Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege for me to speak today to Bill C-9, an act to amend the Criminal Code.
The government's platform commitment to take an active role in the proper administration of justice is clear. This bill is an equally clear legislative example of that commitment in the area of sentencing reform.
Bill C-9 would serve communities across Canada by eliminating the availability of conditional sentences for serious crimes, such as sexual offences, weapons offences, impaired driving causing bodily harm or death, and major drug offences.
As our platform indicates, serious crimes involving violence and drugs demand appropriately measured penalties for offenders. As recent events illustrate, this demand is present in our communities and it is immediate.
After 13 years of Liberal rule, we know how crime has become worse. The statistics bear this out, and I am sure the hon. member for Scarborough will enjoy my speech this evening.
According to Statistics Canada, the rate of drug incidents increased 11% in 2004. Cannabis possession incidents increased 15% and cannabis cultivation cases, the marijuana grow op operations, have doubled from 3,400 incidents in 1994 to over 8,000 of them in 2004. In fact, the largest grow op in the country was in the riding beside mine, in the city of Barrie, in the old Molson plant. We had cocaine incidents increase by almost 70% in 2004, to almost 17,000; heroin-related incidents were up 19%, to almost 800; and drug importation offences were up 45%, to almost 1,000. These are staggering increases.
Drugs and drug-related violence pose a threat to our communities, our children and our law enforcement officers. I get tired of hearing people criticize government for wanting to punish drug users, growers and dealers. Drugs and the crimes that go along with them cost our economy huge dollars. Bill C-9 conversely sets out to curb them.
When conditional sentences are handed down for serious offences involving drugs, the purpose of sentencing is confused. The purpose of sentencing should be to show respect for the law, to prevent further crime, and to maintain a more just, safe and peaceful society. Perhaps I can take a few moments to list some examples.
A few weeks ago here in Ottawa, we had a home invasion by youths. They brutally beat a man in his nineties because they thought he had some money. This gentleman lived in an average family neighbourhood. Why should he have been worried that someone would break into his home and beat him up?
These are the types of crimes that are very frustrating to police. They feel as though their hands are tied. I know because I have gone on patrol with the police in my riding of Simcoe—Grey. They say the gangs from Toronto come up on the weekends and it is largely drug-related. The reason they feel their hands are tied is because of how they have to treat young offenders. If they charge someone without first offering counselling, the judge will throw the case out. I do not think many Canadians would agree that counselling is proportional punishment for savagely beating a helpless man, but I will come back to that a bit later.
A couple of nights ago, one of our staffers parked his car just around the corner from his house. At 7:30 in the evening, on Sussex, it was broken into. Significant damage was done to the vehicle, not to mention that property was stolen. Ask any police officer, why do people break into homes demanding cash or break into cars to steal a stereo or valuables? Ask police officers why it happened and they will tell us the same thing: drugs.
Late last month in my riding, in the town of Collingwood, a man broke into a home and sexually assaulted a woman. When asked about it by a local reporter, the investigating officer said that usually when people break into homes, it is drug and theft-related and sexual assaults are part of the crime.
I hear the frustration of Simcoe--Grey police officers all the time. They arrest someone on a drug charge knowing full well that in all likelihood that person will be back out on the street within hours. For young offenders, they just do not even bother.
On Wednesday, May 3, a 16-year-old male was stabbed in my riding. The 17-year-old Alliston male who did it was charged by police with aggravated assault, possession of a dangerous weapon, assault with a weapon, and failure to comply with a probation order. Perhaps he had not had enough counselling.
I am also reminded of the beautiful young lady who was gunned down in Toronto while shopping on Boxing Day. We later learned that one of those charged had just previously been charged on a separate offence. We see this all too often.
Our system has to be changed so criminals cannot treat our justice system like a revolving door. I heard this over and over during the election campaign. Fortunately, my party had a plan and I was able to share that with my constituents.
Last year my colleague from Whitby—Oshawa, the Minister of Finance, led a Conservative Party task force on safe streets and healthy communities. During this time I toured Simcoe—Grey with various local police detachments. The growing anxiety that people have about crime is not, I believe, unfounded. For example, in 2004 a Nottawasaga OPP detachment reported 238 break and enters. The Collingwood detachment reported 2,206 criminal offences. The Wasaga Beach OPP reported 80 drug regulated charges with over $3 million in drugs removed from the streets in Wasaga Beach.
We know that even so-called petty crime is crime that costs all of us, but I am not sure there is anything such as petty crime. Crime costs all of us and for too long. The previous government has been way too easy on crime and the criminals who commit it. Bill C-9 is going to help correct this.
That brings us to sentencing and what is fair. A further objective of the Criminal Code is that of proportionality. In all cases the aim is to find a sentence that is proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender. It is the position of this government that the objective of proportionality is put in jeopardy when conditional sentences are granted to serious drug offenders.
Illegal narcotics, by virtue of their effects on citizens and their accompanying violence, are a phenomenon of which our government must be concerned. We made a platform commitment to take it seriously. People have been affected by drug crime. We promised to take positive action to do something about it, but there is no sense in making such a promise unless we are prepared to move immediately. These changes cannot happen soon enough. It is with this commitment in mind that we stress the necessity of the passage of Bill C-9.
In proposing this bill, we also keep in mind the matter of Regina v. Kerr. In this case the offender, Kerr, was convicted of three counts of trafficking in heroin and one count of improperly storing a firearm. Heroin is a schedule I narcotic, the trafficking of which is an indictable offence punishable by life in prison under section 5 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Though the trial judge found a conditional sentence inappropriate, the Court of Appeal overturned the sentence of imprisonment and granted Kerr a conditional sentence of 18 months.
I cannot explain that one to the hard-working taxpayer in my riding of Simcoe—Grey who respects the law, provides for his family and plays by the rules. Someone is charged with three counts of trafficking in heroin and gets a conditional sentence.
What the Court of Appeal deemed an overemphasis on general deterrence, the trial judge was found to have appeared to treat drug trafficking as creating a presumption against conditional sentences. The conditional sentence of Kerr was born of a culture of leniency owing to a lack of necessary legislative safeguards. This bill gives legislative teeth to impose more serious sentences for serious crimes.
In the periodic absence of proportionality at common law, we have found a need to legislate proportionality back into sentencing. This, we assert, requires some bounds by which conditional sentences may not be imposed. In the world of drug trafficking, sometimes people need to go to jail.
Among the mitigating factors cited by the Court of Appeal was the fact that Mr. Kerr was dealing in small amounts of heroin and that he was an addict. What the trial judge pointed out, however, was that heroin had not been sold to an undercover officer. It may have been sold to another addict. The judge correctly pointed out that the actions of the offender, his own addiction aside, had the potential to either ruin or put an end to another life.
The argument made by the trial judge bears some reflection. On one hand, many of the cases involving trafficking of narcotics examined by the Department of Justice contain an accused with sympathetic unfortunate circumstances. Often these circumstances are noted as mitigating factors in favour of a conditional sentence, but at what cost? What our platform commitment and indeed what this bill requests is that the circumstances of the trafficker be weighed against that of the addict being sold the narcotics. Lives are ruined or terminated at the hands of illegal drugs every day in this country.
Our government is committed to punishing the purveyors of these drugs by limiting conditional sentences for these drug offenders.
Two points bear noting. The first is that this reform does not propose to modify or change the fundamental purpose and principles of sentencing contained in the Criminal Code. Instead it seeks to embrace them. With respect to serious matters, it implicitly requires the courts to focus principally but not exclusively on the objectives of denunciation, incapacitation and general deterrence. Second, we do not propose to ban conditional sentences altogether.
