Joe Comartin

[Criminal Code, June 4th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-35, back from the special legislative committee, really addresses two points. The major one that most people have heard of is to reverse the onus, so that the accused would have to establish why he or she would be released on bail and the other, which is a secondary point but flows from this, is that we have added some criteria that the judge would take into account when determining whether a person would be released on bail.

To expand on that a bit so that we are clear, we have effectively had the reverse onus within the Criminal Code in many respects if one understood how the practice took place. We are emphasizing and the legislature is sending a message to our judiciary that we want it to be very concentrated in its focus on gun crimes and the use of guns in crimes. If people before the court are alleged to have used guns in serious crimes, they would be required to establish under those circumstances whether they should be released from custody pending their trials or disposition of the charges.

It was interesting to listen to the evidence. The very first witness, other than the minister and the officials from the Department of Justice, was a representative from one of the defence bars in Canada, an association of defence lawyers. I have to say quite frankly that he stunned the committee with his opening statement that the organization in fact was not opposed to Bill C-35.

This was confirmed by a number of other witnesses, but he went on to establish to our satisfaction that this bill simply represents what is now happening in our courts across the country. Both he and other witnesses from the defence bar and other people who might have traditionally been expected to be opposed to this legislation, and in some cases were on principle, came forward with the same evidence time after time.

At least in all of the major metropolitan areas right across the country, the courts have already begun to apply a reverse onus. Even though it is not mandated by statute, they in effect were doing it practically on a day to day basis in our courts across the country. They were doing it particularly when crimes involved youth and the use of guns.

I know I have given this part of my speech before, but I am going to repeat it. When we deviate from what is an accepted practice in our criminal justice system, we do so only when we are faced with a serious problem. We know that in spite of the fact that the murder rate in this country continues to decline, as it has on a regular basis over the last 25 years, there have been some spikes but generally it has declined, the rate of violent crime has declined in similar ratios over that 25 year period.

I will digress for a moment. I use the 25 almost 30 year period now because it was over that period of time that we have had good, reliable statistics with regard to the crime rates in this country. Prior to that, the figures are somewhat suspicious in terms of their validity.

For the last 25 to 30 years the murder rate has continued to decline and the violent crime rate continues to decline, but there are exceptions to that and that is really what this bill, to some significant degree, is attempting to address.

One of the areas of crimes involving guns where we have seen a spike, even with some trend to it, has been in street gangs primarily in our major metropolitan centres right across the country. It is higher in some areas, but generally a trend right across the country.

We know that because there are more handguns and illegal guns, rapid fire guns in particular, that have ended up in the hands of gangs through organized crime, the biker gangs in particular. They have imported a lot more weapons in the last decade or so and we are seeing those guns get right into the hands of street gangs.

Therefore, we are seeing a substantial increase in crime within that very specific group. We cannot help but think if that had not happened, that those guns had not ended up in their hands, that the violent crime rate in this country, both for murder and for violent crimes generally, would have dropped even more dramatically than what we have seen over that 25 to 30 year period.

The bill specifically addresses this with an amendment, not only reversing the onus but it specifically requires, under the facts and circumstances, what the court is to take into account when granting bail. We have added to additional sections and one is an amendment to an existing section.

We had traditionally assigned to the court guidelines in section 515 of the Criminal Code as to what was to be taken into account. The overall encompassing section says that the detention is necessary to maintain confidence in the administration of justice, having regard to all the circumstances, and then we go down this list. Bail was to be denied if in fact there was a loss of confidence in the administration of justice.

As I said earlier, we were hearing from the witnesses that our judges right across the country, in the metropolitan areas in particular, were concerned about the effect of confidence on the administration of justice. They had begun to say to people who came before them, charged with crimes involving guns and involving serious violence, that they must establish why they should not be held in custody pending their trial or the disposition of their charges.

These sections were already in, so the judge in determining whether the administration of justice was falling into disrepute had to take into account, first, the apparent strength of the prosecution's case; second, the gravity of the offence; and third, the circumstances surrounding the commission of the offence.

