Joe Comartin

[International Transfer of Offenders Act, September 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the simple answer to the first question is obviously yes, that this approach to the overall bill, but that clause that I keep repeating, giving the absolute discretion to the minister of anything that is relevant to be determined by the minister, is clearly an arbitrary measure way beyond the scope of what we normally pass as laws in this country and certainly in this legislature.

The second question is a bit more difficult. I do not think there is any way we can leave in that particular wording about the minister considering relevant any factor. I do not see any way we can put constraints on that.

With respect to the other seven criteria, some of which I do not agree with, the wording could be changed, although I think some of it would have to be removed.

We are, in effect, doing the same as we have with judges in the Criminal Code. Over the years, we have given them sentencing principles that guide them but constrain their discretion. We could be doing the same. I do not see this bill being amended. It needs to be redrafted and, in that redrafting, those constraints could be built in.

[International Transfer of Offenders Act, September 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, my first answer is that one just needs to look at the track record of the ministers who have exercised this discretion, more limited as it is under the current legislation.

The second point is that judges exercise their discretion by imposing mandatory minimums generally with one or two exceptions. Judges exercise their discretion within the principles that are set out in the Criminal Code. We have had sentencing principles for 30-plus years and we exercise, as judges, restrictions within that. Our courts of appeal, all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada, supervise that the judicial discretion they have is exercised properly within those guidelines that we as parliamentarians have given them having gone through the democratic process.

We also have judges who have been trained, both as lawyers and as judges, to understand how they are supposed to exercise that discretion. We obviously do not have that in the ministers in the government. Now my colleague is saying that we will give them even more discretion.

I would not give this discretion that is in the bill to a judge. I am not prepared to say that any judge in this country should be able to take into account any other factor that he or she considers relevant. I am not prepared to give that to anybody. We operate under a rule of law. We set the guidelines and we expect them to interpret those and apply them, not go off on some whim.

[International Transfer of Offenders Act, September 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-5 is in its second incarnation in this House. It was first introduced as Bill C-59 in November 2009. Of course, it got killed as did so many other really important pieces of crime legislation that absolutely had to be passed immediately. Because of the Prime Minister's prorogation of Parliament in late December 2009, it went down the tubes as did all the other bills at that time. In spite of the protestations and advocacy we heard from the government side about the absolute need to pass these bills immediately, of course prorogation was more important. The bill was then reintroduced in April when it had three hours of debate. The government never did bring it back in the spring, but finally brought it back in the fall of this year.

This bill is quite offensive to a fundamental principle of our democracy, and western democracies in particular. That principle is the rule of law. This is not the only bill where the government has attempted to do this, and in some cases has done it, but it shifts significant power into the whimsical hands of ministers. When I see that, I sometimes think we are back at the point where we have the divine right of kings, that rule where the government of the day gets to make whatever decision it wants based on whatever reason it wants. That basically is what the bill would do.

We just heard from my colleague from Burnaby—Douglas that the system as it is right now, since 1993, has had four cases of recidivism out of 620. That is a rate of .6%.

I will come back to this point in more detail vis-à-vis the two cases that came down on Tuesday of this week from the Federal Court where the decision, again a whimsical decision, of the minister of public safety of the day was overturned. If we proceed with this bill and more prisoners in other countries are refused access to this program, what happens then is they will come out of prisons in other countries where there has been no rehabilitation program at all and will come back to Canada without any criminal record, which makes it difficult for our police forces to be able to pursue them. They will come back to Canada without any parole provisions or any supervision post-custody, because of course that is all done in the other country. They will come back here because they are Canadian citizens and we have no basis for not letting them back into the country. That may be something the current government will try taking a shot at, again. However, we cannot do that under international law. They will come back to Canada without a criminal record, having received no rehabilitation while they were incarcerated and with no supervision control over them when they are back in Canada.

I ask the government to stop and think for a minute about what that means vis-à-vis recidivism and the likelihood of more crimes being committed by those individuals who oftentimes have been convicted of fairly serious crimes in other countries.

