House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2011, with 50% of the vote.
Protecting Canadians by Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murders Act November 15th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague from Manitoba wants to put the figures on the record. I will ask him to continue with regard to what in fact is the practice in Canada, and has been for a good number of years, that puts us at the top level in the world in terms of sentencing people to time to be served in our prisons.
Protecting Canadians by Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murders Act November 15th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, the title of the bill is another one like those we have seen from the government; it seems to almost demean the issue when it talks about discounts. As one of my colleagues said, it almost feels as if he is at a supermarket when that kind of terminology is used.
I wonder if my colleague from the Bloc would comment about that and tell us what he thinks the families of murder victims would feel when they see that kind of wording used on a bill that is as significant to them as this one is.
Protecting Canadians by Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murders Act November 15th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, my colleague is doing a good job of answering my questions, but I want to challenge him with this one.
We just had evidence before the justice committee, the week before the break week, that 25 years, minimum, is how long one has to spend in custody, except for the faint hope clause, which the government is trying to get rid of.
Just so that we are clear, when the Minister of Justice was in front of the committee, he made it clear that if this bill goes through and judges do assign two life sentences, the minimum amount of time spent in custody before people will be able to apply to get out will be 50 years. It will be 25 years plus 25 years.
Right now, the average time for a first degree murder conviction, multiple or not, is 25 years. The minimum time people spend in custody for first degree murder convictions is 25 years.
I would ask the member this. Is the government really serious, with absolutely no reservations, if the judge uses his discretion, about wanting people to spend 50 years in custody? Are we really accomplishing anything?
Protecting Canadians by Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murders Act November 15th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his answer, which was a good one. I sometimes work with him, and in this instance, my party will be supporting the bill at this stage. Indeed, it is important for our country that the committee have an opportunity to hear testimonies with respect to this bill.
Let us now look at the situation where an individual is found guilty of two or three murders. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice knows that when someone receives a life sentence, it is really a life sentence. As a lawyer, could he address that matter? How can a sentence lasting the entire life of an individual be imposed more than once? As a lawyer, can he tell us how that works? That is my question.
Protecting Canadians by Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murders Act November 15th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, I was interested in the comments by the parliamentary secretary on the issue of respect for the judicial system, or our justice system generally. I understand his argument on the one side, but maybe it is my exposure to the U.S. system, because I am located geographically in the country looking north to Michigan and the United States and the impact that the media on the U.S. side has on us and the amount of information we get.
We hear about people in the United States being sentenced to 100 years and 200 years. I remember one case in the United States, which may have been early on in my practice, where somebody was sentenced to 600 years consecutive.
Does the parliamentary secretary not feel, considering cases like that, that we could, with this bill, be in danger of bringing into ridicule the justice system if we were to have sentences that exceed any possible life expectancy of any human being on this planet? Does he not see that that could bring into disrepute and disrespect the justice system?
Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act November 15th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, the answer for my colleague from Ottawa Centre is no, we did not have that.
The House should be aware that the Liberal member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe did propose an amendment to the short title which was determined by the justice committee chair to be out of order. There was a real opportunity at that point for the government to say to the opposition side that we should talk about this and maybe we can reach a mutual agreement with unanimous consent of the committee to change the short title to one that is meaningful and reflective of the content and substance of the bill.
As the justice critic for my party, I can say that we did not have any of those overtures. I do not believe the other two opposition parties had any overtures from the government. However, there was the opportunity as a result of that amendment moved by the Liberals to open the door and there was no response.
Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act November 15th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, the question from my colleague from Mississauga South allows me to hammer home a point.
This week is another crime week in the House. If the Conservatives were really serious in stopping the politicization of the Criminal Code, stopping the propaganda war and stopping the use of victims for their propaganda war, which they do all the time, including in this bill, they would be doing a major revamp of the Criminal Code. Rather than dealing with this on a piecemeal basis where they can play these kinds of political games, it would save a lot of time if we had a complete review of the Criminal Code to bring it into the 21st century and do it in one massive approach.
With the prorogations and early election calls, we have wasted a lot of time on crime bills. If we were to bundle them together in large bills, maybe all in one but certainly no more than two or three, we could have expedited almost everything that the government has put before us two and three years ago.
Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act November 15th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the proposed amendment by the government, which is a pretty straightforward one. All it does is put back the short title to Bill C-22.
In committee, the opposition parties, after analyzing the bill, unanimously came to the conclusion that the short title was just a piece of propaganda on the part of the government with really very little, if anything, to do with the content of the bill. For that reason, the committee voted to delete the short title. From a procedural standpoint, quite frankly, it does not make any difference in terms of the bill going through.
All opposition parties, as well as the government, are supportive of the bill. It is one that should have gone through the House years ago, but with the calling of prorogation and other stalling that the government did on its crime bills, it sat for years, and I mean that literally, before it came forth.
It is not a significant amendment in deleting the short title in terms of the content of the bill and the bill going forward. What it does is ask the government to get serious and stop playing partisan politics, especially with issues of online child pornography, with this. It asks the government to stop its propagandizing, to be honest in terms of its legislation and to stop using these silly titles.
