Paul Crête

[Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act, October 10th, 1996]

The best.

[The Canada Post Corporation, October 8th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the minister has announced today her choice to stop the delivery of unaddressed advertising mailings, while rejecting the recommendation contained in the report regarding an increase in postal rates.

Will the minister wait after the next election to authorize a five cent increase in postal rates as recommended in the report?

[The Canada Post Corporation, October 8th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister responsible for Canada Post Corporation.

Today, the minister finally tabled the report on the review of Canada Post Corporation's mandate. She has stated the she will not privatize Canada Post Corporation so long as it has a public policy role to fulfil.

Can the minister tell us how she defines the public policy role that Canada Post Corporation has to fulfil?

[Criminal Code, September 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order please.

At the end of my speech, I introduced a motion requesting unanimous consent of the House to determine if the bill was votable.

[Criminal Code, September 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak today on Bill C-246, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sexual exploitation of children outside Canada).

I wish to recognize at the outset the generosity of the honourable member for Québec, who introduced this bill. We are dealing here with a situation involving to some extent the export of crime. Since our society does not tolerate this type of activity, which we want to prevent by passing this bill, some people will go to other countries to commit the acts in question.

My personal opinion is that this bill tries to prevent a certain form of imperialism.

This bill is characteristic of Quebec's and Canada's position in general regarding respect for children and people and it also reflects the fact that we cannot ignore the reality of such an activity, especially since as a society we are exporting it because we do not tolerate it on our own lands. There is at the moment a sort of silent acceptance, which must absolutely be dealt with.

The Government has already proposed in Bill C-27 measures comparable to the objectives of this bill. Its objective, I repeat is to amend sections 7 and 211 of the Criminal code so as to prohibit obtaining, for consideration, the sexual services of a person under the age of eighteen years outside of Canada; transporting people to common bawdy-houses outside Canada for the purpose of having sexual relations with persons under the age of eighteen years; and certain acts of procuring committed outside Canada in relation to persons under the age of eighteen years.

I wish to congratulate the member for Québec, who introduced this bill.

We can see that the government has finally decided to follow suit with Bill C-27. The two bills are quite similar on the principle but it appears that Bill C-27 needs to be reinforced because we are in an area where we have a responsibility to act, even if we are dealing with extraterritorial actions, since fundamental human rights are at stake. We are not discussing relations between corporations, as with the Helms-Burton act, we are discussing fundamental rights. It seems to us that the government bill, based on an interesting principle, similar to the one put forward by the member for Québec, also needs to be strengthened.

First of all, we must make it more specific in order to give it real legal authority to go after these people. As the bill now stands, a principle is stated, but we do not really have the means to prosecute. Furthermore, the wording should be changed to meet the needs in this regard. Let us take an example. The clause suggested in Bill C-246 states that it is about anyone who "takes, transports, directs, or offers to take, transport or direct, any other person to a common bawdy-house". These are very precise and concrete terms ensuring that every person implicated in such a criminal act may be prosecuted. They really allow for the control of such acts and show the people who could be tempted by sexual tourism that Canadians or Canadian residents cannot indulge in that kind of activity, under threat of penalty.

Now, another shortfall of the bill is precisely concerning the people targeted in it. Presently, only Canadian citizens and landed immigrants are targeted.

There are however people who live in Canada for a while and are not targeted by that kind of bill, although they may precisely be those who travel the most. I am thinking about refugees and asylum seekers. I think it would be in our interest to specify who is targeted in Bill C-27 to make sure that legal proceedings can be taken against any individual in such a position.

The bill introduced by the member for Québec contains another recommendation that is much more significant.

While the government bill treats this simply as aggravated assault, the member for Québec-I support her on this one and I invite all members to consider how wise her recommendation is-suggests that the sexual exploitation of children outside Canada be made a separate offence so that legal action could be

taken directly instead of more globally under a section of the Criminal Code dealing with several activities. It would be good to be more specific.

