Daniel Petit

[Criminal Code, November 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, through you, I will try to answer this question as quickly as possible.

The member does indeed serve with me on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. For the benefit of all Canadians, I will say that this member and his colleagues make it possible for both sides to work together.

The new bill states that fingerprints and photographs can be taken at the time of arrest, if the person is in lawful custody. Under the old legislation, fingerprinting or photographing was not permitted if the individual had not been charged.

That is why arrest warrants often mention section 133, which states how the accused must behave when providing fingerprints and photographs.

This is new, and will help speed up the process. In areas where this is difficult, it will also make it possible to request fingerprinting and photographs immediately, instead of waiting until later, which could be a problem for both the accused and the police forces.

[Criminal Code, November 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague raises a very interesting question.

Since 1932, many sports, also known as prizefighting, have been restricted by the Criminal Code. There have been no amendments since 1932, but a number of sports have appeared in the past 20 years, including initial martial arts. The Olympic committee decided that these should become Olympic sports. That is why they should no longer be proscribed under the Criminal Code.

In answer to my colleague's question, we have what are known as mixed martial arts. It is hard to tell whether these are martial arts or not. What my colleague said was that we have to choose our words carefully when provincial and territorial organizations refer to Olympic rules. In that case, they can be authorized or removed.

[Criminal Code, November 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, people who have been charged or accused often ask that question. Currently, under section 133, a person who is arrested and lawfully detained, and who is accused of a criminal offence, may immediately be fingerprinted and photographed. Once the trial is over, fingerprints and photographs may be returned to that person on request.

Right now, a certain period of time passes between the moment a person is taken into lawful custody and the moment he or she is charged. There are far fewer police officers in some jurisdictions than in others, or they may be very far away. That is why we need to ensure efficiency. We can help police forces be more efficient in all jurisdictions and physical locations where the Criminal Code applies, and update the code, by making it possible for fingerprinting and photographing to happen early on, any time after individuals are taken into lawful custody and before they are charged.

[Criminal Code, November 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to offer my strong support for Bill C-31, which would amend the Criminal Code and other acts, in order to make our justice system more efficient.

To fight crime and ensure the safety of Canadians, we need a justice system that reflects our reality, that allows us to use technology effectively, that adapts to scientific advances, to changes in the nature of evidence and scientific procedures, and that operates as efficiently as possible, while still remaining fair and equitable.

This bill is another concrete measure that demonstrates our government's ongoing commitment to fighting crime in the most effective and advanced way possible.

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Minister of Justice for his continued efforts and for recognizing that making minor changes and reforming outdated procedures can also make a difference.

I would also like to take this opportunity to look at what effect some of these proposals would have on the work of the public servants who also help provide security and protection for Canadians.

Public officers are not police officers. Their primary responsibility is the enforcement of non-criminal offences covered by federal legislation other than the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. One proposed amendment would give public officers the same authority as police to deal with goods seized under section 489.1, bearing in mind that they both have the same authority to conduct searches.

At present, subsection 489.1(1), which deals with the return of seized goods, only applies to peace officers and allows them to return the goods seized directly to a person when there is no dispute as to ownership of the goods and if the goods do not need to be kept as evidence.

Subsection 489.1(2) applies to anyone who is not a peace officer and requires that they bring the goods seized before a justice of the peace or that they retain them until the justice orders that they be returned to the lawful owner.

Under these sections, a peace officer can seize an item in situ, or on the spot, in order to examine it and return it to the owner, if he is convinced that the item need not be retained as evidence.

In the same circumstances, a public officer exercising his authority under section 487 would have to bring the item before a justice or retain it until it can be reported to a justice or until the justice authorizes its return. In situ seizure under a warrant is becoming an increasingly common practice in a regulatory context because search warrants are used to investigate quasi-criminal matters often pertaining to equipment that is impossible to move in an industrial workplace or similar setting.

Another amendment would specify that the peace officer or public officer who fills out report 5.2, the report to a justice of the peace, can have another person file it under subsection 489.1(1). When the peace officer has seized items and has subsequently returned them to the lawful owner, he must report it to a justice of the peace, on Criminal Code form 5.2.

This addition will save a great deal of time for an administration that has employees in the court house, because they will be in a position to file the documents in question rather than the peace officer or public officer who completed them.

The bill also includes a new provision that will permit the release of any items seized by the police for scientific examination before the trial. The current provisions allow for the release of such items for scientific examination only at the trial stage, which often delays the trial, and is particularly difficult and inefficient in cases of trial by jury.

