Mr. Speaker, the—
House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2021, with 43% of the vote.
Justice June 8th, 2022
Mr. Speaker, the—
Justice June 8th, 2022
Mr. Speaker, serious crime in this country will always carry with it serious consequences. The kinds of situations that we are targeting with this legislation on minimum mandatory penalties are situations where public security and public safety are not at risk. It is being done to attack the systemic overrepresentation of Black and indigenous people in the criminal justice system.
The kinds of situations that he is describing are being attacked in Bill C-21, and we are raising the maximum penalties.
Justice June 7th, 2022
Mr. Speaker, these attempts to spread misinformation about Bill C-5 are appalling. It is important remember that serious offences will always carry serious consequences.
Bill C-5 targets offences where public safety is not threatened. The idea is to give judges the latitude they need to hand down sentences that can help society as well as the victims.
Justice June 7th, 2022
Mr. Speaker, serious crime will always have serious consequences.
What we are doing with Bill C‑5 is completely different. We are targeting the overrepresentation of Black and indigenous people in the criminal justice system. We are talking about offences where public safety is not at stake. For serious offences, there is Bill C-21. I hope the opposition will support both of these bills.
Justice June 7th, 2022
Mr. Speaker, our hearts go out to anybody, to any families and communities that suffer from the ravages of multiple murders. The Supreme Court ruling is clear and unanimous. We have said and we have pointed out that the ability of a mass murderer to get parole is extremely rare. Celebrated murderers and mass murderers like Paul Bernardo do not get parole. The system is, in itself, one that punishes criminals seriously.
Justice June 7th, 2022
Mr. Speaker, our hearts go out to victims and we will always stand with victims. With respect to the Supreme Court ruling on serious intoxication, we are looking carefully at that ruling. The Court has presented us with a number of different options, and I have already said publicly that we will evaluate those options and come back to this place.
Serious crimes in this country will always carry serious consequences. The failed tough-on-crime Conservative policy needs to be put in the past, and that is precisely what we are doing.
Justice June 6th, 2022
Mr. Speaker, serious offences in this country are always punished with serious sentences. That is why we are moving forward to increase penalties for certain gun infractions, as Bill C-21 proposes.
We also are making sure that we attack systemic discrimination within our criminal justice system so that indigenous Canadians and Black Canadians are not overrepresented in that system.
Justice June 2nd, 2022
Mr. Speaker, our hearts go out to the victims, and we are working on improving the justice system to help victims and Canadian society.
With Bill C-5, we are tackling the overrepresentation of indigenous peoples and Blacks in the system, in cases where it does not put public safety at risk. Conditional sentences and the elimination of certain minimum sentences will help us to attack the real problems by helping victims and society.
Justice June 2nd, 2022
Mr. Speaker, as I have said to the hon. member, and to reassure Canadians first and foremost, this defence is in fact available in only a very small fraction of cases. Nevertheless, we are looking at the Supreme Court decision. We understand the seriousness of the situation, and I can ensure all parliamentarians in the House, and indeed all Canadians, that we are looking at ways to address the situation.
Justice June 2nd, 2022
Mr. Speaker, nothing could be further from the truth. Let us have an honest discussion.
Serious offences will always have serious consequences in our system. The kinds of penalties we would be attacking by eliminating certain mandatory minimum penalties and allowing conditional sentence orders are precisely the kinds of sentences where a person, the community and victims are not served and where the problem is something else, like a health problem or a problematic addiction, for example.
We are moving ahead with these reforms to address the systemic overrepresentation of Black and indigenous people in the system to make the system more just.