Joe Comartin

[Business of Supply, April 21st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I was having a discussion with my colleague from Timmins—James Bay about the factual reality that we were still having a debate on the gun registry so many years after it was introduced into law.

I was telling him that for a while I had been studying the experience that Australia went through. It is similar in terms of its initiation into attempts at gun control, gun registration and regulation. Our attempt in Canada was prompted, to a significant degree, by the massacre at Polytechnique in Montreal. Australia's attempt was prompted by an incident on the island of Tasmania, where some 45 people were killed in one incident of mass murder. These incidents prompted governments to react.

The debate has ceased in Australia. Its gun regulation is stronger and more extensive than it is in Canada. However, we continue to have the debate and it is in part because of really gross incompetence on the part of the Liberal government of the day in the deployment of the gun registry, the long gun registry in particular, and its inability to bring provincial governments onside.

I do not know if this is accurate, but I am told that the decision made by the Liberal government of the day was to do this and that it did not need the provinces onside. There was an arrogance, as described to me, but I am not sure how real that was.

In Australia all six of the state governments were onside. Australia has a federated system like ours. It has legislation at the state level and at the federal level. As I said earlier, it has a much more stringent regulation of guns than in Canada.

While reading this material, one of the points I came across was the fact that for 10 years after the regulations and laws went into place, Australia did not have one incident of multiple murders. It was a whole 10 years before Australia had any reoccurrence and those incidents were minor by comparison to some of the experiences it had before the regulations and laws went into effect.

In terms of my analysis, this has become as much an emotional issue as a factual issue. It is unfortunate that we are at that stage, but I understand it in quite some depth.

I have rural areas in my riding. A number of my constituents are hunters and they have strong feelings against the registry. When I discuss it with them, the cost always comes up, the incompetence on the part of the Liberal administration of the day in allowing the cost to escalate to such a degree.

The Auditor General has said that the costs are under control. The RCMP has taken over and it has it under control. She says that it is an effective mechanism.

The anger on the waste that has gone on still overwhelms those factual arguments. I do not think those people hear me and unfortunately that is probably true of a number of members of the Conservative Party. They are overwhelmed by that history and cannot see their way through it.

Another very small group of people oppose the gun registry to a significant degree on principle and on their philosophy of life. These people are opposed to any control at all, whether it is handguns, or long guns, or rapid fire weapons or assault weapons. They do not want government involved in their use of weapons at all. Fortunately these people make up a fairly small percentage of our population, probably no more than 5%.

Then there is the third group. They have issues in the way the registry functions. I am thinking in particular of people from the rural areas and the northern part of the country. Our first nations are probably the best example. People in the third group feel that the system could perhaps be modified for those regions. I have some significant sympathy in that regard. I think that if in fact we are going to have any reform in the legislation, the Firearms Act, that is the area that we should be looking at.

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Outremont. I will only use half the slotted time.

Australia, a country that is similar to us, had the same experience. It is very true in Canada that the registry has been effective. It has reduced significantly, by as much as two-thirds, the domestic murders committed with long guns. Those are incontrovertible facts. The suicide rate with the use of long guns has reduced itself dramatically since the registry was in place.

The fact that I find perhaps as telling as those two is that the number of accidental deaths with the use of guns has dropped dramatically. That result has occurred because of the number of guns that have been taken out of circulation.

There was a survey done of gun owners around 2001-02. One of the questions asked of people was when they last used their guns. Over 50% of them said they had never used their long guns.

When the registry came into effect, people had to pay to register their long guns and a good number of them said it was no longer necessary, they were not going to use them any more, they were not going to put any money out, and turned their guns in. A huge number of weapons were turned in that were not stored properly and were not being taken care of properly from a safety standpoint.

When people had to meet the requirements under the act, they simply got rid of their guns because they were not using them. They were not real hunters and were not using them for recreational purposes. The effect of that has been to dramatically reduce accidental deaths, such as kids getting a hold of guns because their parents or custodians had not properly stored them.

It has had that impact in those three areas. Domestic murders are down dramatically, suicides with long guns are down dramatically, and accidental deaths are down dramatically.

