Mr. Speaker, in light of the documents released and the statements made in this affair, do the Prime Minister's personal interests not stand square in the way of his ability to satisfactorily perform his duties as Prime Minister?
House of Commons photoWon her last election, in 2000, with 44% of the vote.
Prime Minister April 2nd, 2001
Mr. Speaker, in light of the documents released and the statements made in this affair, do the Prime Minister's personal interests not stand square in the way of his ability to satisfactorily perform his duties as Prime Minister?
Prime Minister April 2nd, 2001
Mr. Speaker, parliament finds itself in the paradoxical situation of the Prime Minister being both judge and defendant in his own case. He is the one who must admit that he placed himself in a conflict of interest, and he is the one who must agree to an independent inquiry. In addition, under the 1999 contract, the Prime Minister himself will have to pay the costs of his associates' lawyers in the event of an inquiry into this affair.
Is the Prime Minister not very clearly caught up in two conflicts of interest, rather than one, in the Auberge Grand-Mère affair?
Prime Minister March 26th, 2001
Mr. Speaker, all of the Prime Minister's lines of defence have fallen. There is now a very serious lack of confidence in the Prime Minister, not only in the House, but among the public and in his own caucus.
Does the Prime Minister realize that the best way to re-establish confidence, if this is still possible, is to agree to appear before his peers on the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to account for his behaviour?
Division No. 36 March 26th, 2001
Mr. Speaker, a whole group of witnesses from Quebec told us unanimously that they were opposed to this bill.
Indeed, the Barreau du Québec appeared as a witness. We also heard from all the groups that are directly involved in this field. We heard from Cécile Toutant, a well known criminology professor at the Université de Montréal. She came to tell us how this bill would be harmful to our young people and that we should continue to apply the law as it is in Quebec. I think that was a unanimous opinion in Quebec.
Maybe the member opposite has not heard those views but I think she will have the opportunity to hear them when the bill reaches committee stage.
Division No. 36 March 26th, 2001
Mr. Speaker, I certainly do read the bills before making any comments about them. I can even tell the House that I attended the hearings of the Standing Committee on Justice, where several witnesses, experts and lawyers, told me how incomprehensible this bill is. They told me that even lawyers who read their fair share of such legal documents all agree that people in the legal profession would have a tough time understanding this piece of legislation. Can you imagine how tough then it is for people who are not really used to this kind of legalese—which could be the case of the member opposite—to understand this bill? As far as I am concerned, I stand behind what I have said.
Division No. 36 March 26th, 2001
Mr. Speaker, progress cannot be made by making disparaging remarks and attacking members of parliament.
What the Bloc Quebecois has been asking for, and what I also want, is for the current legislation, which is working very well, to continue to apply in Quebec. That is what my remarks boil down to.
Division No. 36 March 26th, 2001
Mr. Speaker, as we have been saying all along, the Bloc Quebecois is totally against the bill introduced by the justice minister.
We cannot agree to the rigid model she is proposing, because her bill goes against the values shared by all the people in Quebec and everyone working with children at risk. The government is ignoring years of efforts to implement programs to help young people facing violence in their daily lives. We are not about to backtrack on this.
The government is looking backwards by taking unnecessarily repressive measures without proposing acceptable alternatives to its strong action. To supervise and to punish seems to be the underlying principle of the bill but what about preventing and addressing the problems of our youth? The question remains unanswered.
Despite what the justice minister says, what makes a bill good or bad has nothing to do with the government being reelected but rather with the bill being in touch with reality. The minister is ignoring Quebec's experience in this area. By turning young people into criminals, she is rejecting the Quebec model and its proven success based on rehabilitating young offenders. In doing that, she is compromising an effective approach in favour of considerations on which there is no consensus.
Why is the minister being so hard on our young people who need to be supported and guided rather than punished? Why does she want to send our young people to crime school, which is what prison is? Why deprive them of any hope? Does she want to ruin their chances of getting back on the right track? Does she want to take away their future? These are the goals pursued by the Minister of Justice.
How can a government get swept up in such a piece of legislation, the severity of which is totally pointless? According to recent statistics showing a drop in violent crimes in Canada, such an attitude on the part of the minister, which she insists on keeping despite all opposition, is absolutely unjustified.
Our young people should have a chance to tackle life with more confidence, with proper guidance and supervision, but the government wants to do the opposite.
The bill opens the door to consequences that the government has yet to measure. Young people, gobbled up by this repressive system, will find themselves with their backs to the wall, with no choice but to try to survive in the prison environment. Can we believe that the measures contained in the bill would really have a deterrent effect? Does the minister truly hope to do society a great service by treating this way young people in trouble?