There is another more technical element. The government bill will make an exception for surgical procedures. According to the advice we received from doctors, it does not seem advisable to allow people to obtain, in a roundabout way, what is prohibited by law. In other words, managing to legally perform sexual mutilation as a result of a physician's broad authorization. We believe that right now nothing can justify such an exception and we think it should be removed.

Another thing, the bill provides that sexual mutilations would be allowed on a consenting adult. This seems somewhat nonsensical. Do we authorize adults to commit suicide or mutilate their own body in various ways? Why should it be allowed in this case, especially as people in a different cultural context may be subject to specific pressure? Such a thing is not desirable. This kind of action is no more acceptable when it involves an adult instead of a child, and we believe it is important for Bill C-27 to be improved in this respect.

In my view, this piece of legislation will have an impact abroad, outside Quebec and Canada, but also internally, because it reflects an important principle found in many other areas of human activity, namely the fact that we will not tolerate the export of criminal acts abroad because of the wealth of our society. Similarly, in the environmental sector, we cannot tolerate the export of economic activities that cause pollution because we do not want them at home.

In this area, this is also not acceptable, and what is proposed by the hon. member for Québec allows us to target a crime that the Quebec or Canadian society would not accept. They would not tolerate that people living in Quebec or Canada, citizens or landed immigrants in our country, or refugees or asylum seekers could commit such crimes abroad.

Therefore, the bill proposed by the hon. member for Québec is a step in the right direction. It even suggests to the government ways to improve the situation which we do not find in the government bill, and this is why I would ask unanimous consent to put this bill to a vote.

[Air Transportation, September 24th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, there seem to be strange and troubling links between the Liberal Party and the carrier Canadian. Let us consider, for example, the appointment of the Liberal Party's bagman in the West, Ross Fitzpatrick, to Canadian's board of directors, and that of the former special advisor to the Minister of Transport, Jeff Angel, to the position of government affairs officer, again with Canadian.

Does the minister not feel that these troubling facts point to an incestuous relationship between Canadian and his government?

[Criminal Code, September 23rd, 1996]

Madam Speaker, in response to my colleague's question the easy part of my answer is that we certainly do not want the Liberal wishy-washy approach. This is very clear.

They claim they want to change things, to make them better, but in the end they just make suggestions that slam the door, because they do not have the guts to clearly say what they want, because they are influenced by right-wing attitudes and the Reform's approach. To save some votes, they do something which is neither here nor there. For instance, compared to the way things were before, requiring unanimity in the jury is tantamount to slamming the door.

When you think that screening by a chief justice will be required before any application is submitted to a jury, this means that

chances of parole are almost non-existent. To exclude all those committing multiple murders is trying to close the door on something that has no basis.

The Bloc is not ready to put up a smokescreen with such purely cosmetic amendments. If the government wants to make changes, it should propose real fundamental changes; once they are on the table, we will examine them and see if they would really bring about some improvement.

As the member knows, statistics show that the present system is far more efficient than the one they are proposing. They have submitted a bill with a little window dressing in order to be able to say to people: "Look. We have done something about that issue; the results are not so important; we put a bill to the House and we hope to score some political points with that."

That is unacceptable on the part of a supposedly responsible government.

As far as confusing sentencing, I think the member missed part of my presentation. This is exactly what I explained when I said we had to make a fundamental difference between the sentence given by a judge and the evaluation of the ineligibility period, or the eligibility later on.

When time comes to decide if, after 15, 18 or 20 years, someone will be eligible for parole, the situation is entirely different from the initial one, because years have gone by and circumstances have changed. I think our position on this point is quite clear.

Finally, I think we could go further in consulting the families.

Indeed, I think that the measures proposed in the bill do not go far enough, that they should be strengthened. With what we know today about the rules that govern human activity, I think we could go much further, because we have to rise above the anecdotal and demagogy and try to draft a bill that will improve the situation.

Instead of voting for this tarted up legislation, the Bloc Quebecois would much rather keep things as they are and continue to trust the people who gave us what we have now, so that in a number of years we will have scrutinized this whole issue. No one in the Bloc ever said that we were not ready to reflect upon this. We should go back to the committee, go back to the drawing board and come back will a truly finished product.

