Brian Murphy

[Business of Supply, February 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the motion before the House. I will concentrate on the egregious cut and elimination on human rights and justice issues.

In particular, I would like to start with the elimination of the court challenges program.

I am from Moncton, New Brunswick. It is the cradle of Acadia and its capital. We have many Acadians who speak French. It is very important to emphasize that Acadians know what it is like to be a minority.

Of all the obligations of members of parliament, the most important and vital is to protect human rights, civil rights, the rights of individuals across the country. Throughout Canada we have minorities with religious and language rights.

Moncton, New Brunswick has a long history of fighting for the minority rights of Acadians.

The story really starts in the 1700s when the Acadian people settled most of the parts of what is now New Brunswick and what was then Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia was split into two parts, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with New Brunswick being the better part, seeing no members from Nova Scotia near me.

What happened is that the Acadian population in 1755 was put to an egregious deportation in the time of colonial wars, which we will not get into, but essentially they were from that time forward treated as second class citizens in the region.

It was a long time from 1755 to 1960 but in 1960 the first French Acadian premier of a province that is 33.5% bilingual, or French and Acadian in population, was elected. His name was Louis J. Robichaud and he instituted a program of equal opportunity.

I will paint a picture of New Brunswick in the 1960s. French, a language spoken by one-third of the population, 40% in the city of Moncton, was not spoken at municipal hall meetings nor spoken in the provincial government. This was long before Pierre Trudeau's visionary Official Languages Act and, I might add, in a brief moment of non-partisanship, long before the vision of Progressive Conservative Premier Richard Hatfield of New Brunswick who brought forward the official languages act at the provincial level in the 1980s. It also was long before 2002 when the city of Moncton, where the largest number of Acadians live in the province in one place, became officially bilingual. This is a continuum from 1755 to today.

What is important to remember is in New Brunswick in the time that I grew up, notwithstanding the great numbers of population who were French speaking Acadians, they had very few schools. They were fighting to keep their own hospitals. I will keep it at schools and hospitals because the other pillar I believe of social justice requires that we look at the judicial system.

The judicial system, because it was more federally regulated than the other two pillars that I wish to delve into, was very much ahead of its time with respect to according linguistic rights to the French speaking minority.

In the realm of schools let me paint the picture that many French speaking Acadians in New Brunswick were told. They were told that they would not go to school but that they would learn a trade. The schools in the area of Moncton, in southeastern New Brunswick and in other parts of New Brunswick did not have sufficient spaces for francophones until equal opportunity and Louis J. Robichaud.

Hospital care was not what it should have been either. It was primarily religious in nature. It eschewed public funding and did not get the public funding it deserved. With time and, I will say, with the progressive measures of people like Richard Hatfield, following on Frank McKenna as well, measures were adopted to certainly visit égalité dans ce secteur.

This drives me to the main point of how the cuts with respect to linguistic minorities in this country are absolutely shameful. The Conservative government should be ashamed of turning the clock back on the advances that have been made over time, particularly with respect to minority rights. With that I am speaking about the wholesale elimination of the court challenges program.

It can be asked, “Isn't that just a fund”, as the Conservative hyperbole would lead us to believe, “that funds lawyers to fight cases and otherwise increase their income?” No, it is not. I will give two good examples of what the fund is about.

First, it helped to ensure the survival of Montfort hospital in an area where the minority population required health care. This program provided funding for the new school L'Odyssée, which will open its doors in Moncton, New Brunswick.

These are but two examples that I hope bring home to the Conservatives the importance of the court challenges program.

The Montfort Hospital we do not have to speak about in great detail. It was a very well publicized case with the Mike Harris government. There are vestiges of the Mike Harris legacy in this House and in the government. We see it with the discussions and in the cuts that are made with respect to how government operates today. It is very much like Mike Harris in Ontario.

I will not go into a complete brief of that. There is not the time, but there is time to explain that the Mike Harris government and many of the people who represent the Ottawa region in this House for the other side were all in favour of closing a hospital that served the needs of a French-speaking minority in this region. That was unacceptable.

