Joe Comartin

[Privilege, October 3rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on this question of privilege because I believe it is a very grave matter with regard to democracy in this country. It is a grave matter with regard to the issue of respect by the government of the day to the House of Commons and the elected members of the House of Commons.

I rise with regard to the announcement last week by the government that it was terminating all funding to the Law Commission.

The Law Commission was established by legislation in 1996. It has functioned since that time with staff preparing reports, et cetera. The legislation that empowers the establishment of that commission was passed by Parliament through all stages. Nothing has been done with regard to that legislation to alter it in this period of time of 10 years.

What is happening is another attempt by the government to thwart the intent of Parliament to the expressed wish and desire of Parliament in the form of that legislation. What the government is doing, if I can put this in street language, is trying to do through the back door what it should be doing, if it is serious about this, through proper mechanisms through the front door.

The government is simply saying by stroke of the pen through, and I am not entirely sure where it thinks it gets the authority, either the chair of the Treasury Board or through some officer in the Prime Minister's Office that it simply is eliminating all the funding for the Law Commission.

It was quite clear when the commission was set up under the legislation that it had certain duties. One duty in section 6 of the legislation is to report to this House. It requires the Law Commission to establish a president and a set of commissioners. Those commissioners shall be paid by the government of the day by direction of this legislation. In addition to that, the commission would have full time staff and operate an office to do research and report on issues of the day in the legal community. As an aside, the Law Commission has done an excellent job in that regard.

This is not the first time that we have been confronted with this type of an issue and by this government. It is not as though the government could claim “sorry we slipped”. We went through this earlier this year with regard to the Firearms Act. We had speculation coming from various members of the government side that it was simply going to gut the provisions of the gun registry under the Firearms Act unilaterally by way of regulatory decree. This would have come from the PCO and/or the cabinet.

The government knows it cannot do that. The government received legal opinions that it cannot do that. There is no difference in that situation than in the situation with the Law Commission. The Law Commission is bound to be established by that legislation of now some 10 years. It has been established. The Law Commission had been complying with the legislation up until a week ago.

The Law Commission has been directed to cease operations completely by the end of the year. The government is cutting out the entire budget and have in effect directed the Law Commission to cease operations before the end of the year.

The government knows it cannot do it under the Firearms Act. It cannot do it under this legislation either for exactly the same reasons. In addition to that, and I think this goes to almost the contempt that the government has for the House of Commons, the previous Conservative government did the same thing to the Law Reform Commission back in 1992-93. At least that government followed the law and that was a majority government, which maybe is the difference that we have here.

This government knows that in a minority government, this particular minority government, with regard to this issue that it could not get a piece of legislation destroying the Law Commission through the House. The government knows that all three of the opposition parties would be opposed to that occurring. We believe in the institution of the Law Commission and so we would vote that legislation down.

If I again may go back to 1992-93, the previous Conservative government did in fact destroy the Law Reform Commission, the predecessor of the Law Commission, but it did so by legislation. The Conservatives had a majority government and they shoved that through the House at that time.

We have two solid authorities to say that the government cannot do what it last week proposed to do. The Conservatives cannot cut that funding and thereby destroy the Law Commission. They know they cannot do it because of the opinion they got on the Firearms Act. They know they cannot do it because there is a precedent specifically on the Law Commission, named the Law Reform Commission at the time, when a previous government did the same thing but did it by way of legislation through the front door, not by the back or side door.

In terms of the impact this has, it is not just a privilege to me as an individual member of Parliament, quite frankly, it is for every single member, including the members on the government side. If we are not going to abide by our own laws that we pass here, what could be more undermining of the authority of this House? I cannot think of anything.

This is a direct attack on our privilege as members. The laws we pass have to be abided by and have to be carried out. If they are not going to be, that is, if the government of the day wants to change this, then the government has to change the law. The Conservatives cannot do it by fiat. They cannot do it in the backroom. They have to do it publicly. They have to bring it to a vote in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I am asking you to find that in fact our collective privilege has been damaged and has been interfered with and that you provide us with that ruling. If you do, Sir, I would then ask that the issue be referred to the justice committee. Upon your ruling, I am prepared to submit a motion with regard to this.

[Criminal Code, October 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question because it concerns another one of those scenarios on which the definition is so weak. That does occur. The use of the Internet to provoke street racing, so they all try to get to the same site first, is one of the methodologies.

Another type of street racing that goes on, what we would conventionally think of as street racing, is where an individual car is timed and then the next car comes down and they are timing each other.

