Derek Lee

[Canada-EFTA Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, March 30th, 2009]

In that case, I will stand down and withdraw that.

[Canada-EFTA Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, March 30th, 2009]

I rise on a point of order. If I am not mistaken, Mr. Speaker, when the votes were being tallied up through the whips of the parties, I believe I heard some extraneous remarks from the hon. whip of the Bloc Québécois with respect to abstention.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, March 27th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am quite sure if you were to seek it, you would find unanimous consent in the House to see the clock at 1:30 p.m.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, March 27th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, as I mentioned in my remarks, I think that by now most of us have recognized among the Conservative government's policies a relentless pursuit of hot-button issues. If crime is a problem in a particular community, the Conservatives will focus on that and hold out that they have a solution. It probably goes beyond the field of crime. They are all politicians and we are, too. The point is that since they are politicians, we can see it. We understand it. I hope Canadians understand it. A simplistic response to a social problem just does not work.

It is not all bad things that are being proposed, but the bulk of it is focused on a hot-button response, which may end up costing the taxpayer more in the long run and does not really address the problem.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, March 27th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, the illegal drug threats to our communities are a real scourge; everyone in the House accepts that. We see it in tragic ways right across the country. I have actually been to Halifax and other parts of Nova Scotia where the drug problem existed. We have seen the problems with heroin abuse, methadone abuse. Even methadone which is supposed to be used for treatment is abused. We have seen the OxyContin abuse. We have seen the problems with double doctoring. The pharmacists in Nova Scotia told us they would be coming up with a system to avoid double doctoring for prescriptions.

The solutions lie in treatment. The bill has provisions called drug treatment courts, which are a major step forward, but they have to be properly funded. Federally we can help with this. Provincially they have to help fund the drug treatment courts. Municipally it has to be coordinated with policing. Progress can be made. We all have to take responsibility for the leakage of addictive drugs into our societies to those who are addicted.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, March 27th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, we are debating Bill C-15 and I want to assure colleagues that it is my intention to wrap up my remarks before the end of the period for debate today.

As one member of the House, I am personally very disappointed in the recent evolution of the criminal sentencing policy as put forward by the government. Some of the policy changes have been harmless. I do not think they will be effective. Much of it has to do with posturing, pretense and political stage play that I do not think will bring about many results at all.

However, in terms of dealing with crime across the country, I am absolutely and totally a firm believer in strong and improved enforcement. Regrettably, for most of us in the House, the costs of enforcement measures are usually borne by the provinces and the municipalities It is really easy for us in the House to talk about getting tough on crime and better enforcement but we do not have to authorize the tax dollars to do it. We should always keep that in mind.

I know how much good work is done at the provincial and municipal levels not only in crime enforcement but also in prosecution, almost all of which is done at the provincial level by provincial prosecutors not by federal prosecutors. Therefore, it is easy for us to talk the talk here and there has been a lot of talking the talk.

In my home constituency, it is mostly represented by a police division called 42 Division. A few years ago, I know for some reason that I never really understood, although I think I understood it at the time, the area I represent had a bit of a reputation for having some kind of crime problem. There were some high profile incidents but, as a result of looking at the thing in the cool light of day and of excellent police enforcement, which focused on a gang problem, this particular 42 Division in Toronto now has the lowest crime rates in the city .

In terms of the list of Canadian cities and their crime rates, Toronto is number 19. Therefore, while crime is ever present, and it has been since the beginning of time, not just in this country, I think a lot of communities are making progress. Some have challenges but there is no point in mentioning particular communities and maligning them because every one of those communities has or should have the tools available to deal with those challenges of crime.

I have become quite dismayed here at the shameless posturing and pretense of members who shout and talk about being tough on crime and point their fingers. I saw a member today on the Conservative side stand in the House and point his finger aggressively at a member of the New Democratic Party as if she had done anything wrong.

Not one member in the House does not have constituents who have been victimized by crime. All of us have been victimized by crime and that will go on. Our challenge is to minimize it.

I want to give the House a test in relation to Bill C-15. How many members of the House actually know the current sentencing for the offences listed in Bill C-15? How many members know how many years one can get for these particular crimes? I have a loonie or a toonie if anyone does know. The fact is that almost none of us even know what the current sentencing is.

I am going to give the answer. Even before I get to the question of what the new proposed sentencing is, I am going to say what the current sentencing is.

That said, nobody in the House knows now what the sentence would be for a crime outlined in this bill. These are already crimes, but this bill just changes the sentencing. Knowing that nobody knows, how does the government think the average criminal out there would know what the sentence would be when the legislators do not even know?

The point is that ratcheting sentencing up and down does not make a difference on the street. The perception of the would-be criminal out there is binary in logic, binary in the sense that he or she is either going to get caught or not. The would-be criminal does not take a lot of time to do the sentencing mathematics. Why would he or she take the time when members in the House who are passing a bill dealing with sentencing do not even know what the current sentence is?

Now I am going to give the answer. Clause 1 of the bill deals with crimes in relation to trafficking and distribution of illegal drugs. Do we know what the sentence is now for conviction in regard to those? Already in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act the sentence is life in prison. The current sentence envelope is life in prison.

Do we know what big, tough move the government proposes in this bill? The big, tough-on-crime move is to say there will be a minimum sentence of one year. That is the big, tough move.

We have taken a sentence of life in prison, available to a judge in sentencing, and added in a one-year minimum. This is really going to have an impact on the street. All those would-be drug pushers out there are going to be shaking in their boots. The fact is they do not care about these laws. They would not be breaking laws in the first place if they did.

What does clause 2 of the bill do? What is the existing sentence for a crime under the section that is being amended by clause 2? There it is, life in prison. We already have a life in prison sentence. What has the government added in? It wants to add a minimum of one year.