The other point I want to make when I am assessing my position on gun control and the gun registry is to say there are arguments on both sides of this and they are valid. I do not want to take that away from the people who are opposed to the gun registry. Ultimately, as members of Parliament, we have to assess both sides and so we look to other sources, experts and knowledgeable people, to give us some direction. On this issue, I have looked to our police forces. They are the front line.

As everyone has heard today from other members, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police is adamant that we need the kind of system we have in place now, that it is effective and usable, and police forces use it. We have heard in the last few days very strong language of a similar nature coming from the Canadian Police Association. We hear from the Conservatives in particular that it is leadership. It is not.

This morning I met with members of the CPA on the Hill regarding their lobby and efforts. These are people from Windsor. They are very clear that the rank and file and regular police officers are saying they need it, they use the system, they need it for their own personal protection, and for the protection of society. As a test, they are the people we should be listening to.

[Truth in Sentencing Act, April 20th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the argument that would be brought forward under section 12 of the charter, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, would be that the pre-incarceration conditions were so bad that they amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and therefore the sentence has to take that into account or, as happened in Ontario under the Askov ruling of the early 1990s, the charge itself may be dismissed. That is a real risk.

We lost 40,000 to 50,000 cases in Ontario in the early 1990s because the backlog was so long. The consequences of a breach of charter is we would not even get to the sentencing process and the charges would be dismissed. A number of those charges in Ontario and across the country, because that ruling was followed across the country, were quite serious, some involving violent cases.

[Truth in Sentencing Act, April 20th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think that is at all beyond the pale of that occurring, but I would see those as exceptional cases. My experience with prosecutors across the length and breadth of the country is they are very dedicated to obtaining and providing justice in a criminal justice system that is fair. I doubt we would see them taking advantage of that other than in exceptional cases.

The workload they are faced with makes it impossible for them to speed the process up. They have too many files on their hands. We need more prosecutors.

[Truth in Sentencing Act, April 20th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I did not follow the second part of the question. However, on the first part, I do not think there is any doubt that members of the judiciary, if they feel they cannot work within the terminology of circumstances justifying it, will look at reducing the amount of time that is given in the ultimate sentence if they feel that is the only just way.

In that regard, I want to make a point at which the member may have been driving. We have a parole system where people get out because of good behaviour and an automatic return. The vast majority of people do not serve more than two-thirds. However, that calculation goes back to this whole issue of people staying in pretrial custody so they can get two-for-one. If they do that and then get an ultimate sentence, that period of time they have spent in pre-trial custody is not taken into account when they calculate the one-third reduction.

Consider two individuals who have committed the same crime. One manages to get out on bail and one does not. The person who gets out on bail will be convicted and spend less time in custody overall than the person who has been in pretrial custody. That is the normal pattern. The argument that the two-for-one automatically gets people a shorter sentence is not accurate in the vast majority of cases. It is a matter of where they spend that time. The time people spend in pretrial custody is much worse than what they spend in our federal institutions.

[Truth in Sentencing Act, April 20th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, he was misquoting me a bit. I said that the average Canadian citizen did not understand the conditions of our pre-trial custody and therefore had a very difficult time understanding why anybody would get two-for-one.

Yes, the attorneys general and solicitors general across the country have been lobbying the government to deal with the two-for-one situation. However, they have also been lobbying it, or maybe the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Justice, for additional resources to deal with the problems they have in the courtrooms. The delays are there. As I said in my speech, they are not just the result of the defence bar or the accused person; it is the system itself. There are not enough prosecutors, judges or court rooms.

In terms of his final point about when I will stand up for Canadians and protection, I have done that all my professional career. In fact, I did it even before I became a lawyer. I have no intention to stop doing that. Hopefully, with some reasonable amendments that would make the bill more useful, my party will ultimately support it. However, I want to be very clear to the House and the Canadian people that to portray the bill as the be-all and end-all of resolving this issue and the problem of two-for-one is to grossly mislead the Canadian public.