The challenge was put under the court challenges program and it was won, legally and then politically. That is an important process to remember. Often the political battle is won after the legal battle is won. This may be another non-partisan moment where I say all governments are going to comply with the law, which is why we are so confident on this side that Kyoto will be implemented by the government because it will obey the law. The law told the provincial government of Ontario at the time that it must keep the Montfort Hospital open and it did.

Let me explain the other case that is real and has a connection to the elimination of the court challenges program.

A group of people in Moncton, New Brunswick decided, because of their growing numbers, that they deserved a school for their school-aged children, grades one to nine, in Moncton. They filed the brief against the provincial government. They started the action. The action was never pursued because when it was publicized and a copy was sent to the provincial government of the day, it agreed to build the school.

This program does not challenge the federal government, as the former minister of justice suggests. It challenges other levels of government that have less open laws toward minorities, and it should have been kept. It is there to protect people who cannot protect themselves. It is there to encourage municipalities, boards, agencies and commissions, and even provincial governments, to do the right thing.

These are two cases that exemplify the reason why the elimination of the court challenges program is an unacceptable measure. It shows the meanness, the narrowness, and the unconstitutional posture of the government. It shows that it is just Mike Harris writ large, on the blanket of this country, and right-thinking Canadians will not stand for it.

It is why I am very proud that our leader and other members of this chamber have risen today and said this is enough. There is no vision that includes everyone in Canada on that side. We will take the time it takes in this House to show to Canadians that the vision from that government is not a vision that will sustain a country. It may sustain pockets of people who think like it does, but it does not sustain a patchwork of Canadians who deserve equality rights for minorities and a better country in the future.

[National Strategy for the Treatment of Autism Act, February 14th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to say a few words on Bill C-304, An Act to provide for the development of a national strategy for the treatment of autism and to amend the Canada Health Act.

First, I would like to congratulate the hon. member for Charlottetown for the work done in this House on this bill.

Bill C-304 is a very important bill, as we can see from the debate on it, although a private member's bill may well work toward defining and differentiating different parties views of who will be left behind and who will not.

I am very pleased to rise and offer my support to Bill C-304, as it provides a national strategy, in law, for the treatment of autism.

The bill incorporates three main provision.

First, we are asking the Minister of Health to convene a conference involving the ten provincial and territorial health ministers to discuss the important issue and begin crafting a national strategy for the treatment of autism.

Second, we are asking the Minister of Health to table a formal strategy for the treatment of autism before the end of 2007.

Third, the bill asks that the Canada Health Act be amended to include applied behaviour analysis, ABA, and intensive behavioural intervention, IBI, as medically necessary for required services.

These measures are considered provisions designed to address a very real health problem in our country, one that affects thousands of Canadian families, no less detrimental than the diagnosis of terminal cancer or any other maladies that affect Canadians in general.

Let me tell members about a real life situation in my province of New Brunswick. I know a couple who have three children. They are seven, five and three years old. The first two of these children were diagnosed with autism. One of the children did not speak until he was three and a half years old. He had been very aggressive and he had many odd self-stimulatory behaviours. The parents did not know how to cope with the problem. He was described by a pediatric neurologist as severely autistic. The second child appeared to be less severely autistic, but she did not learn to speak until she was three years old, did not interact with her peers and seemed withdrawn from the outside world.

When the diagnosis was made some time ago, the discussion centred around appropriate treatment. Unfortunately, ABA was just in its infancy with respect to recommended treatment in the province of New Brunswick. There was no funding available and no professional help available.

These two very fine people, Charlotte and Luigi Rocca, read books. She retired from her law practice and devoted herself to her two autistic children. Through ABA and the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years, the results are astounding. These two children, to use one example of their achievements, at the grade two level lead the class now in their reading skills in English. They are involved in soccer and tae kwan do, not exactly sports that require retreat from the madding crowd around us. They are two very well developed, normal children. However, this did not happen with the help of the New Brunswick medical care system or the Canadian national Health Act.

ASD is a complex of potentially devastating problem for parents such as the Roccas. It affects people's ability to communicate, form relationships and interact with their environment. Within the spectrum there are specific diagnoses: pervasive development disorders, Rett syndrome, Asperger syndrome and child development disorder.

Symptoms can vary widely. Some who suffer from ASD are capable of leading normal, healthy, happy, productive lives. Many more, however, require extensive treatment to mitigate or compensate for unresponsive, uncommunicative and sometimes violent and self-destructive behaviour.