To that we have now added in this bill, assuming it passes the House, in looking at the commission of the offence, whether it included the use of a firearm. Of course that would be a negative factor to be taken into account and the basis on which bail could be denied.

We then went on to add an additional factor. If the accused was liable on conviction to a potentially lengthy prison term, then we added, in the case of an offence that involved or whose subject matter was a firearm, a minimum punishment of imprisonment for a term of three years or more.

Therefore, the judge confronted with a charge of that kind involving a gun would take into account what the potential penalty is and if it is more than three years, that again would be a negative factor in determining whether the individual would be allowed out on bail and more than likely would not.

That has begun to happen right across the country. What we are doing with this legislation is confirming, I suppose, to our judges that we agree with them, that it is an appropriate practice on their part in giving them in effect legislative authority above and beyond what they already have to continue that practice where it is appropriate to do so.

There were a number of concerns around the bill. We heard those from the witnesses. One of them was on principle. We do not use reverse onus in the criminal justice system in this country in the long history that we have had, that the presumption of innocence is overriding in all cases.

However, again, we have made those exceptions on occasion and this is one of the times because of, I will say fairly and justifiably, the crisis that we are faced with, with the use of guns in those particular circumstances, and so it is justified on that basis that we should do so.

One of the other concerns that was raised repeatedly, and we heard from the member from the Liberal Party, was regarding some statistics that show the number of subsequent offences that are committed when someone is already out on bail.

I want to be very clear that we brought forward one of the first witnesses, the people from Juristat, the individuals from Statistics Canada who keep records on bail. We have not been doing that until very recently. The reliability of how many crimes are committed when somebody is already out on bail is certainly not foolproof at all.

The figure that was quoted came from one of the police associations. It was over a fairly limited period of time. It involved a fairly limited number of charges involving weapons on which bail was granted. It is difficult to assess the basis on which we are making this decision on solid, hard statistical evidence. We simply do not have that.

What we are doing here is making this decision based on the anecdotal experience we are being told about. We do not have solid statistical evidence. It is being gathered now. Our police forces across the country are providing that to Statistics Canada, but they have in effect only started that roughly three years ago.

The validity of that needs a period of time, as much as 10 years, before we know for sure just what our experiences are. How many people do get out on bail and who then subsequently commit an offence? We do not know that. We will have that over the next six or seven years at a scientific level that is reliable, if I can say that, but we do not have that at this point.

A statistic that did come out, and is accurate, is the number of people that we have in custody pre-trial. These are people who have not been convicted of any offence but are in custody. This is a major problem for our provincial governments because we actually have more people in this country in pre-trial custody on any given day than we do who have been sentenced to a period of time either in our federal penitentiaries or our provincial prison system.

I was trying to find the figures earlier but I could not. We have about 9,000 people on any given day in this country who are in pre-trial custody and not convicted of any offence. We are holding them in pre-trial custody versus about 7,000 who are in our federal and provincial prisons.

That is a cause for concern because of the cost. Those costs in the pre-trial custodial system are all maintained by the provinces. Obviously there is some sharing that goes on between the federal and the provincial governments, but there is no specific money that is allocated from the federal government for that.

The best estimate we could get was that the impact of Bill C-35 would have very little impact on adding to the pre-trial incarceration in this country because the judges have already done that. That is the immediate impact.

More long term, where judges may have backed off somewhat, assuming the crime rate goes down by the use of guns, it may very well keep that pre-trial incarceration rate up higher than it would be if the judges had simply been left alone with the discretion they have had up to this point.

That is a concern that we are going to have to continue to monitor on an ongoing basis by dealing with it in either one of two ways: looking at ways of perhaps amending this legislation at some point in the future or looking at ways that we can have more funds flow to the provinces to assist them in the cost of that pre-trial incarceration.