The definition is extremely weak and does not address the real issues that often confront our police forces.

[Criminal Code, October 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, what we hear, of course, are the exceptional cases where, on the surface, somebody looks at it and says that in no way is that severe enough, but those are the exceptional cases. In a large number of those cases, there are rational, solid reasons why the judge does that. Our judges are not perfect. They certainly make mistakes and there are times when penalties, by normal standards that most people would accept, are too light, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.

With regard to sentencing guidelines, I am not sure we can add much more if we stay with the existing regime because in order for convictions to occur for dangerous driving, driving that effects criminal negligence, all of the evidence of the conduct would already be before the court. They need to show that conduct to obtain the conviction, so the judge would already have heard all of that evidence.

We could then ask whether we should include in the sentencing guidelines that if someone is convicted of dangerous driving and the conduct is in the form of street racing, that should be grounds for consideration of additional penalties. It may be worthwhile but I do not think, on a practical level, it would make much difference.

[Criminal Code, October 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, again, the government never bothers to look at the actual practice of what is going on. The existing laws have quite severe penalties depending on the consequences. If there is bodily injury or death, the penalties go all the way up to 14 years as it stands right now. In terms of whether the bill would do anything to add to that, it would not.

The other conduct that we want to see society carry forward on is what I think is the way to go. I am not sure I am fully answering his question but it seems to me that the role of the criminal law is already being met. What we really need in the administration of that law is to provide meaningful enforcement and have a public campaign.

We could be doing all sorts of other things. Why do we allow most of our vehicles to travel at rates of speed up to 180 kilometres an hour? We have the technology to slow down our vehicles. Why are we not doing that?

It is all part of that message. It is not all that we do but it is all part of that message of telling people that they cannot race because it is no longer acceptable.

[Criminal Code, October 2nd, 2006]

I am hearing again catcalls from the rear benches of the Conservative Party about deterrence. Again, if he were to do some research he would find out that has nothing to do with the effect we have had on impaired driving.

The reason we were effective in bringing those numbers down was because of groups like MADD, our police forces and parliamentarians. All of us moved into a mode of saying that we would denounce this. We see the ads on television and we see the conduct that is disparaged all the time and it has an impact. That is the same kind of thing we have to do with street racing. We have to say to those people who are inclined to even think of doing it that it is not acceptable to society, but we will not do it simply by passing this bill.

[Criminal Code, October 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I categorically reject that the bill would do anything to target the population we are after. It just does not have that kind of an effect. If the parliamentary secretary had done any kind of meaningful research he would know that.

I am proposing that we do with street racing what we did with impaired driving. Not everybody drives impaired in this country but we built a very effective program of public education in cooperation--

[Criminal Code, October 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, let me rephrase that. “Their responses are more clearly visible but”, and I am inserting here, “the Prime Minister's announcement has too great an air of grandstanding to it. The strong message he seeks to send is already in the code”.

Josh Weinstein, a criminal lawyer in Winnipeg and a member of the Canadian Bar Association's criminal law section, had a somewhat similar attitude. He threw out the rhetorical question in referring to Bill C-19 and the government's position on dealing with street racing:

What really does it add? Well it adds a couple of words -- street racing -- to offences essentially already on the books." It bumps up the time a bit, but at the end of the day, I think the public's going to have to wonder whether this is all just smoke and mirrors.

Both the editorial and the comments from Mr. Weinstein are dead on, that this is grandstanding, that there is a great deal of smoke and mirrors in the bill and the position of the government.

If the government were really serious about dealing with this crime and the conduct that results so often in serious injuries and death, there are other alternatives. To some degree what we are doing here with the bill and assuming it goes to committee is wasting great deal of time.

The posturing that is going on here has to be highlighted by this reality. If the bill does get second reading, the bill will be sent to the justice committee. The justice committee already has a heavy workload. The reality is the bill is not going to be dealt with by the justice committee until at least the spring of next year, and given the bills that are already prioritized before that committee, it would probably would not be dealt with until the fall of 2007.

There is a high likelihood that some time before the spring but certainly by the fall of next year we are going to be into another general election. The government knows that. What we are seeing today with this bill and what we are going to see consistently for the next number of months right into the spring is a series of bills like this one. We are going to see bills on hot button items that attract attention on issues which are of real concern to the Canadian public, but bills that have absolutely no chance of being dealt with by the justice committee and the House in that period of time.