After a diagnosis, if children receive treatment early enough, typically before the age of six, and intensively enough, typically 30 to 40 hours per week, studies have shown that up to 50% can recover to the point of being indistinguishable from their peers. Even those who do not recover completely can show great improvement.

The debate is over. ABA and IBI treatments work. Both are designed to teach autism sufferers how to function in the world. When they are employed, the results can be dramatic and encouraging.

Until recently our understanding of both the incidence and special costs of autism was fairly primitive. However, the most recent, reliable information suggests that as many as one in 167 Canadian children suffer from some form of ASD.

We also know there is no cure and that there are financial burdens borne by families mostly in this country. The treatments can be as high as $60,000 a year. It is an extraordinary load to ask average Canadian parents who are victimized by this disorder to carry for even a short period of time, but the evidence is clear that the money spent on the treatment is effective and we can do something about it by making it a national health question. What can parliamentarians do to help lighten the load? They can do as the hon. member for Charlottetown has done in proposing this bill.

The courts have already rejected the argument that governments share a responsibility to treat autism and there are other constitutional issues to consider. How far should the federal government go on a health issue that properly falls within provincial jurisdiction? This has been referred to by my colleagues. However, the member for Charlottetown and I believe that the House has a moral responsibility to do everything it can. Make no mistake, we can do a lot. The Canada Health Act comes from Parliament.

Currently, medicare does not provide for the treatment of autism. Without sufficient public health care coverage, families will continue to mortgage their homes, extend their lines of credit or even bankrupt themselves as they desperately search for ways to pay for the cost of treatment. Many who run out of options will simply have no choice but to select treatment on the basis of affordability rather than clinical need.

How is that different than an American system of medical care delivery? How is it different to say that if parents have money they can get ABA or IBI, the treatment necessary to make their children performing members and integrated into society. The treatment works. It is very expensive and it should be afforded under any national health care scheme.

The act is not asking that much. It is asking, first, that the Minister of Health convene his counterparts, the ministers of health throughout the provinces and territories. In my province of New Brunswick the minister of health is very open to this suggestion.

The second suggests that the Minister of Health, who may be well on the road to doing this, posits and strategizes a national strategy to combat autism. While this may have been done outside the confines of this place, we think the bill before us, presented by the hon. member for Charlottetown, is the appropriate way to ensure that it is done in a proper manner.

It is not fair, equal or just. Protecting all of the citizens of Canada from crippling illnesses that financially burden families unfairly and end up in treatment of maladies different throughout the provinces and different according to one's means could not have been the vision of Tommy Douglas. This could not have been the vision of those who have modified the health acts across this country over the last 40 years.

Beyond this, there is a big difference in the availability of treatment across Canadian provinces, as we have just indicated. In Alberta, for example, children have full access. In Ontario, kids have access up to a certain age. In other provinces, such as in my province of New Brunswick, it is simply not available except perhaps through means tested social services or welfare programs.

Again I ask you, Mr. Speaker, and all members of the House: Is that fair, particularly when we have the Canada Health Act to help us develop new policies and programs that will benefit our most vulnerable citizens? Clearly, we must acknowledge that provincial health care plans are just that, provincial. We must respect the division of powers between federal and provincial levels of government, but that does not mean that we should abrogate our responsibility as parliamentarians within the constitutional framework.

Again, Bill C-304 is a noble effort to deliver a national health care strategy for the treatment of autism and to treat all Canadians afflicted by this in a fair and equal manner.

[Criminal Code, February 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Windsor—Tecumseh is incredibly right when he says that none of the Conservative bills have come before us with the attendant packages of what they will cost.

In fact, we could extrapolate. The hon. member from the NDP is indeed experienced enough, and smart enough for sure, to extrapolate the costs if he knew how many more people would be affected by the bail provisions. Bill C-35 comes with no package, information or background, which suggests how many more people will be denied bail by the reverse onus.

Surely responsible government means that one does the studies first and then the costing, and the bill is brought in and then is referred to committee. The way the Conservatives do things is that they write the bill on the back of a napkin, they rush down to the CTV news centre, they get Mr. Duffy to interview them on how tough they are, and then they throw the bill to a committee whose members who may not understand all the ramifications of the bill. They have no intention of backing up these bills with the resources. That is some way to run a justice system.