Those are concerns that we will have to continue to monitor. Any government, whether it is this one or some subsequent government, will have to monitor those costs on an ongoing basis.

I want to go back to the bill itself with regard to why we would proceed with it. Last week we had Bill C-10 before us on mandatory minimums which went through the House. I spoke at that time about the importance of us focusing on the use of the criminal justice system on specific areas when we have a specific problem, a significant problem, even a crisis level problem in those areas.

That is what we are doing here in Bill C-35. Our judiciary, to a significant degree if maybe not completely, has already addressed this problem.

What we are doing with Bill C-35 is simply confirming that it is a problem in this country. This legislature is sending a message to those street gangs, to the youth of this country who are inclined to carry guns and use them in crimes, that they are not going to get bail, that they are going to be held in custody and, if subsequently committed, that they are going to be faced with quite severe penalties.

That message is the message that we need to send in a very targeted and very focused way. I believe the combination of Bill C-10 and Bill C-35 goes some distance in doing that.

I would make this final point. One of the witnesses we heard from is a well known professor of criminology and sociology, a highly respected expert. If not the expert in the country, he certainly has no individuals in the country who would be superior to him. He may have a few peers, but there is no one superior.

He made a point in opposition to this legislation. He said that one of the problems with this legislation is that we are creating an expectation that this bill will not meet, because it is already happening. He said that we are creating an expectation that this is going to significantly drive down the crime rate with regard to the use of weapons, illegal guns in particular. He said that it is not going to happen and he is right.

It is not going to happen. It may have a small impact, and he was prepared, I think, to concede that, but as for a major impact, we will hear from some of the government members in particular that it is going to have that major impact, and it is not.

If we are going to drive down the crime rate, especially crime involving guns and serious violent crime, it means more enforcement by our police officers. We saw that again in Toronto, where Chief Blair was very successful in shutting down several of the street gangs by using existing law and existing methodology, before Bill C-10 and before Bill C-35. But he needs more resources, as do a number of our other chiefs across the country.

The other point that we have to be looking at is programming that will prevent individuals, youth in particular, from getting involved in the street gangs, so that they never get to that point where they have to make the decision on whether to take a gun into their possession. Unless we move more dramatically on those prevention programs, we will not see a dramatic reduction in gun crimes in this country.

This is part of the agenda that the government and this legislature have to face on an ongoing basis. I say this repeatedly, and I know it is almost becoming a cliché now, but one violent crime in this country is one too many. The target for us as a legislature is to say that we will do whatever we can to prevent every single violent crime in this country.

Are we ever going to achieve that? I am not naive enough to think we will achieve that ideal society, but I do know, from looking at experiences around the globe, that we can do much more than we are doing now in preventing crime. That is really what the agenda should be for this legislature when we are dealing with the criminal justice system over the next decade.

[Corporate Takeovers, June 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I should ask the House leader to come to Windsor to find out what the unemployment rate is there.

In the last 16 months alone, over 600 Canadian firms worth over $156 billion have been taken over by foreign interests. Not one was disallowed. That is up from $43 billion just two years ago, a whopping 365% increase. At this pace, our natural resources will be 100% owned by foreign companies. We will be mere tenants in our own country.

Will the government commit to the working families at Stelco to protect their jobs and their pensions, and will it commit to emergency hearings on foreign takeovers?

[Corporate Takeovers, June 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the foreign takeover steamroller is picking up speed as Canada's last steel company, Stelco, is on the auction block and working families in Hamilton are just the latest with an uncertain future, not just their jobs but also their pensions.

Will the government, for once, stand up for the working families in Hamilton, announce that any foreign takeover of Stelco will have conditions applied that ensure pensions are protected, jobs are safe and, finally, working families are not the only ones who shoulder the burden of foreign takeovers?

[Manufacturing Industry, June 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, last weekend I joined my colleague from Windsor West and thousands from our community in calling upon the provincial and federal governments to act to protect our manufacturing industry. The rally “Our Jobs, Our Communities, Our Future” was a clear demonstration of the concern the people of Windsor--Essex have about the loss of jobs in this vital sector.