[Truth in Sentencing Act, April 20th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, as its base, Bill C-25 is an appropriate bill to deal with a problem and a perception of a problem in our sentencing process. From that vantage point, my party is inclined to support the bill but it is not without some significant trepidation.

It is important to understand what the bill would do. It would reduce the amount of credit that an individual, who has been in pretrial custody, been convicted and is now being sentenced, will receive. That credit would, in effect, be reduced. Members of the House should know that this reduction in credit would be much less significant than we have been led to believe by the Minister of Justice in his address and in some of the comments he made to the media. Even if we were to take a superficial look at the legislation, we would think there would be a substantial reduction in that credit. I must disabuse the House of that fact because that is not what will happen.

In terms of dealing with this, we need to appreciate the significance of the context. This issue of granting pretrial custody credits grew out of subsection 719(3), which was referred to by some of my other colleagues, that gave our judges the discretion to take into account pretrial custody.

What then evolved was a process that has become entrenched, almost absolutely, over the last five to ten years. What happens now is that because of the conditions in our pretrial custody settings, the judges across the land, both at the provincial court level and at the superior court level, have been practically automatically granting two for one credits.

I want to read from an op-ed piece that was written by a Toronto lawyer in the Globe and Mail on April 1. I will not use the individual's full name but he talks about a man named Pavel who was in pretrial custody. He stated:

Pavel...slept on the floor next to the toilet. He was smaller than his cellmates, and most nights he didn't dare challenge them for one of the two bunks. He spent 20 hours a day locked with two other men in a 12-by-8-foot cell designed for one. The staff was on strike, so his cell was not cleaned for two months. Because he was too small to fight for space at the table, he ate his meals on the toilet. Living in filth, [he] developed a skin disease. His hair fell out in patches. But he was lucky; at least he hadn't caught the tuberculosis that was spreading throughout the detention centre.

This, by the way, was not in the 1800s. This was in 2002 in a detention centre in metropolitan Toronto, the largest city in this country and, arguably, in that period of time, certainly the wealthiest city in the wealthiest province in this country. He was in pretrial custody under those circumstances. He did get two for one when he was ultimately sentenced.

That is the kind of factual situation that led our judges across the board, right across the country, including at our appeal court levels, all the way up to the Supreme Court, to say that faced with those circumstances in our provincial jails and in our remand centres across the country we must give that kind of credit.

What has been happening in more recent years is that in a number of cases credit was given on a three to one basis because the situation in the custodial setting was so bad.

This bill would address a problem. There is no question that I think the average Canadian citizen would ask why we give credit. If a person is in custody, fine, we will give him credit for the one on one, but why any more?

I do not believe the average Canadian citizen understands the nature and quality of the pretrial jail settings in this country. I think most Canadians would be quite upset but they do not hear about it and they do not see it. Of course we all recognize, especially with individuals who have committed violent crimes, that there is no particular sympathy for them.

The other problem the judiciary has with the system is that in a number of sections of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms it talks about the way people who are charged with crimes are to be handled, especially before they are convicted. Everyone has a fundamental right to the presumption of innocence and section 12 of the charter specifically prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

The judges confronted with the charter and the fundamental rights that we have all accepted, adopted and value have looked at that and want to know how to deal with it. In many cases, it is cruel and unusual punishment. They want to know how to keep the courts and the criminal justice system in line with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Their response, almost universally, has been to say that they need to give convicted criminals extra credit. They need to recognize what they were put through in the pretrial setting. This has grown up. It is an absolute sentencing principle and policy that has been followed for a good number of years now.

I want to be very clear on why we would be supportive of this bill even though we have not made a final decision on it. The average Canadian citizen does not understand it and we know how crucial it is for the citizenry to have an appropriate level of respect for our criminal justice system. If we lose that respect, whether it is for the judiciary, the prosecutors, the bar or the police, we would end up with a system that could lead to chaos and, in some cases, anarchy. We cannot take that chance so we must be very careful in how we handle this. There are alternatives.