[Criminal Code, February 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question about firearms. It is appropriate to be speaking about the gun registry just before question period. I would like to add that our side supports gun control.

We think it is very important to regulate handguns and guns of all sorts. We think it is disgusting, frankly, that the Conservative government would bring in a bill, and I am speaking of Bill C-10, that excludes crimes committed with long guns and includes crimes done with restricted weapons.

In other words, a person could hold up someone and hurt them with a handgun in a 7-Eleven in Moncton, New Brunswick or Red Deer, Alberta and be subject to mandatory minimums of three, five and ten years, as the current legislation has proposed, but if the person went into the same store with a shotgun and did the same thing, the person would not be caught by that same provision. I ask members to tell me why that makes sense.

The hon. member asked questions about the long gun registry, but really he asked questions about the safety of our communities. The question goes back to him and to the members of the government, what are we going to do about controlling guns? Bill C-35 will not have much effect in getting guns off the street.

The remonstrances of the member for Wild Rose will do nothing to get guns off the streets and away from the borders. The minister said nothing about the money backing up Bill C-35, Bill C-10, Bill C-9 and other justice bills that will get guns away from the people who are using them.

We need to address that question in Parliament. When is the program coming? It is so close to question period that I wish the Prime Minister were here so I could ask him this question: what are we going to do to get guns off our streets?

[Criminal Code, February 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his impassioned reply. I sit with him on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. I wonder why his government is shying away from him in sending this bill to a legislative committee and not having him look at it. I wonder why his government and his minister introduced their own omnibus justice bill. It is on the order paper.

To deal with the hon. member's serious discussion of Bill C-35, he will know that anything that toughens the laws is a good thing from his perspective, but perhaps what he does not listen to, while I know he respects all members on the committee, is that in order for laws to work they have to pass the test of the charter.

We have a charter. It is here and we have to deal with it. It is a wonderful institution. It enshrined the right of all Canadians to basic human and legal rights. We have it and it must be met. We cannot bring in laws just because we want to be on the news or drive around a ranch and tell people we are bringing in a bill. This is about whether the law works.

I take some umbrage at any suggestion that any member of the House in any party is against good law making our communities safer. This side, that side and every side wants good laws in this country and wants safer communities. It is a shame that the member, with his experience, would insult all members of the House on their integrity and desire to have a safe Canada.

[Criminal Code, February 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak here today to Bill C-35, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (reverse onus in bail hearings for firearm-related offences).

Before going any further, I feel it is very important to understand what Bill C-35 hopes to achieve, particularly the version of the bill before us today in the House.

Bill C-35 proposes changes to the bail provisions of the Criminal Code and would provide a reverse onus if an accused is charged with any of the following crimes, which are grouped into, relatively speaking, four groups of offences.

The first group comprises eight serious offences committed with a firearm: attempted murder, robbery, discharging a firearm with intent, aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon, kidnapping, hostage taking and extortion.

The second group of offences are those that are indictable, involving firearms or regulated weapons if committed while under a weapons prohibition order. The minister spoke at some length about that second part but the bill comprises various types of offences.

Another group of offences is firearm trafficking, possession for the purpose of trafficking and firearm smuggling.

Again, we would like to appear at the committee and the legislative committee, should I be on it, and ask the government what is being done to stop the trafficking and importation of firearms in this country.

These are all serious offences. Individuals accused of any of these crimes must be dealt with, with the greatest care, to ensure these potentially dangerous individuals do not cause any more harm to society. I think everyone in this House would agree with that principle. I see that the member for Wild Rose would agree with this comment.

We must also remember that in Canada everyone is innocent until proven guilty. These rights, such as the presumption of innocence and the right not to be denied bail without just cause in section 11(d) of the charter, are firmly entrenched in our Constitution. Although our system presumes the accused is innocent pending trial, there are reasons in our community to deny bail. This can be done to ensure, under the three grounds of bail, that society remains safe.

The primary ground for denying bail is clearly the flight risk. Will the accused leave the jurisdiction? The secondary ground deals with the protection of the public. The third, although somewhat ambiguous but very much a part of our Criminal Code for some time, is whether the bail order would maintain confidence in the administration of justice. That is the tertiary ground and it is the one we should be the most concerned about with respect to the perception in the public of how well their justice system works.

