Joe Comartin

[Criminal Code, May 29th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-9, which has been referred to as the amendment to conditional sentencing. It is important to appreciate some of the historical background behind this and why attention has been paid to this form of sentencing.

The original provision for conditional sentencing is relatively new to our criminal justice system, being only a little over nine years old. At the time it was introduced, it was a clear attempt on the part of the government of the day to reduce our prison population so individuals were not incarcerated for crimes that could have been better dealt with through rehabilitation, expression of denunciation by the state and justice for the victims. This would justify the use of conditional sentences as opposed to incarceration.

Conditional sentencing was used fairly slowly for the first few years. By the end of 2004, conditional sentences were being used across the land approximately 15,500 times. That meant fewer people were being incarcerated. The provision of the section is such that it is only used, whether it is now or subsequent to the proposed amendment, when the judge decides that the person in all other circumstances will be sent to prison. In these circumstances it would be better, for the reasons I have already mentioned, for the person to remain in restricted custody, but outside of full incarceration.

It is important to appreciate what has happened. Particularly in the last few years we have read on the front pages of our newspapers or heard on the national news cases involving criminals who were convicted of serious, violent crimes but were given conditional sentences. I do not know how many times this has occurred nor does the government. Some cases received substantial media notoriety. When these were investigated, extraneous circumstances justified the use of conditional sentences. However, this flew in the face of the original intent of conditional sentences, which were for non-violent crimes, not those that resulted in serious injury to victims.

A consensus built within the legal community and the legislators in the House that this issue had to be revisited. We had to address the point of when it was appropriate to use conditional sentences. If there were cases when it was inappropriate to use conditional sentences, we had to see if amendments could made to the section that would prohibit judges from using them.

The former government brought forward a bill toward the end of the last Parliament that attempted to address the issue. It reflected, to some degree, some consensus that had been built by all four parties. It did not get to second reading and died after the election was called.

This bill has taken a significantly different and more punitive approach to the issue of conditional sentences. The most important part is to look at the provisions of the section. It basically states that conditional sentences would be unable to be used in cases of a crime that had maximum penalties of 10 years or more.

We have to appreciate as well the impact of the amendment. If it were to go through, and I am cautiously optimistic that it will not in its present form, all these sentences would be served in provincial jails, not in the federal system. One of the other provisions already in the section is that it is not used unless the sentence to be imposed is two years less a day. If it is two years less a day, the person would spend the time in a provincial jail. All the individuals sentenced under this would be individuals who would normally end up in our provincial jails.

It is quite a lengthy list of where it would be prohibited to use this section. Forty-two sections of the Criminal Code have maximum terms of 10 years or more so conditional sentences could no longer be used. The difficulty I and my party have with this is a number of these sections are for crimes that are not of a violent nature, where an individual victim would not be assaulted or injured in a minor or serious way. We would classify approximately 20 sections as property offences, some quite minor. We sometimes wonder why there is even the possibility that somebody would get 10 years or more for that kind of an offence.

The first on the list is property theft over $5,000. It does not take many pieces of electronic equipment stolen from a house or a retail store to amount to over $5,000. It could be a first offence, but a conditional sentence would not be considered for the individual.

I will go through them. We have cattle theft, theft or forgery of credit cards, unauthorized use of a computer, breaking and enter with intent to commit an indictable offence, being unlawfully in a dwelling house, house breaking and possession of instruments, disguise with intent and possession of stolen property over $5,000, theft from mail, bringing into Canada property obtained by crime, false pretense of property over $5,000, obtained credit by false pretense, forgery, utter forged documents, fraud over $5,000 where a testamentary document is altered, false prospectus, personation with intent, wilful mischief over $5,000, wilful mischief of other property and arson for fraudulent purposes.

There are about 20 offences, all of them property crime. We question why some would even have a maximum penalty of 10 years. Nobody ever gets that kind of a penalty for those kinds of crimes, but they are all included in Bill C-9. The effect of the bill is to exclude anybody convicted of one of those offences from being treated by way of a conditional sentence.