The new provision will allow items seized to be released before the trial with the court's permission and on the condition that appropriate measures are taken to ensure that they are properly preserved.

The provisions of the Criminal Code regarding prize fights must also be amended in order to exclude legitimate amateur sports, specifically, karate, judo, tae kwon do and wushu, which have emerged since the last amendment in 1932. Some of these sports are included in the International Olympic Committee program, which means that the international, national and provincial sports organizations in question are dedicated to the values and requirements of the IOC in matters of safety. From now on, amateur sports included in the IOC program will be excluded from the definition of “prize fighting” and the provinces can impose conditions on holding fights for these sports if they so choose.

Furthermore, the provinces could exclude any other amateur sport from the application of section 83 and could also impose conditions on holding fights for these sports. These amendments are the result of extensive consultations with the provinces and territories in 2003 and 2004, as well as consultations with national sports organizations at various times since 1998 when the issue was first brought to the government's attention.

In addition, amendments to the pari-mutuel provisions will clarify the federal government's responsibility for permitting and monitoring legitimate pari-mutuel betting on horse races. These amendments will eliminate the unnecessary power to limit the number of races on which bets can be placed at a race-course in Canada. The amendments will also allow race-courses to harmonize their method of calculating payouts with others in the “foreign race pool” when they accept bets on horse races that take place outside of Canada.

These amendments will enable Canadians to place lower bets than what is currently permitted, which will improve their chances of winning without having to spend more money.

The bill also contains an amendment to better preserve the impartiality of jurors by allowing the court to exclude jurors—on application or on its own motion—from the court room in the case of a challenge for cause. Currently, only the defence can make such an application.

This bill also amends telewarrant provisions. For example, three changes will be made to the current telewarrant system. First, the convenience criterion has been removed, except for telewarrants requested orally—in other words, by means of telecommunication that does not produce a writing. Second, access to telewarrants will be expanded. Third, public officers will now be permitted to use telewarrants.

We have also proposed eliminating the convenience criterion in the case of requests submitted in writing because of technological progress and the reliability of modern means of telecommunication. The telewarrant system enables more efficient use of justice system resources, especially the police. These amendments will save time by making it unnecessary for police officers to go to court to submit a warrant request in person, thereby giving them more time to spend on investigations.

With respect to oral telewarrants, our provincial and territorial partners have observed that requiring police officers to express their reasons in writing promotes the provision of complete and well-organized information for the judge's consideration.

It will now be possible to obtain the following warrants: warrants respecting the seizure of weapons, ammunition and explosive devices; search and seizure warrants in offences related to gambling, betting and stolen minerals; production orders for documents and business records; tracking warrants; and warrants with respect to number recorders.

Police and public officials could request a greater number of warrants by using this process, which would no doubt be beneficial to them. This will be particularly useful for federal public officials, who would otherwise have to make special arrangements in order to show up in person at various locations across the country to secure warrants. This makes the job easier.

This bill also proposes reclassifying certain Criminal Code offences as hybrid offences. This reclassification would convert an offence punishable by summary conviction or indictment under the Criminal Code into a hybrid offence. This allows the prosecution to proceed either by indictment or by summary conviction, whichever it deems most suitable under the circumstances of the case.

We feel that these changes are necessary and quite useful since they give the prosecution more latitude by allowing it to choose the most appropriate procedure for the case at hand. This will considerably simplify the administration of justice and deliver on the government's commitment to make Canada's criminal justice system more efficient.

I would also like to mention that reclassification has no impact on the seriousness of the offences in question. All it does—and I want to stress this—is allow the Crown to choose the procedure for prosecuting the alleged offender. For example, a criminal offence that becomes a hybrid offence can still be prosecuted by indictment if, under the circumstances, a more complex procedure, including a preliminary inquiry and a jury trial, is warranted. However, when the facts of the case do not warrant the full procedure or a heavier penalty, it is possible to prosecute the offence by summary conviction.

It is important that the procedure used reflect the seriousness of the offence and that we make the best use of the court's time and resources. Reclassification offers greater flexibility, making it possible to choose the most appropriate procedure under the circumstances and to increase the efficiency of our criminal justice system. The defence will still have the right to a preliminary inquiry or a jury trial where a full procedure is warranted.

This bill also includes changes to the expert witness regime. Once again, these changes are necessary because the time currently set out in the Criminal Code for communicating expert reports is sometimes not enough to allow the other party to respond appropriately to what is frequently becoming complex and highly technical evidence.