As a footnote I might add that the government, although not with this bill, is doing a great disservice to our communities, cities, towns, villages and rural areas in their feelings of security. It is doing much to scaremonger and make Canadians very fearful of situations they need not be fearful of.

We in this House should stand up as bastions, as protectors of the Criminal Code and the criminal justice system, and tell Canadians that the Criminal Code of Canada does work, that the justice system as administered in Canada does work and that we are a safe country.

Under Bill C-35, if an accused is charged with an indictable offence committed while already released on another indictable offence charge, if the person fails to appear in court or breaches a release of a condition, if that person is accused of being a member of an organized crime or terrorism unit or other such grave offences, including drug trafficking and smuggling, or if the accused is not an ordinary resident of Canada, then the onus already shifts. We see in the Criminal Code, as interpreted in the case of the Attorney General of Quebec v. Edwin Pearson, that the Supreme Court of Canada has already dealt with the reverse onus provisions as they existed in the Criminal Code for some time by majority decision in 1992.

I would hope no one would leave this place and talk to the public, the press or their constituents and say that this is new law. This is not new law. This is an extension of existing law written in the code. I will be non-partisan here and say that the Criminal Code was created by both Conservative and Liberal governments and that it was a Conservative prime minister who wrote it. It is the best legislation Conservatives have ever brought in. It is from the 19th century and that explains a lot about the evolution of Conservative legislative prowess.

Nevertheless, these extensions are very timely and, if they are pinpointed correctly, I have no doubt that the legislative committee will use its wisdom in refining the bill and asking the questions that need to be asked.

It is good to see Conservative governments once again following the Liberal pedigree of good criminal law.

Since the last election, the Conservative government has been all about making Canada a safer place. It is trying to convince Canadians that our towns, villages and cities are full of dangerous gangs and criminals, roaming the streets at night, armed to the teeth, ready to shoot at everything that moves. This is simply not the reality.

In fact, crime rates have gone down in Canada over the years. Of course, there is still much work to be done and nothing is perfect. However, contrary to the image that the Conservative government is trying to project, Canada is not like a wild west town where chaos reigns supreme.

The Conservative government also seems to think all criminals pending trial are running loose in our communities, when the actual numbers from Statistics Canada say otherwise. There were 125,871, maybe more since this date in 2004, Canadians imprisoned and awaiting trial. Close to 84,000 were behind bars serving sentences. There were significant numbers of people, and more now, awaiting trial and not on bail, as perhaps the new stories would counter-indicate. The bail system works. It needs to be tweaked. The bill will go to committee and it will be discussed in the fullness of time.

The government has been trying to convince Canadians that it is hard at work ending crime and violence, but the facts speak otherwise. It has a plethora of justice bills before committees. Instead of doing omnibus reform and criminal bills, several at a time, it has chosen to do probably 20 by the time it is finished, because that is 20 news cycles, 20 news stories.

We cannot find one measure aimed in the justice bill package at preventing criminality. There is no bill before the House or before a committee that talks specifically about preventing criminality and violence.

We have also seen harsher sentences. I only need draw the attention of the House to the fact that a month ago, Judge Sylvio Savoie, in Moncton's Provincial Court, gave a repeat drunk driving offender five years, when the prosecution asked for four. Those stories, the stories of when judges use their discretion to impose harder sentences than were called for, need to be told, and they are out there. We need to balance the story.

We have seen a bunch of showboat legislation. In the new spirit of cooperation, I think the Conservatives have finally come to realize that they must put bills through committees that will pass. It is a minority Parliament. There must be compromise. In light of that sense and that new desire from the other sides with respect to justice bills, that it is too important to play politics, I think this bill can be saved.

The bill does need to be explained in terms of public perception, that it will not cure everything and that not everybody who is accused of a crime will be denied bail. There will still be the three grounds. There will be a procedural reversal of onus, which I think will be upheld by R. v. Pearson and R. v. Hall. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to ask the justice minister. Nor did I hear from him ab initio whether he had received an opinion from the attorney general's department on the constitutionality of this legislation.