When I saw the bill, my initial reaction was this. Our Crown attorneys will take a look at it and will immediately make deals with defence counsel. Of the 15,500 cases each year, somewhere around 5,300 to 5,400, or one-third, will be excluded. The statistics I am giving are from the Department of Justice. I am not making these up.

One thing that could happen is that crown attorneys would plea bargain deals with defence counsel and some criminals would still get through in other ways. The parliamentary secretary mentioned that one way would be to allow for suspended sentences. I do not see that as a good alternative to dealing with this type of crime.

With suspended sentences, a judge has no ability to put restrictions on the person convicted. The judge basically decides not to proceed with a conviction and no penalties but if the person commits another crime and comes back before the court the judge can sentence the individual. That is how suspended sentences work. It is not a good alternative in terms of rehabilitation or an expression of denunciation from the state. It is not a good alternative to conditional sentences for that kind of crime.

However, we will get some of them out. I am guessing that at least 1,000 or so a year will be taken care of by some other kind of plea bargain but that still leaves 4,000-plus cases.

When officials from the Department of Justice came to me for a briefing I asked them what it would cost and, more important, what it would cost the provinces because all these sentences would be served at the provincial level. It costs about $125 a day to keep somebody incarcerated in our provincial system. It varies from province to province but that is a mean average. If we were to do the math, the operational cost for each convict who goes into the system would be in the range of $200 million to $250 million per day. All provinces will need to build additional cells to provide sufficient capacity to handle these prisoners.

It was interesting to hear the Minister of Public Safety say publicly that the money has not been specifically earmarked but that it has been set aside in the budget. This reflects the Conservatives' lack of understanding of what they are really getting themselves into. That money will be more than used when we get to the next bill, Bill C-10, on mandatory minimum sentences.

The Minister of Public Safety figures that the government will need about $250 million to $300 million. I think those were the figures he used. However that will be used up when we get to Bill C-10 and the number of additional people we will put into jails for longer periods of time at the federal level. Therefore, there really is no money in the budget. If the government is serious about getting both Bill C-9 and Bill C-10 through, there is no money for the provinces. All of that money, and a lot more quite frankly, will get used up in the federal system if Bill C-10, the mandatory minimums, gets through as it is presently drafted. I assume we will get to that bill some time later in the week.

The government has slapped this bill together in a slipshod manner more out of ideology and philosophy of how it would like to see society function than any reality of how it does. It brought forward this section and could not care less about what it will cost the provinces. After talking with some of the attorneys general, I know there has been no specific discussion of how much this will cost and no assurances or guarantees from the government that it will fund it. What it is doing is downloading this cost of its ideology onto the provinces.

We are not talking peanuts. We are talking operational dollars of $200 million to $250 million a year if this goes through and substantial additional capital. The best estimate I can give, since the government does not have one, is somewhere between $200 million and $500 million for the additional prison cells that will need to be built to accommodate the additional 4,000 to 4,500 prisoners at the provincial level.

The other negative byproduct of this approach to criminal justice by the government is that conditional sentences have been used in a significantly higher percentage among first nation peoples than it has for criminals in other sectors of society. I will give one example.

In Saskatchewan, where conditional sentencing has been used, and arguably more extensively than any place except the province of Quebec on a per capita basis, 64% of the conditional sentences are for individuals who come from the first nations, Métis and Inuit population.

A number of years ago the province of Saskatchewan, probably around the same time as the conditional sentences were working their way through, made the conscious decision to reduce its prison population and to specifically target first nations because first nations population members make up almost 80% of the prison population at the provincial level in Saskatchewan. It has had a significant impact in Saskatchewan of reducing that population, of keeping them in society, of keeping them in their communities and of rehabilitating them at a much more effective rate.

We all know, and no one in the House should delude themselves otherwise, that the longer someone is in prison the higher the rate of recidivism and the more people are kept our of prison the lower the rate of recidivism.