Later in the week I united with my NDP colleagues, the Canadian Labour Congress and again thousands of others on Parliament Hill in another rally to highlight the crisis in manufacturing and to present to the government a practical five point plan to address this problem.

Canadians have shown that we can be the best at manufacturing in the world. We want to continue that proud tradition but cannot continue to be a leading manufacturing nation without the proper tools.

It is time for the government to provide those tools and develop a manufacturing sectoral strategy and a national automotive policy.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, May 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated earlier, I want to acknowledge the work that has been done by the member for Peace River in bringing forth this piece of legislation in the form of a private member's bill. It is one that addresses a current and very serious problem in the country.

As the House knows, as it is a private member's bill all members of the House are entitled to vote as they wish, but as the critic for my party, I will be recommending support for the bill at second reading and that it go to the justice committee. Having said that, I do have some concerns with it, some of which I have discussed with the member for Peace River. I feel fairly optimistic that we can resolve them.

Let me address those. They take two forms. One is that the creation of this new offence, which is in proposed section 7.1(a) may capture potentially individuals or even companies that we may not want to. We may have to look closely at that wording where it talks about the intended use of the chemical or the equipment used in the production of methamphetamine.

That is one area. It is a bit technical but I can see a potential abuse of the legislation if it catches the wrong people. It may need to be tightened up because it may produce a defence for individuals guilty of criminal conduct but who would have a defence in that the language is somewhat vague. We will have to spend some time at committee to make sure that it is not the case and if it is, see what we can do to improve the language.

The second concern I have is the lack of a specific penalty in the section. Section 7(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act as it is now prohibits the production of many drugs listed in other parts of the legislation. That section does not address the issue of equipment or material that is used in the production of the particular drug, in this case methamphetamine.

Maybe it would have been better to create a whole new section of the act, a section 8. In any event the problem is that the balance of section 7 as it is now in the act deals with penalties, but it does not deal with any penalties with regard to equipment or material used in the production of the drug. It only talks about substances.

The law as it is now would not cover part of what we are trying to prohibit in the way of both equipment or other material. It will need an amendment to deal with penalties.

There is another concern I have, although I think I have pretty well satisfied myself, but I will raise it at this point and we will probably have more discussion in committee, assuming the bill is passed in the House at second reading. Clearly, the member for Peace River is after--I do not want to presume guilt--individuals or groups who may very well be part of organized crime or have attachment to organized crime, because they are the greatest number of individuals or groups who are producing methamphetamine in this country at this time. By and large overwhelmingly they produce it and then distribute it, as we have heard from members from the other three parties, primarily to the youth in this country.

We have also heard, and I have not addressed it because so many other members have very accurately and in some cases passionately addressed the consequences of this distribution by these groups, by organized crime in particular. The penalty may need to take that into account. We may be able to put in a specific penalty and then fall back on other sections in the Criminal Code with regard to organized crime. I want to do more thinking on that. I want to hear from the justice department in that regard.

However, the point that I am making is this. For individuals who are long-time criminals with lengthy histories of criminal activity, specifically if they are in organized crime, whether they have criminal records or not, we would want more severe penalties with regard to their conduct. They are really the ones we are after to try to stop this scourge.

In spite of the very debilitating effect that methamphetamine has on individuals who have become addicted to it, it is a reasonably well known fact that there are occasions where because they are so addicted to it and desperate for it, but are still functioning in a reasonably capable manner, they produce the methamphetamine for their own use. In that case we would want a separate penalty for them, which I think would have great emphasis with regard to treatment to try to get them off the drug.

The other penalty that needs to be addressed, and again I have spoken to the member for Peace River about this, is with regard to equipment and material used in the production of the drug. We want to give the courts authority to confiscate the equipment, and that would come from an application from the crown prosecutor. This additional power would allow our judiciary to adequately deal with these labs, especially the more sophisticated ones.