[Criminal Code, September 23rd, 1996]

Madam Speaker, for each of the bills we vote on, we have not necessarily personally experienced the situations facing the people whom we have to make decisions on.

Except that, in the present situation, perhaps because of my age, we have had to give much consideration, in the past 20 years, to the objectives we were aiming at with the justice system. We put in place some things that are aimed at a form of rehabilitation and I believe we were pretty successful. No one challenged the statistics that were given on that. These are official statistics.

Of the 175 people eligible as of December 31, 1995, 76 applied for a reduction of their parole ineligibility period; 39 got a reduction and only one committed another crime. The crime was armed robbery, not murder.

So, this information tells us the current system is still working pretty well. There are certainly things we must look at more closely, and one of the elements that was not put forward in the reform to insure better rehabilitation is the issue of consulting the families when we decide whether or not to reduce the parole ineligibility period. We should add that, we could put it in more specifically, we could give them a more important voice in the process, and I am part of that.

It is important to understand all the psychological process that these people undergo. The evidence is there: the families of victims do not suffer any less. It is not because the murderer is going to serve 25 years that the victim's family is going to grieve less. There is no direct link in this respect.

Nobody has ever proven there was one. If we have proof, I would like to see it. I understand that, for someone in such a situation, for a victim's parents, life is very hard, but the way to alleviate their sadness is not necessarily to make sure that the individual who has committed the murder, the criminal act, is punished. It will not make them feel any better.

I believe that, as lawmakers, we have to take the whole situation into account. We have to look more into what human reactions are in such situations and act accordingly. At the moment, the way things are handled, I believe that the status quo is much better than the amendments proposed by the government or a rigid approach, which would not solve anything.

[Criminal Code, September 23rd, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I had the opportunity to speak on this bill at second reading. At the time, I raised the issue of attitude toward this bill, which is an important issue.

I think the remarks I made then are still valid, as the government did not bring in the amendments we thought it might make to the bill to enhance the Canadian system.

From the outset, I must say that this is a bill that draws on the responsibility of the law makers. It does not deal with details, but with important matters affecting human beings, the lives of human beings, people, not only criminals, but also the victims' families. It makes deciding the issue all the more difficult.

We are dealing with a bill to amend the rules for setting the parole ineligibility period for individuals sentenced, say, to 25 years in prison and who, under the existing rules, after serving 15 years, may apply for a reduced sentence and be released early.

We can either give way, as the Reform Party did, to anecdotal accounts, individual cases, the kind of stuff that makes the first page of newspapers. Our first reaction may be to say: "The system should be much more repressive, to give people who commit such heinous crimes no chance of ever getting out of prison".

That is the first attitude, the first reaction we may have, but I think that, as law makers, we have a duty to look further, beyond this first reaction. We must go and see what the reality is for the people in these situations.

As of December 31, 1995, 175 prisoners were eligible for this program. Of these, 76-already fewer than half-had applied for a reduction in their number of years of imprisonment without eligibility for parole.

Of these 76 cases, 39 were granted a reduction. And at December 31, 1995, out of this total, there was only one repeat offence, a case of armed robbery. This was not a repeat offence involving assassination or murder, but armed robbery.

Therefore, overall-those listening to us know this-there is no perfect system that would completely eliminate errors. In all human endeavour, there are forms of error. What we must do is evaluate whether the system now in place has given and continues to give satisfactory results, and then find ways to improve it.

I think the situation needs to be looked at very carefully. In this regard, the Minister of Justice perhaps gave in too quickly to representations that I would call a bit more election minded. We are seeing the Reform Party's relentless pursuit of this issue. The justice minister, perhaps knowing that an election was coming up, gave in a little too quickly. And since he knows that the system is working reasonably well, he said: "We will table a bill with amendments that are neither fish nor fowl and that will not really improve the situation".

