Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest this afternoon to hon. members and I would like to thank the members of the Liberal Party, the Bloc and, of course, our member for Windsor—Tecumseh for their thoughtful comments.
The member for Windsor—Tecumseh has had 27 years experience as a lawyer and understands the system. Therefore, I have full confidence in him when I ask him what he thinks of this or how should we do that. He always has very good answers that have been well researched.
I want to let everyone know that when we talk about crime prevention and the justice system, we are doing that from very well researched sources and very thought out policy. I want to make sure that people are aware of that.
On the other hand, I did not have a chance today to listen to any members from the Conservative Party, which is probably a good thing.
Before we came back, people in my riding were asking about this crime stuff. They wanted to know what we were doing and what was going on. I basically said that the government had postponed the session and I then explained the whole idea of prorogation. I said that it did not make any sense and that it was a waste of money. I told them that everything that had been done will need to be restarted again. I said that all the work will need to be rekindled again and all those wages for the committee will need to be paid again. As a matter of fact, the agriculture committee just went back to work this week.
This is a symptom of what has happened and the whole idea of a delay. As my colleague from Windsor--Tecumseh said, at least four bills were already in the process before the delay and two bills may even have been law today. We might have had a couple of good crime bills, which everyone had worked on together and other parties had a chance to make amendments. We could have been going forward but instead it is almost as if we are being held, and I hate to use the word, hostage.
I heard arguments today that if we do not support the bill why did we vote for it. A lot of us voted for the bill because we felt that there was no alternative. Some good amended bills, which were worked on, discussed and should have been law, are part of this package and we should not delay them any longer.
We are at the stage now where we have this omnibus bill and we are in the process of debating it. I want to make it clear that I agree fully with what my colleague from Windsor—Tecumseh said about Bill C-27, the dangerous offenders bill, which is that we tried to amend one part of it relating to dangerous offenders upon a third conviction and would place the reverse onus on the convicted person to prove that he or she should not be considered a dangerous offender. Apparently there will be challenges and problems with it but the bill will be passed and I guess we must to live with it.
I would like to share with the House an article from the Penticton Western News, which touches on my riding and on the riding of the Minister of Public Safety. The editorial, “Legislation plays on public fears”, states:
Canadian jurisprudence -- once an example of moderation -- is changing for the worse. This is the conclusion we draw from the Tackling Violent Crime Act now winding its way through the House of Commons.
I might add that this is not some kind of a left wing newspaper that is always constantly attacking government policy or the mainstream way of life.
It goes on to state:
This broad, sweeping piece of legislation threatens to inject Canada's legal DNA with alien elements that may not only be unconstitutional, but also unconscionable because they fan private fears by exaggerated public threats.
We have seen this topic discussed among members of the opposition parties today.
The article goes on to state:
While the provision to raise the age of consent to 16 is a welcome measure to bring Canada in line with the rest of the developed world, the rest of the act -- which actually includes five bills -- is nothing short of demagoguery.
Its tough language implies that we live in a crime-ridden society, when nothing could be further from the truth. National crime statistics have declined to the lowest levels in 25 years.
Other members have mentioned the United States, our neighbour to the south, which has an incarceration rate of over 700 people per 100,000 people, the highest incarceration rate in the world, followed only by Russia with something like over 400 people per 100,000, and China. The Canadian rate is something like 100 people per 100,000 people.
When I ask people whether they would feel safer in a country that has an incarceration rate of 700 per 100,000 or in a country like Canada which has an incarceration rate of 100 per 100,000, they obviously say Canada. Something is not quite right here.
The article goes on to state:
Yet, in spite of all the available evidence, [the] Prime Minister...has convinced many that our streets and communities are indeed not safe. What we need instead, he argues, are tougher penalties for criminals and more prisons to hold them for longer, if not indefinitely. Once again, this approach contradicts all the available evidence about the effectiveness of long prison sentences.
While criminals need to be punished, they also need to undergo rehabilitation, so they will not return to their old ways once they are out of prison.
Yet this government has failed has failed to support such programs, prompting complaints from guards, whom one might expect to support a larger prison system.
The article goes on to state:
But that is not the worst part of this act. It creates an unnecessary atmosphere of fear, paranoia and suspicion.
Earlier, the NDP agenda was discussed. It is based on the same philosophy as the Bloc Québécois', that is, that prevention and protection must be emphasized alongside punishment. Together, these three fundamental principles are effective at fighting crime. This bill, however, is only about punishment.
I would like to pick up on the article about the report “Unlocking America”, which my hon. colleague talked about earlier. The article reads:
Due largely to tough-on-crime policies, the Unlocking America report says, there are now eight times as many people in U.S. prisons and jails as there were in 1970.
In fact, the U.S. states with the lowest incarceration rates generally have the lowest crime rates, it says.
I asked that question earlier and I would like to ensure this is on the record. The article goes on to state:
U.S. taxpayers now spend more than $60 billion a year on corrections, says the report. “The net result is an expensive system that relies much too heavily on imprisonment, is increasingly ineffective and diverts large sums of taxpayers' money from more effective crime control strategies.”
Interestingly enough, the government promised to increase the number of officers on the police force. We have not seen those numbers so far and yet the government is willing to build more prisons with our money to put more people in jail. Something here does not make sense.
The article continues:
Much of the burden has fallen on disadvantaged minorities. Blacks and Latinos make up 60 per cent of the U.S.'s prison population. According to the report, eight per cent of American black men of working age are now behind bars. “In effect, the imprisonment binge created our own American apartheid,” it says.
My hon. colleague from Windsor—Tecumseh gave me an interesting statistic. He said that as far as dangerous offenders go in our country, although 3% of our population is made up of first nations people, in the dangerous offender category, 20% of the prisoners are from first nations communities. There is something not quite right. The danger is that if we implement a lot of the provisions of this new act, this will increase even more.
In talking about the United States, the report states:
“At current rates, one-third of all black males, one-sixth of Latino males and one in 17 white males will go to prison during their lives. Incarceration rates this high are a national tragedy.”
U.S. prisoners receive sentences that are twice as long as British prisoners, three times as long as Canadian prisoners and five-to-10 times as long as French prisoners, the report says. “Yet these countries' rates of violent crime are lower than ours.”
Since the early 1990s, U.S. crime rates have fallen sharply and are now about 40 per cent below their peak. The report says it's “tempting” to conclude that this decline occurred because incarceration rates soared during the same period.
However, this is not, according to the article, true. It states:
“Most scientific evidence suggests that there is little if any relationship between fluctuations in crime rates and incarceration rates.”
In fact, in many cases, crime rates have risen or fallen independent of imprisonment rates, it says.
What are we to conclude as we debate this bill? The first conclusion, in summary, is that we have wasted time. A lot of these bills could have been in effect now but, as I mentioned earlier, we have been held hostage, for lack of a better word. If we support part of this bill, then we must vote for the whole bill. If we see a flaw in Bill C-27 that has not been corrected, then we must leave it up to the courts to do it.
I believe I have expressed the concerns that I have and the concerns of a lot of citizens in my riding.
