Pierrette Venne

[Firearms, April 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice.

Yesterday, the Minister of Justice said that those who use firearms for sustenance purposes, particularly aboriginal people, will be exempted from the registration fees for their firearms, thus creating a double standard?

How can the Minister of Justice claim to be in a position to check if those who own firearms use them for recreation purposes or for sustenance purposes, particularly among aboriginal people?

[Government Contracts, April 6th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Acting Prime Minister.

Can the Acting Prime Minister tell us if the practice of using public funds to develop a communication strategy for the Liberal caucus is widespread among his cabinet colleagues, and if it is consistent with government ethics?

[Government Contracts, April 6th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice. We have learned that, last November, the Minister of Justice awarded a $22,500 contract to Earnscliffe Strategy Group, a communication firm.

Under the terms of the contract, this firm had to advise the minister on the gun control strategy he should adopt in dealing with his caucus.

How can the minister justify spending $22,500 in public funds to develop a communication strategy aimed at convincing his Liberal colleagues to meet their electoral commitment?

[Government Contracts, April 5th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the minister will have to take my next question under advisement as well.

In the Ottawa-Hull area, it is even worse. The value of contracts awarded to Quebecers is around 2 per cent, as opposed to 98 per cent for Ontario. Furthermore, 99 per cent of all research papers are drafted in English only.

What explanation does the Minister of Justice have for this tendancy among his departmental of officials to prefer suppliers in English Canada and a unilingual English approach?

[Government Contracts, April 5th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Justice.

Since the Liberal government was elected in October 1993, the Minister of Justice has awarded 186 contracts for professional and special services, for a total value of $7 million. This money is used to fund criminological and legal research.

Could the minister tell us why individuals and companies from Quebec have obtained only 5 per cent of the value of these contracts awarded by his department, 15 times less than the percentage obtained by persons and companies in Ontario?

[Drunk Defence, March 28th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice tabled Bill C-72, claiming that it would resolve the sensitive issue of using intoxication as a defence. Need I remind the House that the Supreme Court decision on the Daviault case was heavily criticized, given that intoxication was used as a line of defence against a charge of sexual assault or assault.

The minister claims that his bill will ensure that all people who commit violent crimes in a state of extreme inebriation will be considered criminally responsible for their behaviour. Regardless of the minister's bill, a sexual aggressor whose victim succumbed to his attack is still free to use extreme drunkenness as a line of defence.

How can the minister claim to have resolved the problem of the drunk defence when his bill only covers a small group of offences?

[Criminal Code, March 27th, 1995]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will continue with my remarks. I was just saying that many women have been battered, sexually assaulted, choked, struck with an object, or threatened with a firearm or a knife. Very few cases are reported where only one form of abuse is involved. The most frequent injuries, in 90 per cent of all cases, are bruises. Then we have cuts, scratches, burns, hairline fractures or broken bones. Almost 10 per cent of injured women said they had suffered internal injuries or had had miscarriages.

The worst part of it all is that the victim of such abuse finds excuses for the abuser. Victims seldom lay charges. On average, the police are notified in only one-quarter of all of the cases of spousal abuse. When charges are laid, the victims withdraw their complaints or decline to testify. Those victims are afraid and, by that very fact, sanction the actions of the aggressors. How often have the courts heard victims say that they have decided on reconciliations, that the husband's actions were not that bad, that he had problems at work or because he had no work, that the children were annoying that day, that he was tired and that he had been drinking?

Precisely, he had been drinking. As if it were an excuse. It is not; it is an aggravating circumstance. The survey in question shows beyond a shadow of a doubt the relationship between alcohol and violence. It reveals that alcohol is a prime factor in spousal assaults. The aggressor had been drinking in half of all the reported incidents. More specifically, the rate of assault on women living with men who drank regularly, that is at least four times a week, was three times higher than for abstinent husbands.

Women whose husbands drink often-five drinks or more at one time-were six times more exposed to assault than women whose husbands do not drink. In 1993, fifty-five per cent of the men who killed their partners had consumed alcohol. Native women are particularly at risk when alcohol is present. It was a determinant factor in nearly every case of sexual assault on native women. Alcohol also played a part in every other offense against native women.

The Criminal Code contains no provisions dealing specifically with intoxication. Bill C-72 will change all that by adding to the Criminal Code section 33.1, which will prohibit the accused from using intoxication as a defence for violent acts.

Before specifically speaking of the use of intoxication as a defence, I must stress that it is important to understand the elements of a criminal offence and the types of offences for which the drunk defence can be invoked.