We talk about safe streets and safe communities; they are speaking points, buzzwords. How safe are our streets, how safe are our communities going to be when we dump those people back into our communities with no supervision, no rehabilitation? Oftentimes they are coming out of prisons in other countries that just hardened them. Oftentimes they come back with serious mental health problems as well, if they did not have them before. That is what is going to happen if we reduce the number of cases that are allowed access to this program.

It has been an extremely successful program. There is no other program that anyone can point to with that low a recidivism rate. There is not one in Canada. I do not know if the government thinks that by doing this it will somehow reach perfection. The opposite is going to happen. Many more people will come back after many years of incarceration elsewhere and commit serious crimes in this country.

If we keep the program as it is now, it could use some fine tuning. If we keep it as it is now, we allow access to it. When people are incarcerated here, we see to it that they go through the rehabilitation programs in Canada. When they are released, it will be under parole supervision, oftentimes for extended periods of time. They will have a criminal record in Canada. All those mechanisms will exist to protect our communities. They absolutely disappear if people do not get access to this program.

There is another point I would like to make with regard to the actual provisions in the bill itself. The government has listed eight criteria, all discretionary on the part of the minister to consider. I listened to my colleague from the Conservative Party who spoke just before me. He said that these things do not have to be taken into account. Sure, it would be good to know whether an individual in a prison in another foreign jurisdiction had refused rehabilitation programs, but the minister does not have to take that into account. All eight of the criteria are met.

This brings me to the kind of exercise of discretion that we have seen. On Tuesday, two rulings came down from the Federal Court. I have to apologize that I was not able to get the actual rulings and I am working with some of the quotes that have been taken by media out of the rulings. There are two separate cases.

In one case the court clearly and bluntly said to the minister, “We don't understand how you could have drawn these conclusions. The facts in the case are this. You made your determination and said the facts of the case are exactly opposite”. That is the kind of whimsical discretion we are seeing exercised by government ministers in the face of legislation that requires them to exercise their discretion reasonably, which was another determination the court made in that case, that it was not exercised reasonably.

The reasons given were completely contradictory to the actual facts as found by the trial judge in that case, completely contradictory. It was not just the trial judge, by the way, it was also the prosecutor. The case was overturned and sent back for reconsideration by the minister. One can only guess what is going to happen if that case comes up under the legislation being proposed. The current legislation will not apply because it will not be retroactive.

The court very clearly told the minister that he did not know what he was doing, that he was doing it all wrong and completely backward. Now the government is proposing to give other ministers unlimited discretion. The wording in the last of the eight criteria reads this way, “any other factor that the minister considers relevant”. If the minister considers the colour of the prisoner's skin, the colour of his eyes, whether he has short hair or long hair as relevant, he or she can determine that. There is absolutely no limit to what is relevant because it is all at the whim of the minister.

We are hearing from the Conservatives that this is sub judice, but there is no realistic possibility for an appeal of this case. The Federal Court judge decided that case on the facts of these two cases. The second case is troublesome from one standpoint. I believe that the wording is accurate, but I am only quoting from the article in the newspaper.

What Justice O'Keefe said was that the courts “cannot condone nor accept completely unstructured discretion”. If they apply that, in the light of the charter, this law will not survive a charter challenge. It is quite clear in that wording.

What we will hear at the public safety committee, if it gets there because there is substantial opposition from all opposition parties, but if it does pass at second reading and gets to committee, is the minister saying that he has had his people look at this and that it is charter proof. We have heard that from the Conservatives a number of times with a number of cases on other bills they have passed, supported, oftentimes, by the Liberals, and then struck down because they are not charter proof.

We have heard reports in the last few weeks in the media about well qualified public servants within the Justice Department speaking anonymously that they are constantly under pressure to agree to let the courts decide. They hear from the minister and the minister's office, whether it is public safety or the justice minister, “Don't worry about it, don't worry about the charter. If we're wrong, let the judges fix it”. That is not only an abdication of responsibility but it is also a dishonest approach both in the House and to the public safety and the justice committee and to the public generally.

The Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada has a responsibility to not present legislation to the House that clearly will not survive a charter challenge. It is not a maybe might survive, but we will let the judges decide. The Minister of Justice and Attorney General of this country has a responsibility to only present legislation that he believes, based on firm opinion and on the law and the charter, that it will survive a charter challenge. That is not what has been happening since the Conservatives have taken power.

We are constantly seeing sections come through both the justice committee and the public safety committee, sections that will not survive a charter challenge, but we are hearing from the Minister of Justice and Attorney General that they will. Then cases come on and there are many more pending. We know there are all sorts of sections that will get struck down. This is almost certainly one of them based on the decision of the Federal Court on Tuesday.

We in the opposition parties are faced as a Parliament at this point of having to tell the government that based on this decision it should withdraw the bill, take it back and have another look at it. I will concede that there are some provisions with regard to the eight point criteria that we would be prepared to support. As I mentioned earlier, if we know from the other jurisdiction that a prisoner has refused to take rehabilitation programs in that jurisdiction while incarcerated, that should be taken into account, not may be taken into account, by the ministers as to whether they will allow the person into the program. We would accept that.

The bill should be sent back to the Department of Justice, redrafted to make those criteria that are acceptable mandatory, that the minister must take them into account in making a decision and, of course, removing the absolute discretion of the minister that the bill is proposing at this time.

I will now talk a bit more about some of the cases I have had to deal with in my office since the government came into effect. We are now on our third public safety minister but they have basically all acted the same way. There has been a significant increase in the number of rejections by the government minister of the day since the Conservatives came into power, cases that have cried out.

I remember one case a member from Edmonton raised and then got slapped down by the minister, and I assume by the Prime Minister's Office, involving a case of a person incarcerated in Cuba. I have had two of those myself in my office where they were denied access to the program.

In all three of those cases that I know quite intimately, under the old regime, prior to these minsters, all three of those people would have been admitted back into Canada. In all three cases, the fact that they were not, we are going to get people back in our country who are not going to be supervised, who will not have a criminal record because they did not have one when they left Canada and, as all three of those cases are in Cuba, none of them had access to any rehabilitation programs. One of the cases involves a severe health problem. I am not sure that person will ever make it back to Canada. He may very well die in a prison in Cuba. It was not a death sentence that he was sentenced to either.

Then we have that really notorious case in Florida of a young man out of Quebec suffering from bipolar or schizophrenia. This has all been in the paper and so I am not releasing any information that has not been made public by him and his family. On his way down to Florida he stops taking his medication. He gets into a fight just inside the Florida border and, in the course of the fight, the other combatant is killed. He is convicted to the equivalent of our second degree murder or manslaughter. He is receiving absolutely no treatment. He is not even getting most of his medications while incarcerated and sentenced to life. All of that information was put before the minister and he rejected him having access to the program. The state of Florida did allow him to have access to the program.

I do not know if I made this clear, but the jurisdiction where the person is incarcerated must agree first that the person will be released back to Canada and then our minister needs to go along with it. Florida officials said that they would release him back to Canada so he could serve the time in Canada but our minister rejected that.

We have those kinds of cases. Their conduct is inhumane. What we will be doing here with this bill, if it goes through, is augmenting extensively their ability to do it, if it survives the charter challenge. It is a very offensive bill from that vantage point. I go back to my opening comments when I said that we are a democracy, that we are based on the rule of law.

I happened to be flying during the summer break near the end of the summer and I watched the current Robin Hood movie. There we had it, 900 years ago. Our system began to curtail absolute discretion on the part of our rulers and replaced it with rule of law. This bill would take us back to a similar period of time where we do not have rules that ministers have to follow, exercising their discretion within those. Our charter says that we should and I hope, should this bill ever get into law, that the charter will be strong enough to reject this and say that it is unconstitutional and offensive to our rights in this country.

That is not the route we should go. We should not fall into the trap that the Conservatives have fallen into of saying, “Well, we are not sure, but this is what we want to do ideologically, this is what we want to do politically, we have to be seen to be tough on crime and so we will let the judges decide”.

This is a minority government and the opposition parties have a role to play. We will not fall into that trap. We are parliamentarians and we have a responsibility to protect all of our citizens from unjust laws. This is an unjust law and we should all vote against it and defeat it at second reading.

