moved that Bill C-217, an act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of witnesses), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Madam Speaker, I am proud to rise today to introduce Bill C-217 in this House. The purpose of this bill is to protect any person testifying in criminal proceedings in which the accused is charged with a sexual offence or a violent crime.
Under this bill, the accused could no longer personally cross-examine witnesses. In such cases, witnesses would be examined or cross-examined by the court.
First of all, I would like to thank the members on both sides of this House who have already told me they would support my initiative. I wish to thank them all. I hope that my presentation will convince other members and that a majority in this House will feel that my bill is well founded.
Bill C-217 is a solution to the problem of accused people defending themselves. In fact, the accused can choose their own defence strategy, including defending themselves. They can then cross-examine their victims and confront them face to face. I have two examples of legal proceedings supporting my arguments.
My first example is the trial of former Concordia University professor Valery Fabrikant. That circus lasted five months, ending in August 1993. Fabrikant assumed his own defence after firing his lawyers. He was finally found guilty of murdering his four colleagues, and he is currently serving a life sentence in the Donnacona penitentiary, close to Quebec City.
The second case is that of Ferreira, whose trial took place in Montreal, last fall. This person was accused of forcible confinement and sexual aggression. As in the above-mentioned case, Agostino Ferreira assumed his own defence. He even personally cross-examined his two victims. I deplore the fact that these aberrations in our legal system were not more strongly condemned outside Quebec. I presume that a certain regionalism prevails when it comes to news items of this sort.
For example, reaction to horrible murders committed in British Columbia is not as strong in New Brunswick. To fully understand the purpose and the objectives of my bill, it is imperative to see the facts in these two legal cases that led me to propose this solution.
Here are these facts. On August 24, 1992, around 3 p.m., Valery Fabrikant, a teacher and researcher at the mechanical engineering
department, entered Sir Henry F. Hall, in Montreal's Concordia University. He was carrying three fully loaded revolvers, as well as boxes full of ammunition. He went to his office on the ninth floor with his union president, professor Michael Hogben, 52, and shot him point-blank.
He then killed in the same manner professors Ziogas, 48, Saber, 46, and Matthew Douglas, 66. He also shot secretary Elizabeth Horwood several times, 66, without managing to kill her. He then locked himself up in an office with the security guard, Daniel Martin, and Georges Abdou, who managed to disarm him when he was momentarily distracted. That is the first horror story.
On January 4, 1995, Agostino Ferreira entered a clothing store on Saint-Denis in Montreal. It was 10.30 a.m. and the store was empty. He indicated to the two young female employees that he needed their help to write a suicide note, but they did not take him seriously. In the face of this reaction, Ferreira showed them a bomb attached to his belt. He said it was powerful enough to blow up the whole neighbourhood.
He was also armed with a pistol. He calmly told the girls to get into a taxi. They were afraid that he would set off the bomb, and did what they were told. The three went to Ferreira's apartment. In a gloomy room, lit by candles, he had one of them write a suicide note in which he confessed to a double murder five years earlier.
He then bound the girls with tape. He gagged them, blindfolded them and tied their hands and feet. He cut the clothes off one of them with a knife. He then raped both girls. They managed to escape when he left the apartment to get some cocaine. So much for the facts.
The Fabrikant and Ferreira cases caused quite a stir in the metropolitan Montreal area. Apart from the cruelty and the perversity of these individuals' actions, these two sordid affairs have one fundamental point in common. These two individuals presented their own defence, without legal representation, and took advantage of their rights to personally cross-examine the victims of their crimes.
In the case of Valery Fabrikant, the trial lasted five months. Fabrikant, who refused to plead insanity, as his lawyers had suggested he do, wanted to show that he had been persecuted by Concordia University. He wanted to mount a defence mid-way between that of provocation and the battered woman syndrome. In all, the accused rejected 10 lawyers.
His defence, obviously, was not admissible in law. Provocation supposes that the accused has been subjected to an insult or an unfair action such that a reasonable person in the same situation would have been unable to maintain control and, in the heat of the moment, would also have killed his victim. This is a defence which, if accepted by the court, would not have led to an acquittal, but to lessened criminal responsibility. The individual could have been found guilty of involuntary homicide rather than murder.
I dare not even touch the battered wife syndrome argument for fear of losing my cool. There can be no more twisted and abject individual that one seeking to justify his foul crime by identifying himself with a woman who has been the victim of spousal violence. These are nothing more than the dreadful machinations of a paranoid and narcissistic mind.
The right to a full defence is a fundamental one in our society, and probably the grounds on which Mr. Justice Fraser Martin allowed Fabrikant to parade 77 witnesses, mostly from Concordia University, despite the inadmissibility of the defence of provocation.
During the entire trial, Valery Fabrikant presented himself as the victim of persecution, of a plot by the Concordia University community. He even summoned Elizabeth Horwood, the secretary who survived the massacre. Our system allows such things.
But I would ask this: Is our system better served when someone who has been accused of attempted murder can cross-examine his victim and attempt to discredit him or her? No. When there is a legal counsel, he or she serves as a middleman to cross-examine the victim without confrontation with the attacker.
I will give you an example of the type of question Fabrikant was allowed to ask Mrs. Horwood, whom he had shot at: "Where did I hit you? What did I look like at the time? Can you describe what I did?" Mrs. Horwood acquitted herself very well under the circumstances, but might she not have been spared a second attack by the perpetrator?
Take a moment to imagine the state of mind of Mrs. Horwood, when she again saw her attacker coming toward her to question her on the events that have left a permanent scar on her life? After five months of trial, the jury deliberated seven hours before finding the ex-professor guilty of the charges against him.
During the trial, Fabrikant did not hesitate to insult Judge Martin, which earned him six citations for contempt of court. The Supreme Court of Canada finally sealed this murderer's fate on June 2, 1994, by refusing him leave to appeal. That put an end to the circus trial.
The story of Agostino Ferreira is scarcely any better, in fact in some ways it is more loathsome. I shall not go into the facts of the case, except to point out that Ferreira was charged with forceable confinement, kidnapping and assault. At the trial, the victims were cross-examined by Ferreira himself, who did not have a lawyer.
He started out by apologizing to the first of the two victims for asking her questions. He asked her if the suspect-the suspect being himself-had acted not out of spite but out of love. Ferreira also asked questions related to his statement that someone or some
force may have been with him in the room when he committed these rapes. This cross-examination lasted an hour and and a half.
The next day, Ferreira cross-examined the second rape victim for an hour and ten minutes. Referring to a crucifix, he asked her is her legs were spread apart in the shape of a cross at the time of the rape. He also asked her: "Were you flogged? Did you have to wear a crown of thorns?" This, to me, is an abomination.
I readily admit that such incidents are fortunately not representative of most cases before the courts. Nonetheless, we as legislators have a duty to review Canada's criminal law so that it recognizes the rights of the victims.
If this House cannot give them an active role in legal proceedings, the least it can do is protect them adequately. This is the logic behind Bill C-217.
This bill would amend the Criminal Code so that the protection already provided to victims of sexual or violent offences who are younger than 14 is extended to all victims.
That is why I am asking the members of this House to support my bill.