The government talks about dealing with these issues such as street racing and I think a bill will be coming forward this week regarding three strikes and you are out, and there are any number of others that are being proposed, such as lowering the age of when youth can be sent to penitentiaries and all those speculations we heard from the minister in the spring and summer, in addition to the bills that are already before us. If the Conservatives were really serious about dealing with these issues, there are alternatives.

I have argued strongly in the past and do so again today that our Criminal Code needs serious reform. It is substantially out of date. There are a number of contradictions in the code which need to be taken care of. Yes, there are additional issues and probably additional crimes as well as sentencing issues that have to be dealt with. But it misleads the Canadian public to bring forward a series of hot button bills that are not going to achieve anything, as opposed to being serious about dealing with the Criminal Code and its weaknesses and its loopholes. The government could do that. It could be serious about it by bringing forward an omnibus bill to reform the Criminal Code, to amend it extensively to bring it into the 21st century which it badly needs. The government should stop playing politics with crime and should stop playing politics with the victims of crime.

That is what Bill C-19 is doing and what the government is doing. If it were really serious about dealing specifically with this crime, this conduct, some things could have been done quickly in the budget. The government could have signalled very clearly to police forces across the country that it would provide them with the financial resources to enforce the existing laws regarding such things as dangerous driving and dangerous driving causing death and injury. The government could have signalled that it would provide them with the necessary resources.

In that regard, I recently read an article about Richmond, B.C. The local police chief was detailing what his force had done to combat street racing in that community. He felt he had done a fairly good job of getting it under control. He bemoaned quite strongly what it cost his police service. He had to take officers off other work and put them on to that. He had to redeploy resources from fighting other crimes to fighting that specific one. He did not have the resources to do both so he had to make that tough decision. What that says, however, is it can be done.

It was interesting to speak with one of my colleagues from Winnipeg. She said there is a street in Winnipeg where everybody knows street racing goes on, but the police force simply does not have sufficient resources to deploy forces regularly over an extended period of time, six months to a year, to combat the street racing that occurs there. The police just do not have the resources. That was the information she was getting from the police department.

If we are going to get serious about stopping street racing, and I say this a lot when I am dealing with this government in particular, let us do it. Let us not say after the fact when somebody has been seriously injured or killed that we are going to send the criminal to jail for an extended period of time. Do the victim's loved ones or family members really care that much at that point? They want the victim to be alive, healthy and a vibrant part of their lives. That is what we should be talking about when we are drafting legislation. Does it do anything to help the victims of crime? Does it do anything to prevent crime?

I would say that the minister is obsessively convinced of the deterrent factor in spite of all the evidence that it does not have much effect to pass those kinds of laws.

We need to look at the consequences of this particular legislation. I was interested to hear the minister talk about one of the flaws in the legislation. He did not admit it as that but it is there. If the bill eventually becomes law, what we will have done is created a new offence. In that offence we have defined street racing as being racing. I know non-lawyers would say how ridiculous that is. The minister is telling us not to worry about that because the government has received interpretations and it will rely on precedents from other cases.

Those precedents, in my opinion, do not exist because at the present time and historically, when this street racing type of conduct has been dealt with by our courts, it has never been defined by our courts. Our courts have looked at it as dangerous driving, as criminal negligence. We do not have any way of relying on precedents as to what racing is.

The definition of “street racing” in the bill reads:

“street racing” means operating a motor vehicle in a race with at least one other motor vehicle on a street, road, highway or other public place;

Let me repeat that street racing means operating a motor vehicle in a race. That definition is absolutely useless to the courts because it does not tell them anything. What it does do is it raises a major problem. We have to appreciate that the penalties under this section are not being altered significantly on the first offence, but on second and third offences we are going to mandatory minimums, which of course the minister is in love with, all evidence to the contrary.

Let me give a scenario. Somebody is convicted once of what I am going to call stupidity. Most crimes are stupid and certainly street racing is that. Let us take what I call the jack rabbit start. Two young people are at a stop sign. One starts revving the engine; the other one responds. They take off. They go down half a block. They are stopped by the police. That is racing by this definition. Big deal. What is going to happen? They are going to be charged with street racing. They are going to go to court and they are going to get a relatively minor penalty on the first offence. If they do that a second time, one, two or three years later, they will be going to jail for three years, and if they do it a third time, they will be going to jail for five years or longer.

That is not what the bill is intended to do, but that could very well be a consequence. We could repeat that in a number of other ways because of the lack of a proper definition of what racing would be under this law.

