to, and in fact is even a threat to, the Quebec model, which works best of all the systems in Canada and which has made the most reduction in youth crime, as my hon. colleague has acknowledged?

[Young Offenders Act, April 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Quebec Minister of Justice, Linda Goupil, spoke out against the punitive character of the federal Young Offenders Act, because it threatens the preventive approach developed by Quebec and because the Quebec model, with its focus on rehabilitation, might be forced unwillingly into becoming as repressive as the prevailing legislation in Canada.

Since there is a consensus within Quebec that young offenders need help rather than punishment, does the government intend to respond favourably to that consensus and to exclude Quebec from application of its bill?

[Kosovo, April 21st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the result of yesterday afternoon's vote in the House is clear: the Prime Minister does not care about parliamentary approval for sending troops to Kosovo.

How else to explain his scorn for democracy, when in 1991, he considered it vital to hold a vote in parliament before Canada participated in the gulf war? Just how important is democracy to the Prime Minister?

Here is one explanation, perhaps. It comes from an interview the Prime Minister gave to a German newspaper early in the year. He said, and I quote “The good thing about our system in Canada is that, with a majority, the government just has to keep the members of its own party in line”.

The Prime Minister missed a fine opportunity to obtain a strong consensus from all the parties in this House. He could have strengthened his international position and honoured the demands he made himself in 1991.

The Prime Minister's lack of transparency and leadership, his lack of respect for democracy and for parliament all indicate that power is more important than democracy in this country.

[Kosovo, April 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, does the Deputy Prime Minister realize that the government's offhand attitude to Canadian parliamentarians is harmful to the consensus that is required between all Quebecers and all Canadians on our involvement in this conflict?

[Kosovo, April 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the week's events in Kosovo have been tragic ones: rapes, burned villages, tens of thousands of refugees forced to flee.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government is refusing to hold a vote on a peace plan, refusing to hold a vote on sending troops, and releasing information in dribs and drabs.

My question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. With this heavy-handed attitude, is the government not running the risk of stirring up dissension among the various political entities in Canada, instead of doing its best to avoid them, as is its duty?

[Criminal Code, April 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-484, introduced by my Reform Party colleague, the member for Saskatoon—Humboldt. The purpose of this bill is to amend the Criminal Code with respect to consecutive sentencing for the use of a firearm in the commission of an offence.

More specifically, this bill is intended to amend section 85 of the Criminal Code, as well as several other sections of the Criminal Code that I will deal with a bit later.

Section 85 currently states that:

85.(1) Every person commits an offence who uses a firearm

(a) while committing an indictable offence, other than an offence under section 220 (criminal negligence causing death), 236 (manslaughter), 239 (attempted murder), 244 (causing bodily harm with intent—firearm), 272 (sexual assault with a weapon), 273 (aggravated sexual assault), 279 (kidnapping), 279.1 (hostage-taking), 344 (robbery) or 346 (extortion),

The bill as it stands is aimed at changing section 85, with the exception of all the crimes I have just listed.

Section 85 also addresses the use of a firearm while attempting to commit an indictable offence, or during flight after committing or attempting to commit an indictable offence, and committing or attempting to commit an indictable offence or during flight after committing or attempting to commit an indictable offence using an imitation firearm, all of which are indictable offences punishable, in the case of a first offence, by imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years, with a minimum punishment of imprisonment for a term of one year.

In the case of a repeat offence, the maximum penalty is fourteen years and the minimum three years. This is what is set out in the Criminal Code at the present time. It also calls for these sentences to be served consecutive to any other sentence. The Criminal Code is already clear enough on the use of firearms in violent crimes.

So, what amendments does our Reform colleague want to introduce? First—and I am sure everyone here is rather surprised—Bill C-484 amends section 85 by increasing the sentences provided as follows: a minimum of ten years, if the firearm is not discharged; 20 years if the firearm was discharged—he missed here—and 25 years if the firearm was discharged and an individual other than anyone participating in the offence is caused bodily harm. So the change is from a maximum sentence of 14 years to a minimum of 25 years. This is no small change.

In the same breath, the member proposes that the same supplemental sentences be included in sections 235, 236, 239, 244, 272, 279.1, 344 and 346, all of which, with the exception of section 235, are excluded from the application of the existing section 85.

This is the purpose of this bill. Let us look now at its effects.

I must say right off that the phenomenon of violent crime, particularly that involving firearms, is extremely serious and distressing. However, the more repressive approach, which imposes excessive sentences, in my opinion or in the opinion of many of those involved in the area in Quebec, will not necessarily reduce crime.

Our neighbours to the south, the United States of America, have a per capita rate of incarceration that is one of the highest in the west. It is also a country where, although a large number of states have reintroduced the death penalty, the crime rate has not dropped accordingly. This shows that repressive measures are not what reduce crime.

Another very troubling feature of Bill C-484 is that, by providing for very tough minimum sentences, it reduces the discretionary power of courts to hand down sentences that take into account the circumstances under which offences were committed. It is as though suddenly judges were not allowed to exercise their judgment.

Under our criminal justice system, sentences can be adjusted to fit the crime and the person that committed it. This is described as taking into account the subjective and objective gravity of an offence. The subjective gravity has to do with the circumstances surrounding the person charged with the offence and the objective gravity has to do with identifying the extenuating or aggravating circumstances under which the offence was committed.

By substantially increasing the minimum sentences for all imaginable circumstances, the member is attempting to turn the Criminal Code into a strict set of instructions with no room for judicial discretion. This runs counter to a long-recognized principle essential to the enforcement of justice.

Another important principle is flouted here. This is the principle prohibiting multiple convictions established by the Supreme Court of Canada in Kienapple v. The Queen. Under this principle, a person may not be convicted under different sections having the same elements. A person cannot be charged twice for the same offence.

In the bill before us, this principle is set aside. For instance, convicting someone of robbery, or armed robbery, and giving them an additional ten-year minimum sentence for committing the offence with a firearm is simply ridiculous. Yet this is what the bill does by introducing the concept of dual conviction, when in fact both offences include the same essential elements flowing from the same case and the same offence.

In any democratic system, the Kienapple principle is very important. No self-respecting justice system would consider supporting such a bill.

Last, but not least, if this bill were passed, it would almost certainly violate section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms under which everyone has the right not to be subjected to any cruel and unusual treatment or punishment.

In fact, the courts have already questioned the constitutionality of the one-year sentence now provided for in section 85 of the Criminal Code. It goes without saying that a minimum sentence of 10 years would violate section 12 and would certainly fail the reasonability test of section 1 of the Charter. This is not the first time the Reform Party has taken leave of its senses.

For all these reasons, I am unable to support the bill and, speaking for the Bloc Quebecois, I am certainly not alone.