I want to make two more points that are indirectly related.

We know from an experience in the United States that there are other ways of dealing with this. I am not in any way taking away from the importance of doing this because we need this legislation.

New York state, when it first confronted the use of methamphetamine in its jurisdiction, identified early on that it was very important to get at the chemicals, the precursors that are used in the production of this. We know that a number of these chemicals are sold over the counter, mostly in pharmacies but in grocery stores as well.

The state did two things. It regulated the ability to sell those. People who produced the methamphetamine would walk into a pharmacy and strip the shelves. The pharmacy would sell these chemicals to them and they would take out box loads. Obviously, it was much more than was needed for individual consumption, whether it was for a cold, or a flu or some other ailment. That has been regulated. Now pharmacies can only sell a limited number.

The other major problem the state of New York identified, and it is problem we have in Canada and one that I am critical of the government for not acting on this, was big pharmaceutical companies were producing and selling substantially more of the precursors than they could imagine being possible for legal purposes.

Again, the state regulate that. It said that, historically, this was the amount of a certain chemical that was sold in its state, and two years ago it jumped by 100% or 1,000%. The state regulated that and all the company could bring into the state and sell was a certain amount. If the company's market expanded for legal purposes and it could justify it, the state would allow it to sell more.

That is a problem we have in Canada. The government has not acted on this. We have regulations that allow a company to do the same thing. The Department of Agriculture should be doing this, but it has not acted on it, in spite of recommendations from the RCMP and just about every major municipal police force in this country. We can be using the model from the state of New York. This would have a very positive effect on reducing the availability of this drug in our country.

The other point I want to make is this, and we know it from experience. The first time we saw this really develop was in the northern parts of the prairie provinces. We are not quite sure why it happened. We think it is because it is cheap to buy these drugs. However, it has now spread across the country. There are treatment facilities that can respond when we identify this, particularly when our youth get into it. There are not enough of those available. Both provincial and federal governments need to address this issue and allow our youth, in particular, to get the treatment they need to get off this drug.

Again, we will do what we can to improve this bill at the justice committee, assuming that it gets there.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, May 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I think this bill is an appropriate one and I wish to acknowledge the work the hon. member for Peace River has done.

I have a question and it may be technical. A concern I have is with regard to the penalty provisions that would apply to these offences. I do not think section 7, as it is now, is applicable. I am wondering if the member has addressed his mind to the types of penalties and where one would look, whether in the Criminal Code or in the bill, to what the penalties would be for these offences.

[RCMP, May 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians would be prepared to spend that $2 million or $3 million. This is a national institution that is in crisis.

The Minister of Public Safety does not understand that and he cannot slough it off on the Liberals any more. This has been on his desk too long. If the minister will not do the public inquiry, what will he do?

[RCMP, May 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, there are allegations against some senior ranks of the RCMP and they just keep growing. Canadians are increasingly disturbed by these allegations.

Today the Toronto Star reported that up to 12 RCMP officers could provide information about cover-ups, illegal activities, harassment, and the list goes on and on. These officers want a public forum where they can provide this testimony about these allegations without fear of repercussion.

Will the Minister of Public Safety send these and the many other allegations that are out there to a public inquiry for a complete, open and formal hearing?

[Criminal Code, May 28th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, there are really two parts to the question asked by my colleague, the member for Yukon.

In terms of the judicial discretion, it limits the judge's discretion, and I recognize that. What it does accomplish is it is part of the message we are trying to send to the country as a whole, to law-abiding citizens who are frustrated at times when they see sentences they believe are too lenient. We know that happens. Judges are not perfect. I am a very strong proponent, as I think most members of the know, of our judiciary.

I think there is no better judiciary in the world than ours. There may be some that are as good, but there are none that are better. However, judges are not divine. They are human and they make mistakes from time to time. We are saying to them that when the crime is of a certain nature, this is the minimum they have to give.