The concept of criminal responsibility requires that all material and mental facts, the elements of fault, be proven beyond any reasonable doubt for there to have been a criminal offence.

So, on the one hand, self-induced intoxication can diminish moral responsibility for normally criminal behaviour. But, on the other hand, the person who has committed a criminal offence while in a state of self-induced intoxication should not absolved of his or her responsibility.

Since the drunk defence does not exist in the Criminal Code, it must be drawn from case law. Where intoxication was not the result of a deliberate act, the accused could always plead the drunk defence.

Involuntary intoxication may come about through fraud or the actions of another person or through the bona fide use of a drug prescribed by a doctor, the effects of which were not known to the user.

So Common Law recognizes involuntary intoxication as a defence. By maintaining this defence, Bill C-72 codifies the jurisprudence. The new section 33.1 will still allow the involuntary intoxication defence, as is now the case.

Before Daviault, the question was whether the intoxication was self-induced, whether it resulted from the fault of the accused; it could not always be used as a defence.

However, in the case of offences requiring specific intent, such as manslaughter or robbery, intoxication can be used as a defence. Courts went to great pains to distinguish between the two categories. Even today, many legal scholars are hard put to understand the distinction between the two. Yet, this distinction is very important when the defence is based on the intoxication of the accused.

In the grey area of criminal law, there is no clear dividing line between specific intent offences and general intent offences. I will give an example. According to the Criminal Code, a murder is first degree murder when, and I quote the code: "it is planned and deliberate". This is a specific intent offence. The homicide must be premeditated, the accused must have planned the ultimate consequence of his action, that is the death of the victim.

Under section 322 of the Criminal Code, for a theft to be considered a theft, it must be committed, and I quote: "with the intent" to deprive, temporarily or absolutely, the owner of the object which has been taken. Here again, one could plead intoxication as a defence because it is also a specific intent offence.

We must remember that Bill C-72 does not change in any way the distinction between a general intent offence and a specific intent offence. In other words, a person accused of severe offences such as murder, theft, robbery, extortion, breaking and entering, and torture, will still be able to plead self-induced intoxication as a defence.

Sexual assault becomes murder when it results in the death of the victim. In this case, murder being a specific intent offence, the offender will be able to use the intoxication defence. He could not have presented such a defence if his victim had not died, since the offence he would have charged with would been sexual assault causing bodily harm, which is a general intent offence.

Which leads to the following nonsense. If the aggressor hits his victim hard enough to cause her death, he can plead that he was too intoxicated to know what he was doing. If his victim recovers from her injuries, he will no longer be able to use this defence. We must eliminate the arbitrary distinction between crimes of general intent and crimes of specific intent.

This legal fiction was created solely for the purpose of allowing drunkenness or intoxication as a defence. Criminal intent should include specific moral elements for each offence. Offences should no longer be divided into two distinct categories, but classified on a gradual basis according to their seriousness.

Bill C-72 is a step in the right direction, and I am convinced that it is constitutionally valid. The preamble to the bill will make it possible for judges to interpret section 33.1 in a way consistent with the principles of a free and democratic society. It will stand the test of section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

However, the justice minister should amend the general part of the Criminal Code without delay. The rules of criminal law are archaic and many of its fundamental principles are not included in the general part, as they were elaborated by the courts.

Precedents shape the law, and lawmakers are always lagging behind the judiciary. The time has come to reverse the roles, and for lawmakers to act responsibly. Thus, the justice minister will be able to stop trying to play catch up, and Parliament will be able to decide in which direction criminal law will be heading in the coming years.

Stopping violence against women will have to be part of this new direction. I urge the justice minister not to wait for another Daviault case to happen before he finally acts.

[Criminal Code, March 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to remind you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Québec.

As the Minister of Justice mentioned earlier, it is in response to the Supreme Court ruling in the Daviault case, among others, that the minister finally tabled Bill C-72 on February 24, 1995.

As he said, that bill amends the Criminal Code and prohibits self-induced intoxication as a defence in the case of violent crimes.

Persons who become intoxicated to a degree where they are unable to control their behaviour shall assume criminal liability for their actions. Later on, I will examine in detail the criminal acts affected by this bill, because it does not apply to all criminal acts.

We are still a long way from a comprehensive reform of the Criminal Code sections which set forth the fundamental principles of criminal liability and the grounds for defence in case of accusation.

This is still the stone age as far as criminal legislation is concerned. The rules of criminal law have not really been modified over the last 100 years. It was the Supreme Court that urged the minister to take action. Without that ruling by the highest court in the country, would the Minister of Justice still be consulting the population and the various stakeholders?