Saskatchewan is saying that it has a major problem. Is the province able to get around it? If it can, why are we bothering with this bill? The real possibility is that Saskatchewan will not plea bargain a little bit. It may plea bargain a lot.

We need to appreciate that the alternatives to probation and suspended sentences are nowhere near as effective as the tools we get from conditional sentencing. The judges have a much broader scope of the conditions that they can impose on the convicted criminal under this section than the authorities have under the probation provision or the judges have if they were to impose a suspended sentence.

We are doing one of two things here. We will either end up with more people in our provincial prisons, which means the provinces will carry that bill, and, as a result, our first nations people in particular will be targeted, or the same number will be kept out but under suspended sentence or maybe probation where they may receive a short sentence period and then a long probation period. However the tools we will now have under the suspended sentence provision or probation will be much less effective than under a conditional sentence.

We need to understand the history here. Judges had begun to use the conditional sentencing concept and in a number of cases they imposed conditions. We heard the Bloc member say that one of the conditions is the person could not consume alcohol in his or her own home. A number of provisions, such as that one, were challenged under the charter and the higher courts ruled that a judge did not have the authority because it was not provided for in the Criminal Code or other legislation.

What happened is that this provision was put in. The judges then said that they now had the tools and, in cooperation with the prosecutors, the police, the defence counsels and the criminal himself or herself, that they would develop a specific set of conditions applicable to that person to control his or her behaviour and make a serious attempt at rehabilitation.

One of the concerns I have with the government jumping ahead as it is right now is that there are no studies. I have checked throughout the private sector academia and there are no good studies on just how effective the conditional sentences have been. There is a fair amount of anecdotal that they have been and we know we have substantially reduced our prison population at the provincial level. It has been effective from that perspective which is one of the major things it was to do. However, on the rate of recidivism we do not have that and we should have that before we proceed with this legislation.

I believe all parties recognize that there are certain cases of serious violent crimes for which conditional sentences should not be available. My belief is that when the bill comes out of committee we will see that section amended to the degree where at least that will be covered. I believe the concerns we have heard from society will be addressed but we will not have to go any further and eliminate a tool that has been a very effective one for our judges and our prosecutors.

[Criminal Code, May 29th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, as a follow-up to the last question, is the parliamentary secretary really serious when he says that the government is targeting only serious crimes?

I agree with him that there is some concern in this country over the use of conditional sentences when it comes to violent crimes. There have been several--although not many--notorious cases that have hit the front pages of our papers, but as I look at the list prepared by the Department of Justice, I see that there are close to 20 charges that have nothing to do with violence and have a maximum penalty of 10 years. Therefore, conditional sentences will no longer be necessary. Some are: fraud over $5,000, the filing of a false prospectus, wilful mischief over $5,000, wilful mischief of other property, theft from the mail, false pretense, and obtaining credit by false pretense. All of these crimes will no longer be available for those sentences.

I am asking the parliamentary secretary if he does not think that in fact this legislation has overreached its boundaries. Perhaps the government should be considering eliminating a number of those less serious offences from the consequences of the bill.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, May 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to address that point, but I got so caught up in the other issue. It is such an issue of unfairness that I became sidetracked by the passion I feel about it.

I have been a long-time environmentalist. The EnerGuide program makes good sense in terms of environmental protection and it makes good economic sense as well. When I heard the announcements I could not help but think of what the Mike Harris government in Ontario did when it first took power. His government cut the same programs in Ontario in the same kind of timeframe. I was involved with one of the environmental groups that was deploying these services in the Windsor-Essex County area. The funds were cut completely over a very short period of time.

The government is misleading Canadians. The Minister of Natural Resources has said repeatedly, and we heard it again today from the parliamentary secretary that we are only getting 50¢ of every $1 in EnerGuide to the Canadian taxpayers. That is simply wrong. The government is not taking into account the assessments and the cost of those assessments. I am sure the governing party would be the last to suggest that this work should be done on a pro bono basis. That work is absolutely crucial.