[Petitions, September 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the final petition is with regard to the use of the Internet for the purpose of spreading child pornography. In this case, I have going onwards of several hundred, perhaps as many as 500, signatures from all over Canada with regard to this.

The petitioners have been sending these petitions in to me as justice critic for my party, but they are calling upon the government to investigate the use of the Internet for the purposes of the distribution of child pornography and to do whatever can be done to reduce the use of that medium for that purpose.

It is obviously a cause that all of us would be supportive of, and I know there is legislation pending in regard to that, but I would urge all parliamentarians to be thinking of this issue as expressed by the people who have signed this petition.

[Petitions, September 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the next petition deals with reform to the employment insurance legislation and regime. There are a number of points in the petition on specific reforms that the petitioners are looking for, a number of which have been supported by the Canadian Labour Congress as part of its campaign for reform in that area. Again, there are about 50 signatures from my riding and in the city of Windsor more generally.

[Petitions, September 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is one calling upon the Government of Canada to sign the Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare. Again I have, from various parts of Canada but mostly from my riding and the county of Essex, about 50 to 75 signatures in support of that petition.

[Petitions, September 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I have several petitions.

The first one deals with chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency, or more commonly known as liberation therapy, dealing with the conditions of people suffering from MS and the possibility that with some quick research, a new procedure could be implemented across the country to alleviate a number of the symptoms of patients suffering from that. I have about 125 signatures from both Ontario and British Columbia.

[Committees of the House, September 21st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, we are here this evening, in larger numbers than we usually have at this time of the evening, to debate this procedural motion, the effect of which, if it passes tomorrow evening, will terminate Bill C-391, which deals with provisions to terminate the long gun registry.

It is quite obvious to most of us now that, in fact, this motion is going to be successful tomorrow. Therefore, this issue with regard to terminating the long gun registry will end tomorrow, at least for this session of Parliament, because it cannot be brought back in this session as a private member's bill.

There is certainly a valid debate, from a democracy standpoint, as to whether we should be dealing with this issue as a procedural motion or whether we should be dealing with the merits of the bill. I have to say that overall, in terms of my love of democracy, I would prefer to be dealing with the merits of the bill and to defeat it on its merits. It does not have many.

The reality is that the government, through a private member, chose to go the private member's bill route. The way to deal with a private member's bill is to, in fact, defeat it tomorrow through this procedural motion.

We had nowhere near enough time to deal with this issue because of the constraints the private member's bill procedure imposed on us. We had eight days of hearings, two hours each time. We had from the opposition parties something like 275 to 300 witnesses, either groups or individuals, who wanted to testify, and we were able to hear about 30 to 35 of them in total. We have not had anywhere near the information or education that would have come out had we had a government bill to deal with fully over a much more extended period of time. Therefore, it is appropriate that this bill be killed tomorrow by way of this procedural motion.

The other reason we are going to see it killed tomorrow is the way the government has conducted itself. For example, it hid until the last minute reports that showed the viability and validity of the long gun registry. There was the dismissal of Chief Superintendent Cheliak, who did a great deal to improve the usefulness of the long gun registry while he was superintendent and was responsible specifically for the administration of the Firearms Act.

We have repeatedly heard attacks on our police chiefs and police forces by members of the Conservative Party. At times they were almost saying that they were liars because they stood up and said that this is a viable investigative tool for them and that they use it. They use it extensively, and they use it to protect their members and communities. Because of that, they have been castigated repeatedly by the Conservatives to, I think, their eternal shame.

An interesting thing did come out of those hearings. We saw it sometimes juxtaposed very clearly. On one occasion, the chief of police from Calgary, one of the few chiefs of police in the country who is opposed to continuing the long gun registry, was confronted by the chief of police and the officer in charge of the firearms division of the Toronto police force. The question was put to him: “You don't have anywhere near the investigative tools used by the Toronto police when you take into account the difference in population between those two cities”. Ultimately, Chief Hanson of Calgary had to admit that they basically were not trying to use it.