Let us review the facts of the Henri Daviault case. Mr. Daviault knew the victim, since she is one his wife's friends .She was 65 years old at the time. She is partially paralysed and confined to a wheelchair.

One evening, around 6 o'clock, she asked Mr. Daviault to bring her a quart of brandy.

The victim, that is the lady, drank less than a glass and fell asleep in her wheelchair. When she woke up during the night to go to the bathroom, Mr. Daviault grabbed her wheelchair, pushed her into the bedroom, made her lie on the bed and sexually assaulted her. He left the apartment around 4 o'clock in the morning. Henri Daviault is now 73 years old; when the accusations were laid against him, he was 70.

At the first trial, he said that he had spent that day in a bar where he had drunk seven or eight bottles of beer. He remembered drinking a glass of brandy when he arrived at the victim's apartment, but did not remember what had happened between that time and the moment where he woke up naked in his victim's bed.

Mr. Justice Bernard Grenier acquitted him because he was not absolutely sure that Mr. Daviault was conscious enough to form the guilty intention, that is the intention to commit the sexual assault.

The Quebec Court of Appeal quashed Mr. Justice Grenier's decision and found Mr. Daviault guilty. On September 30, the Supreme Court of Canada decided that an intoxication defence could be made in this particular case and ordered a new trial.

So, time is short. The Bloc Quebecois has always asked that people who voluntarily intoxicate themselves and then commit violent acts be held more accountable for these acts. It is time that legislators take their responsibilities and alleviate the increasing concerns of the public as the result of the Supreme Court decision in the Daviault case. We should not delude ourselves: the Daviault case is only one example among many, all equally revolting.

The results of a national survey on assaults against female spouses, in which more than 12,300 women participated, were released in March 1994. This survey reveals troubling facts on spousal abuse. I use the word "troubling", but "revolting" would be equally appropriate. But no matter what words are used, the majority in this House will not listen.

Violence against women is disturbing, so certain people prefer to ignore it instead of looking at it. As long as it happens to someone else, people do not feel that concerned. It is absurd to think that just saying that violence is everyone's business has become a cliché, something that everybody is tired of hearing.

I am not referring only to physical violence but to psychological violence as well, which has effects just as harmful and lasting. Disparaging remarks, abusive language and insults can

be just as harmful as a slap in the face or a punch. They leave deep scars that almost never disappear.

When a woman is told by her husband that she is good for nothing, that she is too stupid to understand, that she is not a good mother and spends too much time with friends and not enough time at home, when her husband tells her that he should have left her long ago, she gradually loses all self-esteem.

Life is a nightmare. Fear replaces the feeling of well-being that every human being needs. Isolation prevents victims from blowing the whistle on their abusers and it becomes very difficult for anyone to guess that a shy smile may hide terrible secrets. Injuries to the soul are the most painful, but they are the most difficult to see.

The national survey done last year by Statistic Canada on violence against women attempted to verify the theories on the existence of a link between physical and psychological violence. About one third of the women who are, or have been, married reported that their spouse or estranged spouse had been psychologically violent against them. Former spouses are considered more violent psychologically speaking than present spouses in a proportion of 59 per cent. Although psychological violence can occur without physical violence, the two types of violence occur together in a majority of cases.

Three-quarters of the women who said they were victims of physical or sexual violence reported having also been victims of psychological violence.

Eighteen per cent of the women who are not subjected to physical abuse at the hands of their partner have said that they experience psychological abuse. Physical abuse can take many forms. The main types that are described in the survey are pushing, grabbing or shoving around one's partner. The next type is threatening to hit, slapping, throwing objects at, kicking, biting and punching one's partner. Many women have been battered, sexually assaulted, choked, struck with an object, or threatened with a firearm or a knife. Mr. Speaker, could you ask my colleague behind me to listen quietly during my remarks? I will do the same when he takes the floor.

[Human Rights, March 16th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, how can the Minister of Justice continue to delude himself that the Criminal Code, as it stands, suffices when a gynecologist, Claude Fortin, states that he had to perform surgery on nine Canadian women to treat genital mutilations and that no lawsuit was ever filed against those who committed these barbarous acts?

[Human Rights, March 16th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice. On January 18, the minister, in reply to a request made by his counterpart in Quebec, refused to explicitly prohibit female circumcision and other genital mutilation, under the pretext that the current provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada sufficed.

Why has the Minister of Justice refused to explicitly add female circumcision and other genital mutilation to the Criminal Code of Canada, as requested by Quebec's justice minister, Quebec's human rights commission and all of the experts in the field?