It does not do anything for discretion except to limit it somewhat, but it does make the sentences more consistent across the country. We get some variation across the country, so to some degree it tightens that up in terms of what it does with regard to the lower end and not having any increases at the other end.

The vast majority of these crimes, if we try to add mandatory minimums at the top end, I believe those would be struck down by our courts, under the charter, as being cruel and unusual punishment. With respect to any attempt to add mandatory minimums at the top end beyond the seven years, I think the Supreme Court and other courts of appeal have made it clear that the seven years is the maximum they are prepared to tolerate under the charter with regard to these types of crimes.

At the lower end, I agree. This is a valid criticism of the legislation. We are probably sacrificing a few people who judges might, because of extenuating circumstances, give lower penalties than the mandatory of five years. Of course, the mandatory for these in just about every case where it is now four at the present time will go to five. It will not be a big difference.

There are cases of extenuating circumstances. I always think of a story I was told as I was lobbied by some groups that were opposed to the mandatory minimums. It was about an individual who had suffered a severe head injury as the result of a trauma in a motor vehicle accident. He was married, had children and was living a pretty normal middle class life by Canadian standards. There was a complete change in his personality. His intelligence level was lowered dramatically. He came under the influence of his brother who was a long-time criminal and was involved in a serious robbery involving guns.

If one takes that kind of fact situation, one would think he would get five years. What one hopes for, and what in fact happened in that case, is a negotiated deal where the charges are reduced on the basis of what the crown says. The fall back is that if the issue is to be dealt with, to a great extent it will be our crowns who will have to deal with it.

[Criminal Code, May 28th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, as I was saying to my colleague from the Bloc, it is now my turn to point out all the inconsistencies of the two opposition parties to my right.

However, let me start with an acknowledgment that this is a piece of legislation that does divide the House. I think that division is also reflective of the situation in the country. I do not believe that there is a member in this House who does not want to do whatever we can do to protect our citizens. That is the absolute first and primary responsibility of any democratically elected government. It is not a responsibility that I believe any members in this House ignore or shirk in any way.

What Bill C-10 is really about is what methods best protect our citizens.

There are givens. The NDP recognizes that the overall violent crime rate in Canada has been dropping. I think this is quite provable by solid statistics for at least the last 25 years, as we have been keeping better statistics around crime rates. There is really no debate with regard to this. It is an accepted fact.

However, there are within that criminal activity certain areas where in fact from time to time we will see spikes in certain crimes or where some crime rates in fact are going up. One of the areas in which we have seen an increase has been crime with the use of guns, the use of handguns and illegal guns in particular, but long guns as well, and involving street gangs and youths in particular.

I have to say that most of those guns that get into the hands of the street gangs and the youth of this country and are then used in serious criminal activity almost always flow from organized crime activity. Many of the guns are smuggled in from the United States, where organized crime is the major actor behind that conduct.

That is the reality of what we are faced with in this country at this time. What we attempted to do with this legislation was to take a significant overreaction by the Conservative Party in the form of the present government and reduce the more radical parts of the bill to achieve what we felt was the proper method to respond to that specific crime statistic and crime conduct.

Is this perfect? I will be the first to admit that I do not think so. Is it better than what the Conservatives proposed? Yes. Is it better than what the Liberals proposed in the last election? If the Liberals' promise had been carried out, there would have been even more severe minimum mandatory penalties, not nearly as well focused, and that is a key point.

I also want to say for my colleagues from the Bloc that it is interesting to hear them rant against this bill, but we in this House passed mandatory minimums to fight impaired driving. Again, it was a condition in the country that had to be dealt with. The rate of impaired driving was going up. The casualities on the ground, on our streets and in our cities were horrendous. We used mandatory minimums to deal with it, and the Bloc supported it, as did the Liberals and the Conservatives and my party.