This is where I would be critical of the former Liberal government when it instituted this. There were all sorts of problems with the system. What happened, in particular, when the RCMP took it over, but it had started to happen even before that, was that the administration had begun to clean it up.

What happened was that a number of police forces were so jaded about the system, they stopped using it. As we moved into the period from 2005 to 2009 and the system became much more efficient, they did not follow it. One of the shames of losing Superintendent Cheliak was that one of the things he did quite successfully was go across the country to educate individual police forces, one at a time in some cases, about how to use it and how to use it effectively.

After he did that, they responded affirmatively, and the usage of it went up dramatically. The use of it as an investigative tool went up dramatically. It is to the shame of police officers like Chief Hanson that he did not learn that lesson. He was given the opportunity. His force was given the opportunity, and he did not take advantage of it. Yes, there are a lot of “ifs” about the role the police have to play in this, but the reality is that police officers who have used the system and know how to use it know that, in fact, it is a tool they have to have.

The other point I want to make is that tomorrow, when this motion is passed and Bill C-391 is defeated as a result, we cannot let that be the end of it. This government, since it has been in power, has had the opportunity in a number of ways to improve the system. They have had recommendations from officers within the system to improve the system in a number of ways and to get rid of some of the irritants. The most dramatic one is the one we are proposing. The Liberals support us. We propose to decriminalize the first offence in this regard, to take away the stigma that has been attached to honest gun owners, legal gun owners. It would take that away from them.

There are a number of other amendments and changes to the system, both at the regulation level and at the policy level, that would improve our firearms controls in this country. A great deal of the opposition from individual gun owners would be taken away if we proceeded. The government has intentionally avoided doing those things it could do without legislation so that the irritants would remain and it could then continue to try to justify getting rid of the long gun registry.

We, as a party, have proposed a number of amendments. Decriminalization I have already mentioned. We have proposed annual audits by the Auditor General to make sure that the cost controls are still in place; ensuring that aboriginal rights are guaranteed, as protected under the charter and the Constitution; protecting the information within the registry from being released at all, ever, where individuals could be identified; toughening up the screening process, and on and on. The bill is going to be fairly lengthy, because there are reforms and fixes that need to be made to the system. We are going to need to continue to do that, and I am asking all parties, including the government side, to support that private member's bill when it comes forward.

I want to make one more point before I conclude. The point I heard from the member for Portage—Lisgar was about how much it costs. Talk about another myth. The vast majority of the costs in the present system for licensing, for registering restricted weapons, including handguns, and for registering in the long gun registry, a significant portion of that budget, of the expenditures every year, are on the licensing side.

When I listen to the member's argument, one of the fears I have is that if the long gun registry goes down, what is going to go down next? Will it be the registration of restricted weapons? Then are we going to move to the U.S. style of minimal licensing? The only way we are going to save any money is to get rid of licensing to any reasonable degree. That is very much the intention of some of the really fanatical gun owners in this country.

We are faced with this decision as parliamentarians. Our responsibility is to protect our citizens, our societies. If we are right, the position of those of us who support the registry is that we are going to save lives and we are going to give our police officers an investigative tool that is useful. If they are right, and those of us who support the registry are wrong, the worst is that we have inconvenienced gun owners, and we have cost Canadians somewhere between 10¢ and 12¢ a day. As parliamentarians, are we prepared to take that risk? I do not think so.

[Criminal Code, September 21st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the bill, as does my entire caucus support the bill.

We have heard arguments and I want to address those. We have heard that the bill is not necessary in that there are a number of other sections in the Criminal Code that would prohibit suicide bombings and that that should be sufficient. We do not need to address it. I think that is part of the reason that we have not seen legislation in other jurisdictions of similar backgrounds as Canada's.

However, that argument misses an essential point of why we should pass the bill. The use of criminal law is not just for the purposes of creating a crime and providing a penalty for breach if conduct amounts to that crime. Criminal law generally also has a role to play in expressing society's condemnation and denunciation of that particular conduct. That is why the bill is so important that in fact suicide bombing be included in the Criminal Code as a specific offence.