I must say that I was somewhat concerned and maybe even a bit taken aback by the minister's speech this afternoon when he talked about the work that he has been doing with the provincial levels of government to deal with the level of remands and the overcrowding in our system. The truth is that we have done hardly anything at the federal level to assist the provinces. We need more judges, court rooms, prosecutors, police and greater funding for legal aid so the defence bar is able to provide adequate defence within the confines of the charter. If we as a federal government were engaged actively in assisting the provinces, this bill probably would not be necessary because we would not have the practice.

The Winnipeg Free Press had an interesting editorial on April 1 after this bill was tabled in the House. It made two solid points. It said that when we are passing as many criminal laws as we are, it does not necessarily mean that we will reduce the crime rate. All it means is that we will have more criminal charges that our courts have to deal with. It went on to say that the biggest challenge, however, would be to make the court system work efficiently enough that no lawyer could claim that a client should get additional credit for time served before sentencing. That is the key.

I want to make one other point that was made about Manitoba, and this is true across the country. In Manitoba, almost 70% of all the people in custody are in pretrial custody. They have not been convicted of anything but in many cases are languishing in jail. The crucial point was that we need to speed up the court system.

With all due respect to attorneys general and solicitors general across the country, we hear regularly from them that the slowdowns are because of the accused person and his or her lawyers. One of my caucus colleagues passed a letter to me from a retired judge who said that was an insult to the intelligence of anybody who works in the criminal justice system. The defence bar does not control the agenda. Prosecutors do not control the agenda. The judges control the agenda in their courtrooms and they do not allow for meaningless adjournments or extension of trials.

The reality is that our prosecutors are way overworked. They have file numbers that are totally unrealistic in terms of being able to prosecute offenders in an efficient manner. They are required by our Constitution and our law to provide disclosure but they do not have enough resources within their departments or from the police to be able to give that disclosure. They end up in court every two weeks and an accused is brought forward even though disclosure has not been completed. An adjournment is called on consent of the prosecutor and the defence and acceded to by the judge because the judge has no choice. That is why we have a backlog.

Unless we put those resources in the bill, the bill would have little effect on reducing the remands. This fact must be recognized by the Minister of Public Safety, the Minister of Justice, as well as solicitors general and attorneys general across the country.

I want to make another point about what is going to happen here.

I believe the minister is being overly optimistic. In Bill C-25, the rule would be one for one credit but clause (3.1) provides that if the circumstances justify it, it can go to one and a half to one.

My colleague from the Bloc is not reading the bill properly. I think he said that this would be in exceptional circumstances. That would then limit it quite dramatically. This clause simply says that the judge needs to have evidence in front of him or her that will justify going to one and a half credits instead of just maintaining it at one. Members may remember my earlier comments when I said that it is automatic now. Very little evidence is given. It is automatic now that the offender gets two for one credit. It is the exceptional case where any significant amount of evidence is put in.

If the bill goes through with this wording, the sentencing part of the trial process will become quite lengthy because people from the custodial setting, prison guards, staff people, et cetera, will be called as witnesses. The accused himself may go on the stand and tell what happened to him and why he is entitled to one and a half as opposed to just one credit.

The sentencing process would get much longer than it currently is, which means that our backlog would get worse. As opposed to that not being much of an issue at all, maybe a minute or two in a sentencing process, the judge simply states that this is a case where two to one should be granted, nobody objects and they go on to what other representations will be made on sentencing.

If this bill passes, it will now take half an hour, an hour or maybe several hours in every sentencing because the judge will need to hear evidence in order to explain why he or she is giving the one and a half credit. Our sentencing process will get much longer and remands will get much longer.

As opposed to some proposals, I have had discussions with some solicitors general across the country. With respect to the two-to-one, to deal with our criminal justice system, and I know we do a little of it and I will give the minister credit for that, we should be specifically and exclusively targeting repeat offenders. The argument that is made in those conditions of a negative impact on a first offender is much more telling to a judge than if that person is a repeat offender. If they are convicted as repeat offenders, we should be able to argue that they will not get more than one-for-one. The same applies if they are convicted of being part of an organized crime gang.