Therefore, rather than adopting this attitude and resorting to a litany of examples, as the Reform Party is doing, or to simply try to gloss over the situation, as the bill does, I think that we must look further for the attitudes to adopt and the positions to take.

First, we must ask ourselves whether our goal is to punish these people, who are in prison for prolonged periods, some up to 25 years. Is our goal to rehabilitate them? Is our goal to ensure society's safety? In the end, are we not trying to do all these things? And must we not try to find a satisfactory balance?

Let us remember how it works at the present time. Under the act, when someone applies-as we know, 76 of the 175 eligible have applied-he appears before a jury, 8 out of 12 of whom must agree. These jurors are members of society who have agreed to decide, based on their abilities and on the information before them, whether the person should benefit from a shorter ineligibility period than the one originally set. In other words, the person could be paroled at an earlier time than originally set out, at the time of sentencing.

Let us not forget that this process comes into play 10, 12, 14, 16 or 18 years after the sentence was handed down. A distinction must be made between the time a person was sentenced and the time his ineligibility is reviewed. These are two very different issues. To be sure, there are times when a person changes his behaviour to the point where he could reintegrate society. Statistics tell us that this is often the case.

However, under the current system, victims, who are an important factor in the equation, do not have enough of a say in the process. The relatives of victims live a very difficult situation. When the victim is a young person, a brother or a sister, the grief is such that the survivors look for a way to alleviate it. One such way is to think that this unfair, terrible and unacceptable death was caused by another person and it would not be humanly correct to let this person benefit from a situation where he would not be made to realize the seriousness of his action.

We agree that there should be greater representation of the families of victims. This could be an option for the future, one that should have been examined more thoroughly and that should have been included in this bill.

The minister now wants a unanimous decision. This means that not 8 out of 12 but 12 out of 12 jury members will have to agree to reduce the ineligibility period. This means that everyone on the jury must keep an open mind, that no one must decide a given application can never be approved on principle. Otherwise, the bill would, perhaps not hypocritically but somewhat artificially, close all the doors, eliminate any possibility of rehabilitation, without actually using the word.

On this point, I think the minister is hiding behind a smoke screen. That is one of the reasons why we cannot support the bill as it now stands, because the government maintains that the decision should be approved not by 8 out of 12 but by 12 out of 12 jury members. Could a compromise have been reached? Maybe, but the government has made no move to that effect.

The other criterion is the link to multiple murders. Someone held responsible for the murder of more than one person would not be eligible. I do not think there is a causal link. Is a double murder more serious than a single one? Are there not other elements that must be considered, such as the circumstances surrounding the case, that are as important as the number of people killed if not more so?

It is not an easy situation. It is not easy to evaluate. We have to study the present system, and ask ourselves whether this system is working as it should, whether there are improvements to be made and whether there is anything that should be studied a little more in depth.

We made representations. We tabled them in the House. However, the government did not accept any amendments. I think this is one area where we should move carefully. We have to make sure that the decisions we make represent a strong consensus within society. These are things which have a bearing on us as human beings.

In this regard, I object to the statement by the Reform Party, which said a while ago: "If you were in such a situation, if a member of your own family had been killed-"

I think this kind of attitude is very dangerous. We are not in such a situation, we are legislators, in a Parliament, who have to make decisions for the society as a whole.

Here is another example: If I do not keep to the speed limit on the highway, I may be highly indignant at the consequences, such as being arrested or the like, but it does not necessarily mean that I am right.

In the case of murders, where relatives of the victims are emotionally deeply wounded, it is very difficult to ask people in that situation to be objective. I do not think it is up to them to determine what the sentence should be. It is up to us as legislators to take on our responsibilities and evaluate the situation.

When judgment is passed, when a person is found guilty of a murder and is therefore a criminal, we have to determine, then, the sort of person involved and the kind of sentence we are going to impose, and it is normally 25 years. But 10, 12, 14 or 15 years later we have to review what happened and current circumstances, taking into account the behaviour of the person in jail.

