Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying what I think has been fairly clear in the contributions from colleagues all along, that the NDP will be supporting the bill.
Bill C-51 does some important things, and nobody is going to claim that it does not. In particular, it adds to the categories of folks who might eventually receive witness protection. For example, those who have been assisting agencies in the federal security or defence or safety realms are added, as well as those associated with them: friends, family, et cetera, who may also need protection. There are any number of contexts that we could all refer to and know about that indicate that witness protection, if anything, is a growing need on the law enforcement side of government.
The Air India inquiry was one of the contexts in which we heard that the national security context was a gap in the system. Surely that has to be the case with other forums and other terrorism investigations, which cannot be much different.
The member for Oxford spoke very well about the burgeoning transnational nature of organized crime and how it is becoming more and more sophisticated, which has been a trend line for decades. Law enforcement is always playing catch-up in the role of witnesses to somehow or other get ahead of the game, and the witness protection program must surely be very important there.
One area that is very important to those of us from more concentrated urban areas is the whole question of street gangs and especially youth gangs. How is it that we can actually break the codes of silence, encourage witnesses to come forward, such as in the Danzig shootings that took place in Scarborough not so long ago? Also, how is it that we can use the witness protection program as part of a broader strategy in getting youth out of that environment?
Nobody is contesting that the bill, as far as it goes, is a good bill and deserves to be supported. Nobody is saying that the context is not one that presents a crying need.
That said, working briefly through three themes, I would like to suggest that the bill does not go nearly far enough when it could have, which is the problem. We have had many years of warning. The NDP started in 2007, and we had reports from 2008 on, saying that the system needed to be upgraded. With the upgrading of the system at the level of effectiveness, we have heard all kinds of concerns, including about funding and the need for an independent agency from the RCMP to be involved. We know from the various interventions that have occurred already that those elements really were not addressed, and so it is a lost opportunity. At some level I would like to think of this as sort of a battle between the real and the rhetorical.
We also went through this recently with respect to Bill C-37, the increasing offenders' accountability for victims act, which I was involved with when I was on the justice committee. The NDP also supported this bill, despite considerable concerns we had that it was totally avoiding any federal public support philosophy for victims and instead was trusting in sort of a combination of surcharges that offenders would pay—and many of them would not be in a position to pay—and provincial programs that were a patchwork quilt and often nonexistent across the country. However, the government at that time presented that bill as making a major contribution to support for victims when it was largely devoid of any kind of a federal role with respect to true victim support programs.
However, again, we supported that bill. It was not because we thought it was the greatest bill in the world, but it was because it added something. Although we had some problems at the level of rights protections, we ultimately felt those could be worked out down the line.
This is why I have joined with the mother of a murdered youth from Toronto—Danforth, Joan Howard, whose son Kempton was murdered 10 years ago literally around the corner from my house. He was murdered by handgun. He was a youth worker who contributed in amazing ways to his community. His mother is of the view that we need to focus more on the needs of victims when it comes to the kinds of public support mechanisms that we associate with other causes, which are the kinds of support mechanisms people need, such as psychological support and social service support.
The supports are needed not just for the immediate victims who survived crime, but quite often for their families—maybe even more often, especially when it is violent crime that has taken a life. It is true that provinces jurisdictionally have the responsibility for this, but the specific link to crime means that the kind of victimhood that occurs because of crime is really not taken into account for the most part in most provinces. We get to legislate the Criminal Code and a bunch of other areas of criminal law through other statutes up here, but we kind of back off when it comes to how we deal with the consequences of crime. Somehow, that becomes purely a matter of another jurisdictional level.
At some point, the federal government has to, obviously under an initiative from Parliament, really catch up to other countries that take public victim support programs a lot more seriously than we do, rather than simply downloading costs on offenders and provinces and thinking that somehow or other we have accomplished the task. I see this bill as falling a bit into the same trap. It would do a fair bit that is important, but at the level of making sure the system functions in a way that all witnesses who need protection will be protected—which is a goal that is necessary for making sure all crime that can be prosecuted is prosecuted—then it is a bill that would fall short.
Therefore, I move on to the second thing, which has been emphasized a lot: funding. The government MPs are focusing often on comments coming from government witnesses, including RCMP witnesses, before the committee; basically comments saying that the funding is adequate. I will read an example that has been read, at least in part, by others. This is from assistant commissioner Todd Shean of the RCMP. He said, “We will immediately increase resources. We have increased the resources allocated to our witness protection unit”, and he goes on to say then, “I am confident that we have the means to manage the program effectively”.
What is the problem here? First, he speaks of “...our witness protection unit”. Of course, the RCMP has its own costs, runs its own program and sometimes assumes all the costs because it is an entire RCMP or federal investigation that the witness protection program is latching onto. It is good to know that he is projecting an increase in resources, but there is no reference here, or recognition even, to the provincial or local police force costs associated with witness protection programs. These levels of government, provincial and municipal, and more particularly their police forces, are charged for the costs.
The member for Oxford made it clear to us that of course costs are saved for police forces. I am not saying that is not true, but ultimately when there are costs that are not simply the costs from the fact that there is an overall system that they can tap into, they get billed for it. What we know is that there is already a problem with funding for these levels. In 2007, this was pointed out. We are in 2013, and there was no evidence before the committee that it has changed. There was clear and persuasive testimony before the committee on this, and I will return to some of it as I end.
However, let me first go back to the RCMP. Its own website states, “There are instances when the costs of witness protection may impede investigations, particularly for smaller law enforcement agencies”. What is the second problem with this, apart from the fact that it really probably is only focusing on the RCMP's own costs? The second problem is that none of this is actually a budgetary commitment from the government. It does not indicate anything more than that the RCMP sees increases in resources, and it is no small irony that this is the case when we know that we are in budget season, and that it would not have been a big deal to coordinate this bill with a very clear budget line item indicating that there would be adequate budgetary support for our partners in crime prevention, the provinces and the municipalities. Every million dollars counts; I recognize that. However, a $9-million budget for the last fiscal year for the witness protection program is not exactly a huge budget when we know, from all the testimony before the committee, mostly from police services boards, that there is a need.
I do not think we should end this debate thinking that by having what might be unanimous support for the bill, we have somehow addressed the issue of resources. I would much prefer it if my colleagues across the way would say that the bill does something and is important—we are supporting them on that, let us take that as a given—but let us not throw a cloak over it and pretend we have solved the whole problem.
