Mr. Speaker, this is not an issue of the law. This is a decision made by a judge. The laws are there for the purposes of any kind of penalty that a judge wishes to impose at this time.
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Justice September 26th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, this is not an issue of the law. This is a decision made by a judge. The laws are there for the purposes of any kind of penalty that a judge wishes to impose at this time.
Justice September 26th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, we introduced the bill. That bill is now before the House and now before the parliamentary committee. We respect the role of the parliamentary committee, and that is where the bill now resides.
Justice September 26th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, together with the Minister of Health we rescheduled the whole question of crystal meth so we could attack it with enhanced sentencing in that regard. We have legislation before the House with regard to four new offences with enhanced penalties to combat the grow ops across the country. Where it is necessary we will introduce the required penalties in that regard.
Justice September 26th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, we are committed to introducing every initiative to protecting our streets and innocent victims, not only with regard to conditional sentencing in matters of gun related crime. While we now have more mandatory minimums for gun related crimes than any other crime in the Criminal Code, save for murder, we are still looking at that matter with regard to any initiatives we can introduce in regard to protecting our streets and our victims. We would appreciate the co-operation of the opposition in that regard.
Justice September 26th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, the government will be introducing legislation particularly with regard to combatting issues of conditional sentences and ensuring both that our streets are safe and that innocent victims are protected.
Justice June 28th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member should read the decision from which he is quoting. In fact, the December decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal said it would not release the report because of considerations of privacy and in the interests of the administration of justice. As a result of this most recent judgment, we said we would now be prepared to look into it.
As I have said, I have no objection to releasing that report. In fact, I look forward to it, provided it is consistent with issues of privacy and the administration of justice. We will address that in our letter to the Ontario Court of Appeal.
Justice June 28th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, in our submission to the court we said at the time that we had no objection to the release of Justice Kaufman's report with appropriate protections in matters of privacy and in the interests of the administration of justice. One of the parties objected to the release of the report. We are now going to confer to see whether we will nonetheless authorize the court to release it, notwithstanding that there may be an objection by one of the parties.
Justice June 28th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, we have said before and I will repeat again that the evidence we have thus far has demonstrated that mandatory minimums serve neither as a deterrent nor an effect. We share with the hon. member the concern with respect to the protection of public safety. We now await a report that is about to be tendered with respect to the deputy ministers who have looked into this issue. We will see what their response is on matters of mandatory minimums and other sentencing principles.
Civil Marriage Act June 28th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has said that the notwithstanding clause, as a hypothetical, would be there for that rare possibility in order to protect rights, not to override rights. We are talking about the use of the notwithstanding clause. As I said to the hon. members of the opposition, if they want to re-invoke the traditional definition of marriage then at least have the honesty to say that they would have to use the notwithstanding clause to do so.
They should not invite Canadians to think it could be done by a magic wand of verbiage. If they are going to re-invoke the traditional definition of marriage, they should be prepared to tell Canadians that they are going to use that notwithstanding clause and if they use it, they are going to be overriding the charter of rights. They are going to be overriding the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, overriding decisions of eight provinces and a territory, and they are going to be overriding the rule of law and constitutional law in this country. If they want to do that, at least they should be honest and say that is what they want to do. However, I have not seen that kind of honesty, regrettably, from the opposition in this debate.
Civil Marriage Act June 28th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, I had a sense that this was going to be proposed regardless of what I said. Many of my remarks were spent trying to address that kind of scenario.
The hon. member says that the only one party that wants this is the Liberal Party. I might add that it is not a matter of this party or another party. It is a matter of the rule of law in this country. It is a matter of court decisions in nine jurisdictions following New Brunswick's decision last week, eight provinces and one territory. It is a matter of a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, all of which are constitutional law and a law for making laws.
Any statute about which the hon. member spoke has to comport with the charter, the Constitution, the rule of law and these constitutional law decisions. If we were not to comport with the rule of law, the charter and all these constitutional law decisions, we would have to use a notwithstanding clause and in using it state that all that has been declared as being constitutional can somehow now be regarded as being unconstitutional. That is not the kind of country that Canadians would want or invite.