One could say, “That is all right. I don't mind. If they do it twice even in a minor way like that, lock them up and throw away the key”. I am sure most of the Conservatives on that side of the House would agree with that sentiment. That is not what happens in the courtrooms. In a courtroom the judge faced with that is going to say, “I am not going to convict” and the person is going to walk away.

Talking about, as this government does all the time, accountability and responding to the credibility gap that we have with regard to our courts, if that person walks out of that courtroom absolutely free with no conviction, what does that to do the credibility of our courts? It is that kind of thinking that never is raised by this government when it is dealing with this legislation.

I am hearing from the backbench on the Conservative side that what we need are new judges, and of course, they are going through that. They are appointing their friends repeatedly, in spite of the position a number of them took in the last Parliament that they would not do that. I am not surprised when I hear that comment from the backbenchers because it is also in the cabinet of the Conservative government.

With regard to this section, again if we are really serious, there are other provisions in the code that are going to deal with it and so, we do not really need it. If we are going to go ahead with this bill, and I know there is some sentiment in this House that there may be some advantage in creating a new offence of a very limited nature, and if we are going to be serious about this, the people we want to get at, the criminals, the criminal conduct that we want to get at, are those people who do it on a premeditated basis. We want to get at the people who soup up and alter their cars. We hear of that. Some people adapt the engines so that they can take, I think it is nitrous oxide, to give the engines a boost when they kickstart their cars. Some people alter the engines in a variety of ways. They alter the body of the car, making it lighter so the car will go faster with the same engine.

If we really are serious about this issue, we should be looking at that. There are none of those provisions in this bill. That is not what the government is trying to do. We could do that and it might address at least one of the problems.

We should be looking at a number of alternatives. Let us look at the advertising that auto companies do to sell their vehicles. Somewhere in excess of 50%, and in some markets as high as 90%, of all the advertising done by auto companies show vehicles speeding at an illegal level and being driven in a way that could be considered careless driving all the way up to dangerous driving. Why do we not control those kinds of promotions by auto companies? We did it with cigarette advertising and, to some degree, with alcohol. We can do it with the kind of advertising that is offensive and is encouraging young people to drive recklessly. This level of government could do that .

We could also have more police officers to enforce our laws. As I said earlier, this would require additional resources but those resources could be given right away. We do not need to wait until the next budget or for legislation.

The bill as proposed has major flaws in it and one questions whether we need it at all. If we are going to run it through at all, we must limit its scope quite dramatically so it does something effectively as opposed to nothing, which is what the bill would accomplish.

[Criminal Code, October 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-19 before us is alleged by the government to deal with what I think we all recognize is a serious problem in the form of dangerous driving, street racing at high speeds, particularly on residential streets in this country. We have had some quite notorious cases just this year both in Toronto and in Vancouver and in previous years in a number of other cities across the country.

I have to say that I come at this with some sense of cynicism as to the real motivation of the government in bringing forth this bill. I say that from the perspective of seeing this, to a significant degree, as the government pushing one of those hot buttons without having anything behind it.

I am not alone in that regard. I was looking at an editorial in the Globe and Mail from back in the spring of this year. It addressed the announcement by the Prime Minister that this bill was coming forward and the government was going to deal with street racing.

Similarly, the editorial was somewhat negative as to its perspective on the government doing this. As for recognizing the problem, no one in the House is going to take any position of denying it. We have some argument over how severe the problem is, but what is more important is how we deal with it. The attitude in the editorial was that we already have legislation, which we also have heard about today from some other members of the House. The editorial concluded with this comment:

But the answer is to enforce existing laws and to set stricter sentencing guidelines, rather than to add a largely redundant law to the Criminal Code. Politicians may get more credit if their responses are more clearly visible, but Mr. Harper's announcement has too great an air of grandstanding to it.

[Maher Arar, September 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is exactly that legalistic approach that Justice O'Connor recommended against. Maybe the minister should read the rest of the report.

I believe the Prime Minister does want to apologize and say that he is sorry but the lawyers will not let him do it. They are following this negotiation plan of using the apology as a negotiating chip.

It is very clear that the government is responsible to Mr. Arar for compensation. The government should take the apology out of that negotiation stage, make it unconditional and do it now.

[Maher Arar, September 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, today the commissioner of the RCMP finally apologized to the Arar family. The House has apologized to the Arar family and yet all we hear from the Conservative government is an old cliched line about this being an injustice.

Injustice is a grave understatement. What happened to Mr. Arar is unconscionable and it is unbelievable that the Prime Minister has not yet apologized on behalf of all Canadians.

How much longer does Maher Arar and his family have to wait for an apology from the Prime Minister?