We could set that out and I believe it would buffer us from the charter challenge, which will come in spite of what we heard from the minister. There will definitely be a charter challenge on this on the basis of section 12. This would buffer us quite sufficiently from that if we targeted just those two areas. Those are the ones we want to go after. Those cases are the ones that are causing the disrespect, those people who have been through the system a number of times and still get a two-to-one credit because it is automatic. They would no longer get the credit if they were convicted repeatedly. We could get away with that under the charter.

I am not at all confident that the bill will survive a charter challenge when we go back to the example l gave at the start of my comments today. A case like that coming before a judge will look at sections 12 and 719 and Bill C-25. It will be considered cruel and unusual punishment and will not be bound by the one and a half. It will be struck down at least in part on a number of files. Again, that would cause a huge fight in our court system and would probably go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. For those kinds of situations in our jails, ultimately the bill will not survive as it is presently constituted.

I look forward to the bill going to committee, given the support it has from the other parties. At committee we may be able to rectify some of the problems in the bill and make it more meaningful. I hope also in the course of the hearings maybe more evidence will come forward as to where the real problems are around the cases we have in remand, which in many cases target those who we really do not want to target. If we continue with the existing system, it has the advantage for the repeat offender and a major disadvantage for the first-time offender. They are the people who, if we can catch them on the first time, we know we can reduce the rate of recidivism a great deal as opposed to the repeat offenders. We should targeting those people so we can speed up their trials and get them through the system. If there is going to be a guilty plea or a finding of guilt, let us get it done as quickly as we possibly can, but that means putting in more resources.

It may also mean some amendments to our evidence act. We may be able to reduce the amount of disclosure we have to give to keep in compliance with the charter.

There are other things that could be done which would be meaningful, useful, would be practical common sense solutions to our remand problems. I was going to read a quote from Dan Gardner of the Ottawa Citizen about the government's role in crime bills, but my time is running out. The Conservatives always look for the hot button they can push as opposed to looking for good, practical solutions. The bill unfortunately is another example of that.

[Criminal Code, April 1st, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I share the sentiments of the last speaker in terms of the work done by the member for Kildonan—St. Paul in bringing forth this issue. It is greatly to her credit that she has over a number of years gathered the information and pressed this issue forward. I know she does not want me to say this but it seems at times that she has done this in spite of her own government and political party.

However, as my colleague from London—Fanshawe said, much more needs to be done. The amendments we passed to the Criminal Code back in 2005 met our requirements of an international protocol but we have seen very little enforcement in that regard.

I want to spend most of my time in this debate on the international situation because it tells us something about what we should be doing in Canada, specifically with regard to this bill. We also need much more activity on the part of the government in other areas, not just under the Criminal Code and in the criminal justice system.

I am referring to a report that came out from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in February. It began looking at human trafficking fairly recently, I would say, starting back about 2003. It wrote a significant report in 2006, three years ago this month, and then this report in February of this year. The executive director has a cover sheet on it and I want to refer to several points that she raised.

The first point is that the number of countries that have been moving to implement the protocol has grown quite substantially. She obviously sees that as a major and positive development. She points out that a number of countries have not, particularly on the continent of Africa where a lot of work needs to be done.

She also raises a point that we need to take some cognizance of. She said that although the number of convictions under the various criminal legislations passed around the world have been increasing, the convictions are mostly taking place in a very small number of countries. Canada falls into those areas of the larger group where we are getting very few convictions because we are getting very few charges.

She points out that in two out of every five countries that have signed onto the protocol, they have not had a single conviction. Again, although we do not fall into that category, we are not much out of it, given the few convictions we have had since we passed the law back in 2005.

She goes on to make a third point that I want to draw to the House's attention. She says that, by far, sexual exploitation is the most commonly identified human trafficking. That was at 79% in the study, followed distantly by forced labour at 18%. She then goes on to say that it is probably not an accurate reflection of what is going on when we take into account a number of other forced labour situations, including youth being used as soldiers in warfare, children begging, put into domestic servitude, forced into marriage and even having organs removed. In the covering letter, she makes the point very strongly that we do not have, as we do in other areas of criminal activity, accurate documentation.