In the last Parliament, led to a significant degree by a charge from both the Bloc and the Conservatives, we introduced a whole bunch of mandatory minimums into child abuse charges, some of which I simply could not accept because they were so overblown and so irresponsible, in effect, but the Bloc members supported that. Not only did their member on the committee who led the charge support it, but when the bill came to the House they supported it 100%. There were a lot of mandatory minimums in that bill.

As the last speaker mentioned, the Bloc members also led the charge in introducing, properly so, mandatory minimums with regard to organized crime.

In each case, with the exception of some of those in the child abuse file, it was appropriate for this legislature to do that. It was appropriate because we had a specific problem in this country with regard to that criminal activity. If we are going to use mandatory minimums, we have to be sure we use them in a focused manner.

Again, I am highly critical of the Liberals. When they were in power, they introduced between 45 to 60 new mandatory minimums, depending on how we use the sections, in their 13 years in government. Thus, when they stand in the House and criticize the NDP for supporting mandatory minimums, they are being highly hypocritical, quite frankly, in particular because they used that method so often that it loses its effectiveness.

We saw this in particular with regard to impaired driving. We put together a program in this country, led by citizens' advocates, our police, our judiciary and, yes, members of the House at that time. The message that went out to the country was that we had a major problem with impaired driving and our laws were not adequate to deal with it, not only with regard to the actual legislation but also the enforcement.

In that period, we brought in the use of the breathalyzer, which as an enforcement tool was phenomenal. I happened to be practising criminal law at that time, doing defence work, and I know how easy it was to get people off on the impaired driving charges at that time, but as soon as the breathalyzer came in and there was a scientific method to show that the person in fact was impaired, the ability to get acquittals dropped dramatically.

We had a really good enforcement methodology, a good technique and a new technology. As governments, both provincial and federal, we spent the money to make sure that our police officers across the country had access to that technology. We had a major advertising and promotion campaign to fight against impaired driving, to get the message out to society at all levels that it was wrong, and yes, we introduced mandatory minimums. We had mandatory minimum suspensions for licences. We had mandatory minimum fines. Also, if there was more than one conviction, if there were subsequent convictions, the person was looking at jail time.

That is the system we have in this country. Again, is it perfect and has it stopped impaired driving completely? No, but we have reduced the rate of impaired driving in this country quite dramatically.

That is what we are trying to do. That is what the NDP is trying to do in supporting the legislation as it has been amended. We have to do the same thing. We must have legislation in place that sends a message from this House, the House that governs this country, that we are going to be very serious in how we treat individual criminals who are convicted of serious crimes involving guns. This is the message that goes out with the passage of the bill.

At the same time, we know it is not enough. In fact, I again will be critical of the government and the Conservatives for trying to get the message out that this is the be-all and end-all and we are going to make our streets safe by passing this particular bill, 100%. That is a false message. That is not what is going to happen. It is going to have some impact, but we need to be doing much more. In fact, the impact of the legislation, I always say, is relatively minor compared to what we have to do in other areas, enforcement being one of those other two areas.

Part of this was interesting in that we had the opportunity to go to Toronto and take some evidence from the chief of police there, Chief Blair, and hear about some of the experiences he had in dealing with some of the street gangs, the exact people we are trying to get at with this legislation, and about some of the methods he put into place. He was able to do so only because additional moneys were given to him by the province of Ontario and the city of Toronto to focus specifically on the gangs and specifically on gun crime.

He was quite successful. The violent crime rate in one area of the city was reduced by 40% in one year. It was a phenomenal experience and is attributable to his skill and that of his officers, but also, at the governmental level, resources were deployed. We need to do that in a number of other communities across the country. The government needs to help in that regard, because certainly there are provinces, and I think in particular of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, where additional resources are needed for provinces that are not as wealthy as Ontario and do not have the ability to deploy resources.

Coming back to it, what we are dealing with here is legislation, yes, recognizing that it is of small impact, and enforcement, yes, because it has a much greater impact, but there is a third area in which we need to be doing much more work. Again I am critical of the government because it has not spent enough money. There are all sorts of programs that need to be deployed, again specifically targeting youth, and particularly the youth in our inner core cities, not exclusively but primarily, programs that will get them before they get attracted to those street gangs and get involved in criminal activity at a very young age.

