Mr. Speaker, we are now getting down to the later stages of the bill, the report stage, after having had a rather short time in committee to deal with it. It could have been shorter, but as we have seen with the list of amendments here at the report stage, it is pretty clear that nobody and no party was satisfied with the bill, either at second reading at committee or here at report stage. In fact, the government itself moved a series of amendments at report stage, clearly indicating that sufficient consideration had not been given to the bill either in its preparation for second reading or in committee.
We had one meeting devoted to one aspect of this nine-bill omnibus bill, the justice for victims of terrorism act. None of the amendments that the member for Mount Royal moved were accepted at the committee, yet we had five or six or seven amendments from the government at report stage in an attempt to fix what could have been fixed in committee.
Now this omnibus bill is being rushed through. My amendment, Motion No. 1, is to remove the short title. The short title is “safe streets and communities act”. We want to remove that title because, aside from the provisions having to do with sexual assault and offences against children, which we supported, every single expert who came before our committee essentially said that overall, the provisions of the bill were going to lead to greater crime in this country and to streets being less safe. These experts included anybody who had done any study and anybody who had any credentials based upon their work or their training, whether professors of law, professors of criminology, people who had studied this, or representatives from the Canadian Bar Association, who are experts in this field and represent both prosecutors and defence counsel. The Barreau du Québec was another group that came before us with criticisms of the bill.
We had strong representations from the Attorney General of Quebec, who spoke passionately about the experience in Quebec over the last 40 years in dealing with young offenders and about the principles Quebec operated on, principles that are being changed by this legislation. He said quite strongly that the changes being proposed here were so contrary to the experience and prospects of young people in the youth justice system in Quebec that he wanted them changed. He wanted the provinces to be able to make exemptions in the publication of young people's names, for example. He complained about the use of adult sentences. He complained about changing the principles of sentencing for the Youth Criminal Justice Act to add individual deterrence and denunciation as principles of sentencing, as opposed to rehabilitation. He talked about how successful they had been in Quebec in keeping young people out of jail, to the point that they have a greater success record than the rest of the country.
When we heard expert after expert telling us that the results of the sentencing changes, particularly the mandatory minimums and particularly the lack of flexibility in allowing judges to fashion sentences in extreme cases, we were overwhelmed, frankly, by the received wisdom of those experts saying that there was something wrong with the bill. We opposed it at second reading and tried to make substantive changes to the bill in committee, given the limited time that we had, but we were unsuccessful.
Not a single amendment proposed by any opposition party was accepted in the clause-by-clause study of the bill, yet some of the amendments proposed by the member for Mount Royal are mirrored in the amendments proposed by the government, but ruled out of order by the Speaker, at report stage.
We have a very difficult situation here. I realize it is symbolic to change the name of the bill. The government calls this piece of legislation the “safe streets and communities act”, yet it wants to limit debate to depicting itself as being tough on crime and the opposition as being sympathetic to criminals and wanting things to be a lot easier for them. That is the nature of the debate that the government has tried to foist upon Canadians, but the response from Canadians has been overwhelmingly critical of the government's approach to changing the fundamental aspects of our criminal justice system.
There are some exceptions. Not everything in the bill is negative or bad, and we supported many aspects of it, but to say that this piece of legislation is going to provide safer streets and communities is laughable. There are people who believe that criminals do not get heavy enough sentences for what they do; there may be selective ways of doing that, but the way the bill tackles this issue has resulted in the most consistent level of opposition that I have ever seen from those concerned about the nature of our criminal justice system.
Even those who support the bill have reservations. The Association of Chiefs of Police says it supports it in principle. Some victims of crime came forward to say they were concerned about not having tougher sentences, while others said they were more concerned about prevention and rehabilitation. There are those who think there should be stronger sentences, and our judges are listening to that. Parts of the bill deal with that issue, and we support that aspect.
As I mentioned, the government has called the bill the “safe streets and communities act”, yet expert evidence has indicated that the overall effects of the bill are more likely to lead to more crime, more recidivism or repeat offenses, more victims of crime and less safety for our streets.
Our Motion No. 1 is directed at doing just that.
Motions Nos. 2, 5 and 8 in this grouping relate to what is called acts of terrorism against Canada and Canadians, but the bill really would establish a new tort to allow victims of acts of terrorism to bring civil suits against foreign countries or foreign agencies.
We have some problems with that bill. We do not have a problem with the approach, and there are a number of amendments try to fix the bill. The government has recognized at this stage, a little too late, that it should have been fixed, but that is an indication of how it has rushed this legislation and failed to give the proper amount of time to consider it.
It also underscores that for clearly political and ideological reasons, the bill is being lumped together with eight other bills to support the government's notion that it is tough on crime and the opposition is not. We are trying to improve the bill, make the criminal justice system fairer and more reasonable, and raise the point that changes have to be made to the bill but are not being made.
Even the United States, which probably has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, has safety valves for mandatory minimum sentences; this legislation has none.
There would have been an opportunity in committee to fix the bill if there had been more time. Many changes could have been made in committee. The Speaker ruled that the government's amendments are all out of order because they could have been presented in committee, so clearly the bill could have been fixed if we had had more time to do a proper job, and we argued for more time in the face of time allocation.