It is not a wild goose chase. When the Supreme Court of Canada had a split decision in 1992, on whether 11(d), the right to a fair hearing and the right to bail, was constitutional, and it was not a unanimous opinion, followed up later by R. v. Hall on the question of increased reverse onus on the procedural aspect of bail hearings, there is a good question as to whether this is constitutional. I hope the minister will be able to answer the question from our critic, the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, or in other venues as to the constitutionality of that legislation.

We need to know and Canadians need to know, once again, that legislation proposed by Conservatives is more than just a repeat of the press release, which went on the night before the bill was tabled. We need to know whether the bill has the merit and the substance which is required to stand the test of challenge in our courts.

During the press conference last November 23 in Toronto, the Prime Minister of Canada said, in referring to Toronto, that almost 1,000 crimes involving firearms or restricted weapons had been committed so far that year. I cannot do anything else but wonder how come so many weapons are out there, and I think that hon. members have asked the minister the right questions. What is being done to clamp down on the trafficking and importation of guns in our country?

The Conservatives can blather on all they want about how horrible the long gun registry was, but what is the alternative? What are they doing about getting those guns off the streets, seizing them at the borders and getting them out of circulation? As much as I think Bill C-35 is a good bill in principle, it will not take the guns out of the hands of the people bringing guns into the country.

As much as I think Bill C-35 is a good bill in principle, it will not take the guns out of the hands of the people bringing guns into the country. By and large, and I think it is a non-partisan issue, people who traffic in guns are not deterred by new legislation brought in by the Canadian Parliament. Many of the guns on the streets of our cities come from international gun smugglers. Therefore, the reverse onus on bail provisions in Bill C-35 seem to throw out a real challenge as to how the cause and effect of the bill introduced and the reduction of firearms in general will result. We need to ask these questions.

What is the government doing with respect to the gun licenses for life approach of the Minister of Public Safety? Chief Blair gave very telling testimony before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in Toronto. He said that with our existing laws, essentially the Criminal Code of Canada, and with the appropriate budget resources, he and his force were very successful in getting guns off the streets in certain parts of Toronto.

The question also becomes this. Where are the resources that will go to complement the Conservative justice agenda. Everything that is being proposed will cost money. Where is the money? Where is the plan with each bill and the costing thereon? These are good questions that will be put to the minister and others at committee level.

Harsher punishments and reverse onus in bail hearings, as Bill C-35 proposes, are good measures. We support these measures, but they will not help prevent crime or make Canada and our communities any safer over the long term.

As legislators, we have a responsibility to ask ourselves how we can prevent crime. Unfortunately, many questions are left without clear answers when we analyze Bill C-35. Would the money of Canadians be better spent on prevention, putting more police officers on the street? For example, would hiring more police officers in strategic locations be more effective than putting more people in jail and denying them their bail?

I will draw to the attention of the House the article in The Globe and Mail on January 24 by Bruce McMeekin. It is very important to consider that article is generally in favour of Bill C-35 and that perhaps the public would think the bill would have prevented some of the worst cases of slayings and gun crime in our history.

When we talk about the Boxing Day incident in Toronto and other events in that area, Bill C-35 would not necessarily have prevented those crimes. The existing bail provisions might have prevented them had the court hearing gone the other way.

What is important to remember is that the accused will still have an opportunity to get bail. Bail will still be awarded even if a person is accused for a second time for one of the listed crimes. The shifting of the procedural onus relates only to his or her ability to be free or not free pending the trial. It has nothing to do with guilt or innocence.

Under the existing reverse onus provisions, the standard of proof is on a balance of probabilities. People will still be able, with legal representation, to get bail, and bail might not have been given in previous situations.

We support the bill going to the legislative committee. There are many questions to be asked. Overall, Parliamentarians owe it through their oath of office in this place and to Canadians in general to be fair in representing how well our justice system works and that the exceptions to the rule are not the rule. The exceptions to the rule are egregious. When we have serious crimes that occur to people we know, people related to us, we take it very seriously and it is very bad, but it does not mean that we throw out the baby with the bathwater. It does not mean that all that went before was useless in combatting crime.

