House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2011, with 56% of the vote.
National Defence March 2nd, 2007
Mr. Speaker, the process we used is called advance contract award notices.
If my colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine does not agree with that process, she should know that this process, which we used to purchase the C-17 planes, is the same process that was used 3,264 times by the Liberal government. If she has problems with the process, she did not say anything about it when her government used the process more than 3,000 times.
Montreal Planetarium February 23rd, 2007
Mr. Speaker, every time our government makes a decision, we take great care to ensure that the interests of Quebeckers and Montrealers will be served. Michael Fortier is making sure that Montreal's voice is being heard loud and clear in our cabinet.
With respect to the planetarium, if we have a decision to announce, we will do so shortly. Our government will always serve Montreal's best interests.
Montreal Planetarium February 23rd, 2007
Mr. Speaker, we are aware of the situation. We respect the concerns expressed by the Bloc Québécois and by Quebeckers in the region. If any announcement is to be made, it will be made soon.
Chinese New Year February 16th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, on behalf of our government, I would like to offer my warmest greetings to all Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean Canadians as they welcome the Year of the Pig.
The Lunar New Year has become an important part of the Canadian cultural landscape, with celebrations taking place in homes and communities all across the country.
Simply put, the country we know and love today would not exist without the contribution of Canadians of Asian origin.
Chinese Canadians helped build the railway to the Pacific and now, more than a century later, Canada is building its Asia-Pacific Gateway to continue building our economic relationship to the rising economic powers of Asia.
Righting the wrong of the Chinese head tax was one of this government's great accomplishments.
As Chinese Canadians celebrate the Year of the Pig, I want to say Gung Hei Fat Choi.
In my community of Coquitlam, one of Canada's most vibrant Korean Canadian communities can be found. I wish to tell all my constituents and all Korean Canadians An young ha sae yo.
I also wish to tell all Vietnamese Canadian communities found across Canada, on behalf of our government, Chuc mung nam moi.
Mr. Speaker, happy Lunar New Year. May the new year bring health, happiness and success for all.
Government Contracts February 15th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, let me quote the Auditor General, “Given the serious weaknesses that we identified in our 2003 audit of government advertising activities, this year's findings”--this year's--“are good news”. She went on to say that Public Works has made good progress in ensuring that advertising and public opinion research contracts are awarded in a fair and transparent process.
Taxpayers deserve a government and an approach to contracting that is open, transparent, and gives value for taxpayers' dollars. This Conservative government is delivering. We are fixing what the Liberals did scandalously wrong for 10 long years.
Criminal Code February 14th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, I was not present at the committee meeting my hon. colleague referred to. I can however assure him that every bill that this government introduces in this House respects our Constitution and our laws.
This is the first time since I was elected to this place in 2000 that I see the Bloc Québécois finally support our Constitution. This is a great day for Canada; the Bloc Québécois wants to respect our Constitution and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
This bill is in the interest of Canadians and Quebeckers. It is proposing changes that are respectful of voters in the member's community and of those in mine as well. I think that, after having been debated in the House, this bill should be referred to committee for further consideration.
Criminal Code February 14th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague, the new justice critic for the Liberal Party, will bring a lot of important ideas to the debates.
Frankly, this is not an argument. When legislation is brought before the House of Commons, the justice minister or any minister responsible must put it through a vetting process to ensure that it recognizes and respects Canada's Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That process has been done.
As I said at the beginning of my comments to the member for Windsor—Tecumseh, some people in Canada often say to courts in this country that they should not be legislating. They should be judging the law but not be legislating law from the bench. The reverse reality to that is that Parliaments and legislators should not be assuming what the Supreme Court or any court will say.
This is a common sense provision. If my colleague looks at the cases that have taken place, this reverse onus provision is constitutional. It is respected and it has gone through the appropriate vetting processes to ensure that those standards are met before the legislation was introduced here in the House.
If my colleague is sincere in her request to have criminal justice reforms put through this Parliament and enacted on behalf of her constituents, I look forward to seeing her stand in her place and vote yes to the legislation to send it to committee for further examination. If she does not do that, then we know how sincere she was.
Criminal Code February 14th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this very important legislation.
In my community there is no more important issue that has been expressed by my constituents in the past couple of campaigns than the issue of criminal justice reform.
The Vancouver area and the lower mainland have some of the highest property crime rates in all of North America and violent crime is also on the rise. This is a growing concern in my community and a growing concern across the lower mainland.
My colleague, the member for Selkirk—Interlake, mentioned that to a lot of Canadians and certainly to a lot of my constituents there is a concern that our justice system is like a fisheries program. It is like a catch and release program rather than a real true justice system where people are held accountable for their behaviour, particularly dealing with the issue of dangerous offenders.
Dangerous offenders is what this legislation is about. It specifically deals with people who have been convicted, who we know are dangerous, who we know are threat to our communities and we know the reality of recidivism rates with people who are particularly sexual offenders and we have an opportunity to hold them accountable and to protect the public. We should take that responsibility seriously and we should enact legislation to protect the public when we know we can. We know we can and our government is trying to do that with the bill.
The dangerous offender provisions have a long history in Canada and have been used as a sentencing tool going back to 1947 with legislation creating the habitual offender designation. That legislation created specific sentencing measures targeting persistent dangerous criminals engaged in the more serious forms of crime. The provisions allowed the courts to impose either a determinate or indeterminate sentence where the crown was able to satisfy the court that the individual's habitual criminal activity was not likely to be deterred by a regular sentence and the individual had been convicted of three or more indictable offences.
Courts were guided by fundamental principles of justice in sentencing to determine that while an offender might be of extreme risk to commit further offences at the time of sentencing, if there was evidence that after a sentence of incarceration and parole that the threat would cease to exist, the court had the duty to impose a determinate as opposed to an indeterminate sentence.