I believe we must also take into consideration the opinion of the family and find a way to allow for the best possible judgment in as many instances as possible. In this area, the present system has produced some interesting results. It is true enough that there will always be crimes which grab the headlines and which we will find abhorrent. Yet I think we should also-and I believe it is an obligation for the legislator-go and look at all the other cases. If among the 39 reductions of the ineligibility period there is only one case of recidivism, it means that 38 of these people did not re-offend.

That means that a number of these people are back on the streets and do not constitute a security risk in our society. We have managed to reach one of our goals I just mentioned, securing rehabilitation without endangering society. We have to make sure our actions do just that.

Should we have simply referred this bill back to committee to hear more experts, study various cases again, evaluate this situation once more and look for some compromise? Should we have amended the bill so that families can be heard when a review of parole ineligibility is requested? Should we have raised the ratio of jurors from 8 to 9 or 10 out of 12? Is this something we should have looked at?

These are important aspects which the government has refused to consider, so that we are now heading for a dead end. The government knows the present system gives fairly good results, but it has to deal with electoral pressures. Reform members have been talking about petitions with thousands of signatures asking for harsher treatment of criminals.

But the responsibility of government members in this area is not to give in to voter pressure, but to ensure that the systems they set up are effective and will properly meet the objectives of our criminal justice system.

It is true that individuals must be very conscious of the consequences of their actions and that punishment must be proportionate to the offence so they understand the consequences and know what they are exposing themselves to, but, we must also ask ourselves if we are able to rehabilitate some of the individuals we put in jail and if we must keep in jail those we cannot rehabilitate because they pose a threat to society.

I think that, as legislators, we have that kind of responsibility, and the bill before us does not improve in any way on the current situation. If we adopt this bill, we will not be in a position to say, five or ten years from now, that we improved the possibility of rehabilitation and our society a safer place.

We consider the bill to be incomplete and in need of more fine tuning, that is why the Bloc Quebecois cannot vote for it unless the government amends it in a way that brings it more in line with the objectives set at the beginning of the process. The government should also take this opportunity to study the whole question of violence in our society to be able to avoid simplistic solutions, because the solutions put forward by the Reform Party will not solve the problem and will not reduce criminality.

There will not be fewer murders because people will not have the possibility of getting a reduction of their parole ineligibility period. This is not the way things are decided at the time the crime is committed. As legislators, I think we have to review this issue, to refine it or, if absolutely necessary, to maintain the current legislation, which still has given interesting results, and introduce new legislation only when we have been able to put on the table solutions that will really improve the situation. That is why the Bloc members will vote against the bill.

[Committees Of The House, September 23rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, while I listened to the speech made by the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot the same question kept coming to my mind and I would like him to elaborate on this: Why this diversion? In politics, when one wants to turn attention away from something, one looks for something that will do precisely that. But this is going a bit far.

Why go so far as to call into question an institution such as the Auditor General of Canada? The auditor general is not appointed by the opposition or by lobbyists, but by Parliament as a whole to audit the work of the government. Consequently, he has the support of both the opposition and the government. The auditor general was appointed by this Parliament and this gives him an authority that usually puts him above partisan opinions. But in this particular case, the Liberals sitting on the committee decided to attack that institution.

There must be a reason for that. I think it is basically because the government was just confronted with the fact that it does not comply with the principles of equity and fairness when it comes to tax expenditures. For three years now, the official opposition has been telling the government that an in-depth review is in order. A technical committee was set up. We recommended that the exercise be of a public nature and that a democratic debate take place on the issue, but this was not done.

Now, the government has just been caught with its pants down. To get out of having to explain how someone can send $2 billion out of the country tax-free at a time when the government tells us it needs all the money it can get its hands on, it tried to create a diversion.

I have two questions to put to the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot. First, is this diversion justified and, second, has the loophole created by this interpretation been plugged? The government has known about this situation for a few months. Canadian citizens who owe $50, $100 or $200 often have to write the government to defend themselves at a cost that is higher than the amount claimed. Can these people be assured today that the loophole that was created has been closed and that the current government has resolved the ineffectiveness of its predecessor?