When will someone stand from the other side and say that the criminal justice system works in many regards? When will someone say that by tinkering with bail provisions and by referring this to the committee, we by no means support it in whole, we have many questions about this legislation? When will a member from the other side and when will the Minister of Justice stand and say that they support the good work done in the criminal justice system by all the players, the Crown prosecutors, the parole officers, the judges most who have been under constant attack by the government? When will the government stand and say we have a safe community?

We need to work on making it more secure and safe. I suspect 100 years ago parliamentarians were also trying to do that when they enacted revisions to the Criminal Code. No one in this place wants to have weaker laws with unsafe communities.

Bill C-35 will go to the legislative committee no doubt and it will receive a rough ride on many fronts. There are many loopholes with respect to the considerations to be given to the bill.

In short, we are pleased to comment on the bill, but there will be many questions at the committee. I hope the minister, the parliamentary secretary and the members of that legislative committee will be ready for them.

[Criminal Code, February 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate on Bill C-376. I would like to thank and congratulate the hon. member for Kelowna—Lake Country for his bill and his passion for this subject.

I also would like to congratulate the member for Kelowna—Lake Country for being very proud of his heritage and, I would say, his cultural icon, which is what I would call Napa North in the Okanagan, Osoyoos and other winemakers in the area who truly make the Okanagan a national treasure.

If I may move from championing the delicate and notable passion for spirits and wine to the abhorrence of the abuse of alcohol in speaking about Bill C-376, I do so now by way of background.

This past week, a provincial court judge, Judge Sylvio Savoie, rendered a decision giving a repeat drunk driver in my jurisdiction of Moncton a sentence of five years in prison when the prosecuting team only asked for four. This case is illustrative of what the problem with impaired driving is. We have a problem of repeat offenders, people who are not sensible, who do not seem to react to the penalties and who continue to drink and drive.

Last year a couple was killed on Salisbury Road outside of Moncton because of the actions of a drunk driver travelling in the opposite direction who had a previous conviction under the laws of Canada for impaired driving and who had been seen before the accident wavering in the traffic but who was not caught in time to save the destruction of this family. This couple had two children who are now orphans.

We have a problem of resources of policing and detection of people who are drunk and driving. We have a problem generally, therefore, of deterrence. The question that remains about Bill C-376 is whether this very well intended law will be effective in deterring drivers from getting behind the wheel drunk and whether it will be effective in keeping our communities safe.

In addition to lauding the efforts of the hon. member, I want to laud the efforts of MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which, in addition to initiatives such as this, has suggested over the years more vigilance in the detection of impaired drivers, more resources for policing so the detection can take place, and certain advanced suggestions, such as installing ignition controls for those who are repeat offenders in the realm of impaired driving for people whose BAC, blood alcohol limits, have been elevated before as found in the courts of law.

We do have some concerns with the bill. If the bill is presented to the justice committee we hope the hon. member will take some counsel, not only from the committee but perhaps from the speeches in the Commons this evening and at another time, and perhaps listen to some advice with respect to how to make the bill passable, effective and perhaps even better so that his objectives can be met.

One of the suggestions that seems very clear to us is that the criminalization of the activity has some enduring effects that may go beyond even his intention of punishing the drivers who are driving impaired and, more important, deterring such activity in the future.

While we know that the bill as stated attempts to expunge the record of a person convicted of an offence under the bill after two years of essentially non-criminal activity behind the wheel, we also know that our neighbours to the south and, indeed, internationally treat the record of having had a criminal conviction differently.

In Canada we have a system of pardons that work well with respect to federal and provincial institutions. It does not, however, work currently at the border we have with the United States of America. Unless the member can demonstrate otherwise to the committee and work assiduously to help us in this regard, somebody convicted of the offence of .05 might be faced with the prospect of being banned for life from going to the United States of American because of being convicted under this offence.

What I think the member is attempting to get at is to deter people from getting behind the wheel. He is trying to do it in a sensible way by lowering the threshold to stop people from drinking and driving. I do not think he is intending to ruin people's lives forever by instituting this law. That must be addressed.

We must also take into account what the experts are saying. While my friend in the New Democratic Party says that studies are replete with the effectiveness of .05, he may be mistaken, and the committee will delve into this should the bill be forwarded to committee, between the difference of a bill which criminalizes the activity as opposed to the various provincial statutes that are in place which have very deleterious effects on a person's ability to drive in the future, as opposed to criminalizing the activity.