The fourth point is one about which I am most concerned. With regard to this legislation and the role of the legislation already on the books, the majority of people being convicted of crimes of human trafficking are women, not men. This came out for the first time in the report. My initial reaction is okay, if they commit the crime, they should be convicted. However, what it really says is in many countries the crime is being used in a targeted way against women. She makes the point in the report that almost always the women who are convicted were themselves victims of human trafficking initially. They were brought in almost always by organized crime syndicates, moved up the ladder of the organization to a low level of management and forced to recruit other women and children into the sex trade and other forms of human trafficking.

What then happens is they are the ones who get caught in large numbers, so we end up with this figure that more than half of the convicted offenders are women. The reality is they continue to be victimized. They were victims initially when they were dragged or forced into whatever the conduct is in trafficking and then forced to take part in the crime itself on an ongoing basis. They are the ones who are being convicted in the largest numbers. When we look at the bill before us, we have to be cognizant of that fact.

The final point she makes in the summary of the report is that most of the trafficking, with the exception of a few countries, are internal to the country, and my colleague from London—Fanshawe pointed this out. In our country it has been shown very glaringly to be women and children recruited off our first nations reserves. They are probably the single largest group that suffer from this crime. If we continue with the pattern and if we do not broaden the scope of our approach to deal with this horrendous crime, inevitably we will also find that over a period of time they will show up more and more in statistics as being the convicted offenders.

Again, I want to be very clear on the significance of this point. In the vast majority of crime, and I am talking close to 90% of all crimes, violent and non-violent, it is males who are convicted. That is the ratio in most countries. It certainly is the ratio in Canada. It runs about 85% male and 15% female in Canada currently. However, in this crime we see almost a reversal of that, where well over 50% of those convicted are women. They are not the major perpetrators. It is organized crime in the vast majority of cases, almost without exception. The members who are at the senior levels of organized crime are male, not female, so there is a major problem.

I want to go to the bill itself. I am concerned that if this pattern shows up here, the bill may end up victimizing the victims once again. We have to be very careful about who is going to end up being the target of this legislation. I told the author of the bill that I was working to perhaps clarify and tighten up the language in the second clause of the bill. Some terminology around recruits and exploitation needs some clarification in those circumstances.

In particular I am concerned with the third clause because it takes away judicial discretion. I am not sure if this was intended by the author or not, but by making the maximum sentence 10 years, it prevents conditional sentences being used. There are certainly going to be times, and again I am thinking specifically of women who are charged with this, where it would be appropriate to use conditional sentences, to impose conditions on them of counselling and so on, so they could be brought back into society.

[Committees of the House, March 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the member raised the question of delay of crime bills. I want to ask him if he feels that the Prime Minister was delaying crime bills, since there has not been a government bill in front of the justice committee for over a year now. The reason has been that, first, the Conservative chair of that committee at the time refused to let the committee function. Then we had the election call by the Prime Minister, who then prorogued Parliament, and we are still waiting.

As recently as Monday, Bill C-14, the gang bill, could have been before the House.

I am wondering if he feels that, on each of those occasions, his party and the representatives of his party were delaying the advance of crime bills in this legislature.

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I wonder if my colleague could comment on a story in the newspapers this morning regarding a number of grants that were given to seniors' groups across the country. I do not have the article in front of me but I think about 30 grants were given out and only one was to a riding that did not currently have a sitting Conservative member.

Does my colleague see the same pattern with the $3 billion? Does he have any hope that when the Conservatives allocate the $3 billion, as it appears to be a slush fund, primarily to ridings that currently have Conservative members sitting, if that does show up as a pattern, that the Liberals would actually move to bring down the government or follow their normal pattern of voting with the Conservatives?

[Petitions, March 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition with several hundred signatures calling upon the federal government to support a universal declaration on animal welfare.

This declaration is one that is circulating at the international level. Members from my riding and other parts of the country press upon the Government of Canada to seek that declaration and to support it.