That is not happening right now. The government has spent very little money in this regard. It is not well targeted, but at the very base it is no sufficient. We can pass this bill, and we should, but we cannot say to the country that we really are doing what we are supposed to be doing to prevent these crimes from happening unless we put additional resources into crime prevention. There are a lot of good programs out there, a number of which we can identify, and we should be assisting them to a much greater extent than we have up to this point.

There is one final area that I want to cover with regard to the nature of this bill and what could have been done in addition to it. I have said this in the House repeatedly. Every time I get up to speak to a government crime bill, I raise it, and I am going to do so again. Perhaps at some point the government will finally get the message.

I accuse the government of this and I will convict it as well: the government has been guilty of highlighting specific crimes with specific bills. Then the government is critical of the opposition for taking too long to get those bills back through the House. This bill in particular is a classic example of how the alternative would have been so much more effective and efficient, both in using the time of the House and in terms of dealing with the problem.

We have a bill, Bill C-10, which deals with mandatory minimums for gun crimes, for guns that are used in serious violent crimes. In effect that is what the bill is about. Currently before our justice committee we have another bill that deals with crime of a serious violent nature involving guns. It is a bail bill. It is a reverse onus bill. It is one that all the parties support. It is one that would go through very quickly.

It is one that could very easily have been combined with Bill C-10 a year ago, so that Bill C-10 would have been about both mandatory minimums and bail review, the reverse onus of bail. That bill would now be before the House. We would be voting on it either this week or next and it would be on its way to the Senate and hopefully shortly after that would be the law of the land.

However, what is going to happen is that the bill is not going to get back to the House before we break for the summer. It is probably not going to get through the process until the latter part of this year and then go on to the Senate and royal assent and the rest of it. Roughly a year later, it is going to come into effect.

We need that bill. We need it in conjunction with this mandatory minimums bill that we are dealing with. It was a logical one to do.

This can be repeated. I do not know how many crime bills we have had from the government. I think there have been 10, 12 or 15 up to this point, since January of last year. Any number of them could have been combined and we could have gone through this.

For members of the House, who already know this, but for the Canadian public as well, the same witnesses repeatedly appear before committee, whether it is the police associations, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, sometimes retired judiciary people, advocates around crime, defence lawyer associations, bar associations or academics in this field. We keep hearing the same people over and over again. They could have come once to give us their evidence on a whole bunch of points. However, the government is insistent, and I accuse it of doing this for straight partisan purposes, to try to highlight that it is tough on crime, that will do this, then it will do that and it will do the other thing.

The reality is it could have been done all at once. If there were one all encompassing bill, we could have done that. With those 10, 12 or 15 bills, we could have done all of that and we could have added in a whole bunch of the private members' bills on crime. I cannot even remember all the numbers of the bills that I am supposed to deal with as the justice critic for my party, and I am sure the justice critics of the other parties are in the same boat. There have been that many, if we combine both the government bills and the ones coming as private members' bills.

There have been well over 20 in the last 15, 16 months. All of them could have been combined in an omnibus bill. A lot more amendments need to be made to the Criminal Code to clear up some of the problems, and to the Evidence Act and other parts of the criminal process.

The justice department, through the work it has been doing over the last number of years, very well qualified, would know what sections we need to encompass in an omnibus piece of criminal law. If we had done that, the government would have been unable to say that it was in favour of mandatory minimums, that it was in favour of this or that. It lost that political flavour, and that is to its eternal shame.

The NDP will support the bill now that it has been amended in line with what members believe is a responsible, focused way to deal with mandatory minimums vis-à-vis crimes that involve guns of a serious violent nature.

I encourage the government, once again, to look at its crime agenda legislation and find ways of bringing the bills together so we can get this done in a much more efficient way and Canadian people overall can be better protected than they are at the present time.