It is very important to remember that 9 out of the 10 provinces and three territories already have deleterious effects for driving over .05. This stops people from driving for a period of time which is a good deterrent for most people and is certainly very preventive to the public.

I add the Canada Safety Council's words and those of the eminent law professor, David Paciocco, who has opined on this subject, to suggest that internationally the trend toward criminalizing activity is not where the world is going. The trend toward lowering levels for detection and deterrents with civil consequences, losing a driver's licence and privileges, is where the effectiveness resides. It is the trend which I urge the hon. member to look at.

Mr. Emile Therien, former president of the Canada Safety Council, said on another plane that the most egregious cases of impaired driving deal with people whose blood alcohol content is sky high. The two cases I have mentioned in the course of my comments were such cases: excessively elevated blood alcohol content, repeat offenders seemingly not deterred by the most severe sentences, certainly over .08.

Mr. Emile Therien said that the priority must be to prevent alcohol related crashes, not just to punish drinking drivers. He said that most drivers involved in alcohol related fatal crashes have BACs over .15. That is the group the government should focus on.

[Criminal Code, February 6th, 2007]

Obviously, Mr. Speaker, impaired driving is a scourge in our country on the streets of all our communities.

I wonder if the member could comment more fully, however, on the coincidence of the decisions made in September by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice to table Bill C-32 on the same day that they announced cuts to the pilot program for testing or providing training for the detection of drug impaired drivers, to the sum of some $4.2 million. Only after some political pressure did they announce that eventually the government might offer a program worth $2 million for some training that has yet to be announced.

How crucial to the success of this bill is the training to detect drug impairment?

[Criminal Code, February 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is very typical in the Conservative justice agenda to make grand pronouncements on law and not back them up with the resources needed to effect the law as proclaimed.

Bill C-9 and Bill C-10 deal with mandatory minimums and conditional sentences. Some $225 million was budgeted for prisons. Most attorneys general met in Newfoundland last year and collectively said it should probably be something like $2 billion. With respect to this law, there is no indication that there will be adequate resources to develop the tests for drug impairment detection. We will have a law with no teeth in it.

I can look at the testimony of Chief Blair of Toronto who, using existing law passed by previous Parliaments and extensive resources, had a major and effective crackdown in crime in the GTA. There has been no indication from the Canadian Chiefs of Police that adequate resources will be put in place for the new panoply of Conservative laws which are intended to be tough on crime. Without adequate resources to put its wishes into effect, I am afraid the Conservative government is leading the Canadian public into a false sense of security by promoting law on the 6 p.m. news but not backing it up with the necessary resources. It is cutting funding to everything that is dear to Canadians, including effective, smart, judicial discretion and effective and smart law enforcement. That is what is missing from the agenda.

We are willing to work with the Conservative government as the bills go through the House. I do not know what we do with a minority government that governs like a majority and will not fund the necessary tools to put good laws into effect once they come out of committee.

[Criminal Code, February 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, a lot of work has been done on this aspect. I mentioned in my speech the 1990, 2003, and 2004 reports of various committees with respect to getting tough on crime. The Conservatives cannot take full credit for this bill; this is an evolutionary process.

I will skip quite quickly to the issue of drug impairment detection. It is important to underline to Canadian citizens and members of the House that at the same time the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice introduced the bill--or I should say, they spoke about it, as it is the norm for the Conservatives to announce a bill and then put it to the committee--they also cut funding for a project and study on the development of tests for the detection of drug impairment. One officer outside my riding called me and suggested that it was a shame that this project and study process had been curtailed.

There has been a promise of further funding for further studies with respect to how the police, the front line officials, can perfect the drug impairment detection test. As yet the details are scarce, which is precisely why this bill needs to go to committee. We need to hear from law enforcement officials and the attorneys general across the country. The member is quite right in suggesting that we need to hear from crown prosecutors, as they often have to deal with a file that is not perfect and take it to court to prove those convictions.

We will work on this in committee in a very non-partisan way. As I said in my introduction, this is merely an indication that the current Conservative government felt the Liberal justice agenda was a good one. The Conservatives took what we had, put their stamp on it, and we will be happy to work on perfecting it.