They are being pushed too far. They are left to fend for themselves. What other result can we expect but to turn these young people into future criminals? We must denounce the bill, which was drafted mainly to satisfy a visceral need for revenge which, in the long run, will do more harm than good to our justice system and, more to the point, to our young people.
We have repeatedly denounced all this during the many discussions and debates we have had regarding the bill. Despite our repeated representations, despite the statistics on youth crime—Quebec has the lowest youth crime rate in Canada—despite negative comments from people in the field, despite the success of the Quebec model, the government keeps on turning a deaf ear.
The justice minister, confined in her ivory tower, has chosen to attack the bill's opponents instead of showing its possible benefits, which everyone is still trying to detect. The warning issued to the minister by the Bloc Quebecois failed to make her see the light, so strong is her determination to legislate at all cost in this field. We remain convinced that this legislation ignores Quebec's expertise in the matter and destroys everything that has been accomplished over the years.
The implementation of this new legislation would create more problems than it would solve. We would have to start again from square one and rebuild from a basis whose future efficiency is doubtful. What the Minister is proposing is nothing short of a radical change in philosophy. Nothing justifies tightening up the current act, which has a proven track record and, I repeat, has produced the expected results.
The minister has failed to take into account the criticisms, the objections and, more important, the arguments presented to her. She has come up with a bill nearly identical to the one she introduced in the last parliament.
A few changes here and there—in the French version, the term “infliger” in relation to sentences becomes “imposer”, a fundamental nuance if there was ever one—some of the wording may be slightly different, a few scattered sentences, this is the kind of frivolous changes the minister has the nerve to call improvements.
I cannot see any significant change, any change of direction, any notable redesign, which means that the minister has not seen fit to rethink her bill in the light of everything that has been said or written on the matter. Her bill is based on a lack of maturity and the denial of principles dear to a majority of citizens.
Canada's reputation for tolerance, compassion and good judgement will not survive this new image that the minister is trying to give her government.
Is that the way that the government wants to go? Does it want to erode its reputation on the international scene by choosing a repressive approach over a preventive one?
The Bloc Quebecois refuses to go down this path of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and would rather rely on the law as it is applied in Quebec which, together with adequate resources and programs, is the best tool to solve the problems that the minister's bill claims to be resolving.
No, we will not go for this because, in its current form and in light of the actions taken, the system is achieving the desired results. These actions are not dependent on interest groups, but on needs this bill is not addressing.
Why does the minister not accept the arguments of all the stakeholders concerned? Does she not take their expertise into consideration? If she insists on going about it the wrong way, she will have to shoulder the blame for destroying something that is working well. She will have only herself to blame.
Finally, I want to underline that the Bloc is still vigorously opposed to a bill that does not respect the public consensus in Quebec. The minister must not let the bill be used to promote the hateful agenda of a small number of people. I would advise her to re-examine her position and to think a little longer about the impacts of the bill on Quebec.
I will conclude by saying that, since it does not seem that the minister will let herself be guided by reason but by futile impulses, there is no doubt that she will go ahead as she has said she will in the last few days. She should at least consider giving Quebec an exemption allowing it to continue with the act as it is right now. I doubt that the minister will have enough goodwill and good faith to satisfy this demand, considering what she recently said on the Bloc and which all my colleagues and I still remember.
Since nobody has succeeded in bringing the hon. members to take a moment to think about what they are doing with this bill, I will end on a quotation by Montesquieu, hoping that he will. “Any punishment that is not absolutely necessary is tyranny”.
I would myself add that any legislation that is not absolutely necessary is unacceptable.
Supply March 13th, 2001
Mr. Speaker, it is not a question of deciding whether or not a sexual predator presents a high risk of recidivism. All sexual predators should be listed. This way, there is no discrimination, there are no supposedly objective criteria, all sexual predators have to register.
Supply March 13th, 2001
As I understand the Canadian Alliance member's motion, responsibility for gathering and maintaining the information would not lie with CPIC but with police forces, which would be individually responsible for all the information they would receive, since sexual predators would be listed with local forces.
I do not think that this would be the case if CPIC were used. Since we have seen how effective they are right now, it would perhaps be an idea to use other means and to list offenders with local police forces.
Supply March 13th, 2001
Mr. Speaker, warning the general public would certainly not be acceptable to us.
As we see the bill, this would be confidential information, for the exclusive use of the police and, of course, the solicitor general. There is no question of tacking up pictures of sexual predators or any sort of general public information on lampposts. My answer is definitely no.