As a lawyer who has practised law for a long time and as the justice critic for a number of years, one of the reasons I would like to see the bill go to committee is to see if there are some additional provisions in terms of giving our prosecutors in particular tools that would help them in prosecuting should they be confronted with this kind of criminal conduct. I must say that I am skeptical that in fact that is the case but I would like to hear that at committee.

The other reason I would like this matter to go to committee is that there is an educational value in debating this legislation. Our committee structure within our parliamentary system is certainly one of the ways of doing that.

Part of what might come out at that point would, which I did not see come out in the Senate hearings, is that we need to look at the history of this kind of criminal conduct. It is not new to the 1980s, 1990s and 2000 period. It was quite a common criminal conduct device used by the anarchists, as they were described at that time, starting in the early 1900s right through until the 1930s. In fact, during that period of time we had various pieces of legislation passed in response to that conduct. However, bombings, including suicide bombings, not exclusively but including suicide bombings, were quite common. They were very common in Russia prior to the revolution in 1917. They were fairly common throughout western Europe during that same period of time with democratically elected governments being oftentimes the targets and royal families more commonly being the targets by anarchists.

They were fairly regular in the United States at that time. I am not aware of any in Canada but they were fairly common in the United States, but less so than what we saw in Europe. There was a response by our legislatures at that time. The historical material that I have read suggests that the response was not very effective but that eventually they stopped into the 1930s.

We now see them coming back. It is interesting because most people think of the suicide bombers in the Middle East, whether it be in Palestine, in Iraq, in some of the Middle Eastern countries. The reality is that they started back in Sri Lanka. The Tamil Tigers and the leader of the Tamil Tigers initiated the use of suicide bombings in the modern era, if I can put it that way. They were used very commonly. Then we saw them spread, particularly into the Middle East, but, again, they are quite common in a number of countries in Asia. However, they have generally been restricted to that area of the world. We can think of some notable exceptions but they have generally been restricted to that area of the world.

Part of the reason I support this legislation is that whether it was the anarchist who justified the use of suicide bombings on an ideological philosophical basis as a way of undermining the capitalist societies and the democracies as they saw it at that time or whether it is, as is more common today, being based on religious arguments, we as a legislature must say that whatever the argument is and whatever the fanaticism is that the argument is based on, we condemn that. There is no justification, philosophically, religiously or on any other basis, for this type of criminal conduct. The results have been seen in so many horrendous scenarios with huge losses of life.

I believe that kind of information needs to come out in more detail than I have been able to give today. It is important for us to hear that this legislation will be useful but, more important, we need to understand those people who counsel and advocate suicide bombings. I think that may be one of the advantages that we will get out of this. These people, interestingly, never perform the bombings themselves. Those who do that kind of work are basically cowards. Oftentimes they will find people who are of limited intelligence, have mental health problems or who are so fanatical, whether it be on an ideological basis or a religious basis, that they do not think clearly and can be manipulated into sacrificing themselves.

I can remember being at events where people have talked about this conduct as being a form of martyrdom. We have to condemn that. It is not that. This is purely a criminal act resulting in injury and so often in death. That is the way it has to be portrayed.

I am quite satisfied to support this bill, even though I recognize that it may not in any way increase our ability to fight this kind of conduct in the courts, and I am leaning toward believing that, but in the court of public opinion, it will be the first time a government and a legislature has done this. It will provide leadership, hopefully, for other democratic governments to follow suit. Perhaps there are ways of strengthening this bill.

I am quite supportive of the bill going to the justice committee to be dealt with as expeditiously as possible. If there are amendments that will improve it, I am assuming everybody in the House and everybody on that committee would support those amendments and would get it back here quickly to get it passed, have it completed and on our books both for the message that it sends to the perpetrators of these types of crimes and to the rest of the world. This will say that this is leadership, that this is a way of denouncing this type of conduct and that everyone should be looking at doing the same.

[Criminal Code, September 21st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I know of no other Parliament or government that has passed this type of legislation. I heard some rumours that other governments were considering doing it, rumours of pending legislation. I just wonder if my colleague from the Conservative Party would be able to indicate whether she is aware of any others that are pending at this point.