To respond to expert witness evidence, it is generally necessary to find and hire an expert in the particular field, brief that person on the case, obtain transcripts and so on. The changes make various improvements to the regime. First, to encourage compliance with the notice requirements in the Criminal Code, the bill provides for a mandatory 10-day adjournment if these requirements are not met. Second, so that all the parties are prepared to respond to expert evidence, the bill provides for a discretionary adjournment when the notice requirements have been met, but the other party has not had enough time to prepare.

Third, the Criminal Code will contain a list of factors the court must consider in deciding whether to grant an adjournment or to lengthen or shorten an adjournment that has already been granted. These factors are meant to reflect the challenges associated with a trial involving expert testimony.

Lastly, the court will have to explain if it refuses to grant an adjournment or reduce the period of adjournment. The new measures will also help the courts in rendering decisions. These changes would enable the courts to make enlightened decisions that are adapted to different cases of non-compliance and would encourage parties to adhere to the notice provisions.

These changes will not generate any additional obligations on the defence. Both parties' obligations will remain the same. The changes would simply improve the expert evidence regime in the Criminal Code to ensure that the parties can respond appropriately to the expert testimony, by providing new measures that the court can take if there is insufficient time, and to encourage parties to adhere to the notice provisions in the Criminal Code.

We know that the Identification of Criminals Act does not authorize police officers to fingerprint or photograph individuals in lawful custody until they have been charged or convicted, which often results in unnecessary delays.

Some people have called for the enforcement of this legislation to be simplified and clarified. That is what our proposed changes would do. The proposed amendments would streamline this process by adding the authority to fingerprint and photograph an individual who is in lawful custody following an arrest, but not yet charged.

For example, if the individual is not charged with an offence, if the charges are dropped or if the individual is acquitted, we know that many police forces destroy fingerprints and photographs at the request of the person involved, if the person is not found guilty. The courts have ruled that it is not unreasonable for police forces to retain fingerprints if no request is made for them to be destroyed or returned after charges are dropped.

I have listed some examples covered by this bill. It is important to note that the bill includes about 40 amendments that will all help improve, streamline and modernize our justice system. I urge all members to fully support this bill.

[Canada-Jordan Free Trade Act, November 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member a question.

I listened carefully to his speech, particularly when he was talking about how this free trade agreement will benefit my home province, Quebec. I think he was saying that the faster this agreement is signed, the sooner people will benefit from it.

He mentioned eliminating tariffs between Jordan and Quebec on forestry products, machinery, textiles and pharmaceuticals, among other things.

Can he provide more information? Will this agreement affect aerospace companies such as Bombardier? Can he provide further details about the removal of tariffs under this agreement?

[Fairness for the Self-Employed Act, November 5th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, through you, I have a question for the Minister of National Revenue, who, like me, is a citizen of Quebec.

I have been watching the Bloc in this House for the past 20 years. First of all, it has never brought forward any measures to protect the interests of Quebec's unemployed workers. Second, it has never wanted power, and accordingly, never wanted to resolve any issues.

I would like to ask my colleague who will pay for this new system. In Quebec, I already pay, in part, for unionized employees who have certain rights, but those employees do not necessarily pay for me.

Since I am a self-employed worker who decided to run for election, I would like to know who is going to pay for this new bill, which benefits self-employed workers in Quebec.

[Justice, October 29th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in April 2009, our government introduced Bill C-26 to tackle the crime of auto theft, which causes losses of over $1 billion a year.

For the past four months, Liberal senators have been delaying this bill.

Yet this bill will facilitate investigations and prosecution in cases of auto theft, and will also increase sentences for serious crimes.

Canadians want action. This bill comes in addition to the measures already put in place by our government to fight organized crime.

We urge the Liberals to listen to Canadians, as we did, and to stop playing partisan politics on the backs of victims.

When will the Liberal leader tell his colleagues in the Senate to pass this important bill?

Our government is the only party that can protect victims.

[Justice, October 28th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Lévis—Bellechasse has indicated his great interest in protecting his voters.

Two years ago, our government—yes, our government—introduced Bill C-27. It was our first attempt to protect citizens from organized crime and identity theft. This bill has finally been adopted. This long journey, despite the many obstacles put up by the opposition, shows that Quebeckers can only rely on the Conservative Party and our Prime Minister to ensure their protection.

[Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act, October 26th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, through you, here is what I have to say in response to my Liberal colleague.