The provisions were amended a number of times but the next major redrafting occurred in August 1997 with the passage of Bill C-55. The most significant amendment in the 1997 legislation was an attempt by the government of the day to do away with the judicial discretion afforded prior to that time for a dangerous offender to be given a determinate or fixed sentence.
The rationale behind the move was that a new sentencing option, the long term offender designation, would be offered to those individuals who did not quite meet the dangerous offender criteria. It was perhaps believed that in doing so, the loss of discretion regarding the indeterminate sentence was acceptable to the courts from a charter perspective, given the availability of the lesser long term offender designation.
As has been mentioned many times during the debate on the bill, in 2003 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in R. v. Johnson that while Parliament could do many things, it could not remove the discretion of the sentencing judge in a dangerous offender sentence and still respect the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The court reiterated the principles established by the Supreme Court of Canada's previous leading case on the charter viability of the indeterminate sentencing option in R. v. Lyons handed down in 1987.
As a result of the 1997 amendments and the decision in Johnson, we ran into a new, albeit unanticipated, problem regarding the sentencing and management of dangerous offenders. The impact has been that a number of individuals who were originally intended to receive the indeterminate sentence of dangerous offender are instead being sentenced under the lesser long term offender option, with the result that these individuals will eventually be released into the community under a long term supervision order of up to 10 years.
From the perspective of the crown prosecutors, the impact of the Johnson decision was that, in many cases, they are now under an additional burden. Not only must they approve beyond a reasonable doubt that the offender meets the dangerous offender criteria, as was the case prior to the decision in Johnson, but they must also prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the lesser sentence of a long term offender designation could not be used to successfully manage the risk that the individual posed to society.
Offenders who otherwise arguably would qualify for an indeterminate sentence on evidence that they are very likely to repeat their sexual or violent offences when released, can now argue much more easily that they will be manageable under a regular sentence followed by a 10 year supervision period in the community. Let us be clear that post-Johnson, the offender often strategically decides to simply refuse to cooperate with the evaluation process knowing this will frustrate the crown's ability to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. If the crown cannot meet this burden then the court cannot impose the indeterminate sentence.
Clearly, action was required to resolve these new anomalies. Bill C-27 does take some bold steps but the suggestion that this proposal is unconstitutional in any way is not founded on an accurate understanding of either the current state of the law on dangerous offenders or what Bill C-27 actually does propose.
The concern appears to be centred on an assumption that there is a constitutional requirement in a sentencing hearing to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. This argument cites the need to respect section 11(d) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. While I agree that it is a fundamental principle of justice that a person charged with an offence is presumed innocent until proven guilty, as enshrined in the charter, this tenet simply does not apply to the sentencing process.
I note that the Supreme Court of Canada, in the landmark case R. v. Lyons, canvassed the issue of whether rights associated with trial proceedings could be extended to dangerous offender proceedings. The court in Lyons was clear that the section 11 charter right regarding the procedural protection to be tried by jury does not extend to the sentencing phase. In my view, this rationale applies equally to the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. In other words, it does not apply to the sentencing process. It is very clear.
This fundamental right is analogous to the other procedural rights enumerated in section 11 and, as such, it is hard to suggest that the logic applied previously by the court in Lyons would be any different. The individual has already been presumed innocent, has been tried and has been found guilty. The right to be presumed innocent has been preserved and nothing in Bill C-27 touches the sanctity of this basic principle of justice or charter right.
While I respect the opinions of members opposite, it is nonetheless my view that the presumption of dangerousness after the third conviction is constitutional given that it is consistent with the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in R. v. Lyons.
I recognize the opposition's concerns. Nonetheless, I believe that it would be a great disappointment to all Canadians if the bill were to fail to proceed further than this debate.
I support Bill C-27 and I support sending it to committee for further study and consideration. Indeed, this is where I believe these issues can be more thoroughly considered, addressed and discussed.
We need the bill to pass to ensure more consistent consideration of the dangerous offender provision by crown prosecutors and to ensure more effective management of high risk offenders. That is what Canadians expect of us, that is why the legislation should pass and that is why I encourage all members of the House to support the legislation. We must hold criminals and multi-convicted criminals accountable for their behaviour. Let us stand up and do something right for victims for once.
Criminal Code February 14th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague from Windsor has been working on justice issues for a number years for the New Democratic Party.
Many people in the Conservative movement in Canada often say that courts should not be legislating, but there is an inverse to that logic, which is that legislatures should not prejudge what courts are going to decide.
This legislation has gone through the process within the justice department and the issue of whether or not it is constitutionally fit was dealt with. Therefore, the core issue is the issue of principle that we are dealing with, with regard to criminal justice reforms. As the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice said a minute ago, this is unanimously supported by deputy attorneys general across the country, including those in the NDP Governments of Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
I know for a fact that Mike Farnworth, the NDP MLA in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, the riding that I represent, takes a very strong stand on criminal justice issues as the justice critic for the NDP in British Columbia. He understands that the public is, frankly, tired of laws that do not seem to hold people accountable, which is what the first part of this legislation is about.
On the principle of this legislation, which is that if somebody, after having had all his or her rights respected and having gone through the process, is convicted of sexual interference, inviting sexual touching, sexual exploitation, incest, attempt to commit murder, aggravated assault, sexual assault, kidnapping, or sexual assault with a weapon or threats of bodily harm, any three of those crimes, after the third conviction the person needs to demonstrate to the public that he or she is not a dangerous offender and is no longer a threat.
What in the world is wrong with that basic principle? How in the world can the NDP be opposed to that?
Public Works and Government Services February 14th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her question. I can assure her that our government is aware of the situation and that we are taking the appropriate action.