I think I have made my point on that. I could go further.

However, I want to direct members' attention to proposed section 8 of the bill. It is a new section. Here is what it says. If a person is charged and convicted of any of these crimes for which life in prison is a potential sentence—we cannot go beyond that because we do not hang people anymore—essentially proposed section 8 requires the Attorney General to ask permission.

This provision is being proposed by a government that is pretending to be really tough, in a vacuum. The proposed section reads:

The court is not required to impose a minimum punishment unless it is satisfied that the offender, before entering a plea, was notified of the possible imposition of a minimum punishment for the offence in question and of the Attorney General’s intention to prove any factors in relation to the offence that would lead to the imposition of a minimum punishment.

The minimum sentence is one year.

When there is a life sentence available, the whole spectrum of imprisonment available for a conviction, how many of them will take the time to give the required notice and generate all the evidence necessary to address the factors in sentencing that would be necessary to impose the minimum sentence? Very few.

I would agree that there might be a case in the context of enforcement and prosecution where there was a particular offender with a long record, an offender clearly operating within the infrastructure of organized crime, that such a notice could, would or should be given.

The reason this provision is there is that, for better or for worse, there are Charter of Rights and Freedoms constraints on how we apply the criminal law and how we follow through on our due process. I am happy the provision is there. I am really not mocking it, but what I am suggesting is that in the face of this staged drama by the government that somehow there is a great war against crime and it is leading it with stupid sentencing, that somehow no one else in the House cares about it and no one else has a plan, I would love to hear a government member talk about the importance of proposed section 8 of the bill. It is an important section dealing with the application of the sentencing provisions.

Again, I do not think there is a criminal in this country or in the universe who will take one second of his or her busy criminal life to read and study proposed section 8, or clauses 1 or 2 of the bill, or any part of the Criminal Code. Criminals do not get around to reading anything until the day they call their lawyer after they have been busted. That is when they begin to do the sentence math or allow the lawyer to do it for them.

I want my remarks to be clear. I stand with everyone else on both sides of the House who wants to be effective and smart in dealing with and helping our communities to deal with the crime challenges. We realize that they do the enforcement, they do the prosecution and we do not. The big, bold government here knows full well that it does not spend a nickel on enforcement, on policing; it is the provinces and municipalities. They know it is a great drama, a staged political drama.

[National Security Committee of Parliamentarians Act, March 27th, 2009]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-352, An Act to establish the National Security Committee of Parliamentarians.

Madam Speaker, this bill is the same as the one introduced by me in the last Parliament and as government Bill C-81 introduced in 2005. The bill would create a committee of the House and Senate in the field of security and intelligence, capable of receiving and protecting classified information in the national security envelope. This is for the purpose of better assuring accountability effectiveness and civil liberties.

The components of the bill were composed and agreed to by an all party committee, a special committee which reported in 2004. The current government has told me it intends to proceed with such a bill, but so far, and it has been three years, it has not done the job.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Environmental Enforcement Act, March 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member urged us not to be too distracted by the details of the bill so that we are not distracted from what is actually the big gorilla in the room, which is climate change. That is excellent advice.

I want to ask her, in relation to all of the increased penalties and enforcement in the bill, and the index of the bill reads like an environmental who's who because it covers over half a dozen separate environmental protection statutes, if we here in the House should not be too distracted by all of this enactment of new penalties. I have grown weary over the years of all of the shameless posturing and pretence that we as politicians go through whenever we see a problem. For example, on the criminal side of things, we see a criminal act take place in some part of the country and we say we are going to pass a law to increase the penalty and that will deal with it, when in fact I do not think there is a criminal out there who knows what the penalty for these crimes really is. The criminals actually do not know.

I could probably win a $100 bet if I went around this House and asked what the penalty for an armed robbery is because there would not be a member in the House who would know. If we the legislators do not know what the penalty is for an armed robbery, how the heck do we think the criminal is going to know? In fact, the criminal could never know because the penalty is not known until the judge sentences the person in court well after the event, sometimes too long after the event.

Can we simply enact new penalties and new provisions and hope that it is going to make a difference? Do we not also have to invest in enforcement, in boots on the ground, in policing and regulatory authorities, people who will be there? Do we not have to do that--

[Environmental Enforcement Act, March 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I do know that the hon. member comes from Yukon, which is, in a relative sense, sparsely populated. However, as I listened to his remarks and to the questions and comments, I could not help but think that even though we are dealing with a bill that deals with insult to the environment, environmental degradation and offences against Canada related to environmental degradation, the biggest villain might be climate change.

I represent a riding in Toronto. Could the member comment on the relative weight that we perhaps should be attaching to these threats, one being the environmental degradation from people relative to the environmental change or degradation that is threatened by climate change? Which is more important in Yukon?

[Environmental Enforcement Act, March 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I will ask the hon. member about two very minor components of the bill, but components nonetheless.

In more than one section of the bill there is a provision that the regulations involved are not statutory instruments. The effect of that provision would be there would not be any pre-publication, any consultation, pre-enactment review of the regulations. We understand why that is the case in many respects because the order involved would have to be put in place quickly.

By saying in the bill that these orders, a compliance order, for example, would not be a statutory instrument, it precludes Parliament itself from reviewing these instruments after they are made and put in place, reviewing, as Parliament normally does for all regulations. That is the first thing.

Does the hon. member have any view about whether or not that is appropriate? I do not think it is. I think the Department of Justice, in drafting the bill, has either forgotten about Parliament or wishes to do an end run around Parliament.

Does she have any thought about the relatively new process in the bill where a fine for an infraction is not set out in the act? It is actually set out by way of a formula in the regulations, so in the end the government ends up setting the fine, not the statute.