Perhaps this bill was in fact introduced long before I arrived here. I was not here at the time. I have been a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights since 2006, and have never seen this bill. But perhaps it was introduced in the past.

I would like the member to understand that in the past two and a half years—since I have been a member of this House, so nearly three years—all I have heard is this: “election, election, election”.

We have never been able to have a normal, four-year term. For a bill to pass, it must be introduced, debated and passed. It takes time. In many cases, bills do not survive. We have introduced nine bills, none of which have survived.

So I understand and I sympathize with my colleague. Perhaps the bill before us today does resemble something they introduced in 2005. I do not know. However, when we look at things over the past five years, there have been four elections. It is therefore impossible for a government, any government, to get anything done under those conditions.

[Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act, October 26th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, thank you for giving me the opportunity to rise here today to support Bill C-46. This bill proposes amendments to the Criminal Code, the Competition Act and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act. These amendments would serve to update offences and investigative powers, to ensure they are in line with modern technologies.

The Minister of Justice has already briefly outlined Bill C-46, but I thought I would take this opportunity to expand on a few particularly important and innovative aspects of these Criminal Code amendments.

As we have shown on many occasions, the safety of our communities, our families, and particularly our children is something that this government takes very seriously. As part of a responsible government, a member of Parliament and a citizen, I am concerned about the safety of our communities.

Before I continue, I would like to briefly explain what the lawful access initiative is all about. Lawful access has nothing to do with listening to private conversations or monitoring the Internet browsing or emailing habits of Canadians. This initiative aims to ensure that law enforcement and national security agencies have the technical and legal ability to keep up with changes in communications and computer technologies.

New technologies are powerful and useful tools. However, criminals and terrorists can use them to endanger public safety. Current technologies provide numerous benefits. We applaud innovation in computer science and technology. However, we recognize that modern technology can facilitate crime, such as the distribution of child pornography, and make police investigations very difficult and complex. This bill will help by providing law enforcement organizations with the tools they need to fight crime in today's environment. The bill updates various offences and creates new investigative powers.

Our justice agenda has recently been the target of criticism. We have chosen to take these actions because we believe that justice reform is necessary. Canada was one of the first countries to establish criminal provisions for computer crimes. However, no significant amendments have been made since 1990. As I said, technologies have evolved considerably since then, but Canadian laws have not kept pace with the changes.

These increasingly complex technologies are challenging traditional investigative methods, and criminals are taking advantage of the situation by using complex technology to carry out illegal activities and endanger our citizens. Fighting crime means overcoming major challenges. Modernizing legislative tools, such as the Criminal Code, is essential to enabling law enforcement organizations to investigate criminal activity effectively while protecting the privacy rights and civil liberties so important to Canadians.

Right now, law enforcement personnel can get a warrant to intercept communications on conventional phone lines. The legislative measures in this bill will bring the legislation up to date by including cell phones and other wireless technologies. These measures will require Internet service providers, ISPs, to have interception capability in place.

When law enforcement officials try to prevent a crime or conduct an investigation, ISPs do not give them all of the basic client information they need.

The measures in this bill allow them to obtain that information in order to protect children from online predators and to prevent other types of cybercrime. We believe that these measures are very important and necessary. We have to protect our children from these predators, especially as our children now surf the Internet at an increasingly younger age. These measures are very useful.

The proposed changes create a data preservation demand that requires an Internet service provider to protect and not delete information relating to a communication or a subscriber if the authorities and the police believe this information could help in their investigation.

Allow me to elaborate more specifically and in greater detail on preservation demands and orders, on modernizing the current provisions regarding warrants for tracking and on the new concept of “transmission data”. I think that each of these tools will have a truly positive influence on investigations in Canada.

Let us start with the new preservation demands and orders, which create new investigative powers for criminal offences under the Criminal Code and offences under the Competition Act. Their purpose is to ensure that volatile computer data is not deleted before the police have the chance to get a warrant or an order to collect the data for investigation purposes. The need for these types of tools is obvious in this day and age. Not only is computer data easily erased, but it can also be lost through negligence or simply through ordinary working procedures. A preservation demand or order will legally require a person to keep computer data that is essential to the investigation for enough time to allow the police to obtain the necessary warrants and orders to get the information. This tool will allow the police to begin the investigation without losing elements of the evidence when the loss can be prevented.

Some people might be concerned about the repercussions of these changes on the right to a reasonable expectation of privacy. They may have heard about the European data conservation systems and are worried that our legislation will import those systems to Canada. That is not what Bill C-46 is about in any way.