This is not the first and probably not the last time that I will take some offence to this as a lawyer who practised in the courts. In court, as a practising lawyer, as an advocate for our clients, we obviously refer to legislation that is before the court on whatever issue we are dealing with. Historically in the courts we have used the short titles rather than the long titles to refer to the law. Just imagining myself in the court room using some of the short titles that the government has used, both in this bill and in other bills, I would be embarrassed as a practising lawyer.
I do not see myself as a practising lawyer doing anything other than protecting my client's interest when I am in the court room. I am not there, nor are the prosecutors and defence counsels in the country, to push the propaganda role that the partisan Conservative government wants to push when it comes to these short titles. We are not there for that purpose. That is demeaning, quite frankly, to our role as advocates.
We are there to deal with serious issues that are before the court, especially when we are dealing with an issue like online child pornography. We do not see ourselves as agents for the Conservative Party of Canada and its propaganda machine. For that reason alone, I have taken some offence to a number of the bills that have come forward with these short titles that are often misleading, and this is another example of it.
The short title the government is proposing to put back in, that we voted out at committee, talks about protecting children from online sexual exploitation. However, the long title, and the more accurate one by far, is Bill C-22, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service. The bill, in its entirety, is all about forcing, cajoling and encouraging Internet service providers to report if they identify it. Then, if on request or under warrant, that they provide additional information so it can be tracked. It is a tool that our police and prosecutors have needed for some time.
As I said earlier, for years we have been hearing from them. I know the justice minister regularly has heard from the other provincial justice ministers and attorneys general for this need for quite some time at their annual meetings or semi-annual meetings.
The bill has been before the House in the past. It has been sitting here waiting to be dealt with. Then we had either an election called or, on two occasions, prorogation and the bill just sat.
It is quite clear this is a valuable tool. It is why all the opposition parties are in favour of it. However, to trivialize it by throwing these silly titles in, which are either irrelevant or misleading, is something that we should not as legislators countenance. The government should be ashamed of itself for bringing this back. Had it brought a more meaningful short title back, it probably would have had support from this side of the House. All it did was bring back exactly the same wording, which as I said earlier is grossly misleading as to what the bill would do.
It is really a technical bill. It is one that is absolutely needed. To suggest that somehow this is the be all and end all of sexual exploitation over the Internet of our children is grossly misleading and not one that we should countenance as opposition parties or as the legislature as a whole.
Therefore, we will be voting against the amendment of the government. It does not advance the cause of fighting the issue of child pornography at all.
It was interesting when the parliamentary secretary asked a question earlier of one of my colleagues. In the course of the question there was at least an implication, if not an outright statement, that somehow we would be able to protect children from being abused in Canada. What came out in the hearing, when we dealt with the issue of online child pornography, was there were very few exceptions, and I think we have had three to five cases in Canada, where the child who was abused in the online material was in Canada.
That is why this title is so misleading. The reality is this abuse of the children is not occurring in Canada to any significant degree. Almost all of this material is coming in from international sources. The abuse is occurring in Asia, Africa, Europe and some places in the United States. In those countries when we identify the source, and we will be able to do that much better if we finally get the bill passed, through the Senate and get royal proclamation, it will allow us to help jurisdictions where the abuse has actually occurred.
The point I want to make, and this is why I am taking issue with the parliamentary secretary, is we know that in a number of the jurisdictions, and in fact a vast majority of the jurisdictions where this material is being produced, even if we do share the knowledge that we will obtain as to the source, the police forces, the prosecutors, the justice system will either be unwilling to respond or will not have the capacity to respond.
I think Canadians need to be aware of that. We fight it as much as we can in Canada, but this is an international problem and it is one that we cannot deal with entirely by ourselves. We need that co-operation at the other end and it is not always there. In fact, in a lot of cases it is not there at all.
Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act November 1st, 2010
Mr. Speaker, with respect to the government, I do not see any programming coming in at all.
This is not radical thinking. This is not radical planning. Most of the states in the United States, which are much more conservative than we are, much more oriented to a free market, have provisions at the state level for guaranteeing pensions. They are backed by the state governments. That is not a radical plan. It is quite common throughout most of western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, all societies that have markets similar to ours.
In the case of insolvency or insufficiencies in the pension plan, we need for those to be backstopped by a reserve fund, and that reserve fund needs to be backstopped by government, at both the federal and provincial levels.
We are probably 40, 50 years beyond where we should be in providing this in our social safety net. It is not so difficult to do it. We know how to structure it. But we need the political will to put that legislation in place.
With regard to the stimulus program, my community is somewhat unusual. I am in the southernmost part of the country, and so weather has not been a problem for construction. My community was in such bad economic shape that they had a number of programs ready to go as soon as the funding became available.
We think we are going to meet our deadlines, but we are pretty unusual. There are other parts of this country that are going to need extensions.
Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act November 1st, 2010
Mr. Speaker, the reality is that it does not do it.
Is this not a serious problem? Yes, it is. I have been the justice critic for my party for nearly seven years now. I understand how serious this is. I also understand that the proposals and the so-called programming that were put out on Friday go nowhere near meeting the requirements.
It is not focused. A good deal of this money is not being spent on the aboriginal community or the missing women. It is being dispersed in various programs throughout the Canadian community.