Data retention can make it possible to collect a large amount of data over a long period of time on all telephone and Internet subscribers, regardless of whether they are linked to the investigation. Bill C-46 does not provide for data retention. It provides for the preservation of data, which is completely different. This would allow for the preservation, for a limited period of time, of specific data related to a specific investigation and to specific individuals. It is important to note that the data will be handed over to the police only if a warrant or order has been issued. Furthermore, data that would not have been preserved as it is no longer useful to the investigation. That is quite a change.

This will ensure that the system put in place by this bill will not inadvertently lead to the type of retention that exists in European countries, as I have explained. So we can see that the preservation system we have created here is very limited and targeted. It was developed to be a temporary solution, so that the warrants and orders obtained by the police to gain access to information are not rendered useless because the data was erased in the time that it took the police to obtain the orders. That is what happened in the past.

Another important amendment proposed by Bill C-46 will update the current Criminal Code provision regarding the warrant for tracking. This warrant was created in 1990, over 19 years ago. The police were able to obtain and use the warrant to locate persons, vehicles or other objects. However, tracking techniques have changed dramatically. Their accuracy and persistence in locating objects has improved. This means that the current type of warrant is no longer suitable and may result in more serious breaches of privacy than before. Consequently, Bill C-46 proposes to increase the protection of personal information for the use of the most intrusive tracking techniques.

The bill establishes a double warrant system for this purpose. The police can obtain the first type of warrant in the usual manner: by proving to the judge that they have reasonable grounds to suspect that the warrant will assist in the investigation of an offence. They would use this warrant to locate objects, vehicles and transactions, as was done in the past.

When a more invasive technique for tracking individuals is required, police must obtain the second warrant, which provides greater protection of privacy than the first. Thus, there would be stricter requirements. According to Bill C-46, to obtain this warrant, the police will have to prove to the judge that they have reasonable grounds to believe—not to suspect, but to believe—that the warrant will assist in the investigation of the offence. Legally, this criterion is much more difficult to meet, and therefore it provides more protection of personal information than the warrant for tracking objects. This is an important legal distinction.

This approach to the tracking warrant provisions is very innovative because it provides stronger protection of personal information where it is really needed while retaining the current tool, which is effective for investigations where expectations with respect to the protection of privacy are not as high.

Lastly, I would like to talk about the new warrant for transmission data. For 15 years, police have been able to obtain a warrant under the Criminal Code for information such as the telephone numbers dialed to and from a suspect's telephone. That is what used to happen. Police could obtain such a warrant if they had reasonable grounds to suspect that the data could help them investigate a crime. Today, this type of data, which experts refer to as call identification data, include not only telephone numbers, but also technical data that all sorts of more sophisticated calling mechanisms can generate on a network.

The fact that the distinction between conventional telephones and the Internet is blurring also poses a problem for police in using the current warrant to obtain call identification data. For example, most cell phones can be used to access the Internet. And in a sense, the opposite is also true. Millions of subscribers use voice over IP to make calls on the Internet. The result is that technologies use IP—or Internet protocol—addresses in addition to telephone numbers; it is a sort of mixture. This has created a gap in what the current warrant can cover. The type of address data police need for their investigation can no longer be obtained using phone records or conventional equipment such as telephone number recorders.

And why should criminals be treated differently just because they use voice over IP to make calls instead of a conventional phone? That is an important question.

Clearly, we need a new legal concept that reflects 21st-century technology. Bill C-46 creates the concept of “transmission data”, which applies to Internet routing data as well as telephone numbers.

For the sake of clarity, I would add that this new concept applies exclusively to this type of data. “Transmission data” applies only to some parts of what is known as the “header”, which includes the email address and information about the email servers that transmitted the email.

This concept was carefully developed, specifically to exclude the contents of messages in order to minimize privacy infringements. This means that the police cannot use this power to read what people have typed in the “Subject” field. Moreover, the police will not be able to use this power to read what people have typed in the body of the email, which is very important.

Like the other amendments I just discussed, the power to intercept transmission data will provide the police with the investigative tools they need to fight crime in a world where techniques are constantly evolving. Like all of these tools, this power was specifically designed to fulfill this purpose with minimal infringement on privacy.

I repeat that our government wants to ensure that law enforcement officials have the tools they need to bring criminals to justice.

The proposed bill will ensure a fair balance between protecting public safety by giving police essential investigative powers and protecting the privacy and the rights and freedoms of Canadians.

I therefore urge all members to fully support Bill C-46, which will update our Criminal Code for the 21st century.