An individual is hired from the private sector to do an assessment. The individual looks at the electrical and heating sources as well as the structure of the home and then gives an overall recommendation as to how the energy efficiency of the residence could be improved. It does not need a lot of understanding; that is how the system works, but it costs money. Depending on the nature of the building, the cost runs from a minimum of $150 to $200 all the way up to $400 or $500 per assessment.

The government is saying those numbers should be on the administration side, that somehow the public service is gathering this money up. It is not at all. Every single penny of the money is in the private sector. It is going to private contractors and is benefiting the owners of the residences. The government is leading Canadians to believe that somehow they are not benefiting from it.

The next stage in the process is to make the recommended improvements. A subsidy of up to $4,500 is available. But the second stage cannot be done unless the first stage has been done.

We absolutely need to spend that money. It is going to benefit Canadians. As those assessments have been completely cut off because all of the money has been cut off, the second stage is not going to be initiated anywhere near the same level. It is all gone. The people who need that incentive are going to drop out. The impact is quite devastating.

If we are going to seriously deal with climate change problems, global warming problems, and carbon dioxide emissions, we have to do a lot of work by way of energy conservation. The only way we can conserve energy is to have this type of program, not just in residential buildings, but in commercial and industrial buildings as well. The government has completely cut the ground from under that program, and has done it in a very misleading way.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, May 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say I am a bit disappointed that the last member who asked a question used up all the member's time, because I wanted to ask her a question. Perhaps we will do that some other time.

With regard to Bill C-13 and the budget, one matter stood out for me. To some degree it is a local matter, although it affects a number of communities across the country. It is a matter that was not addressed in spite of the long history of the Conservatives, and the Canadian Alliance and the Reform Party before them, in championing this issue of trying to attain some fairness and justice in the tax system. However, as soon as the Conservatives were in government, they seemed to forget about it. It is the issue of the manner in which we tax, in Canada, individual taxpayers who are receiving social security benefits from the United States.

This has been a longstanding issue. It goes back to 1996, at which point we entered into a treaty with the United States, saying that people who resided in Canada but received social security benefits from the United States would be taxed in Canada and the revenue from that would be collected in Canada. We would do the same thing with Canada pension benefits in the United States, that is, the United States would tax them, collect the revenue there and retain those funds. We had worked out a formula within the treaty, which in effect was to continue whatever the taxation rate was in those respective countries with regard to that income.

Immediately after that treaty was signed and we began to tax this in Canada, we in fact changed the formula. The way the formula worked in the United States was that because of the way money had been contributed to social security, the taxation of those revenues, that income, was to be on only 50% of the revenue.

Initially, the Liberal government--and to its eternal shame, because of some of the representations the Liberals made to the recipients of these funds--first taxed all the income, the full 100% of the income. The individual recipients began to lobby. They organized and they created associations, including a very strong one in my area of the country. They were able to get the government to move a little. Ultimately, in the 1997-98 period, the Liberals taxed on only 85% of the income. They reduced it by 15 points, but not down to what they should have, and that should have been to tax on only 50% of that revenue.

There have been a number of hearings on this, both in this chamber and in committee, and in the Senate. The groups of recipients who were opposed to this type of unfairness lobbied strongly, made representations and appeared before both houses, but they have been unsuccessful up to this point.

I wish to digress for a minute to speak about the impact this has had. One has to appreciate that for a large number of these recipients this is their total income. At the time this happened, of those who are receiving it now, for more than half of them it was their entire income. They had been living on that income. They had structured their finances accordingly. Suddenly they had this hugely increased tax burden. It was grossly unfair. They had lived their whole lives and had contributed to the social security in the United States with this program and scheme in place, which was completely legal. They planned their retirement and retired with that planning in place. Then, out of the blue, they were hit.

I have come across some horror stories. For example, one involved a member of my church, who has since passed away. Both he and his wife were receiving social security. They were still Canadian citizens. They returned to Canada and bought a house. They obtained not a large mortgage, but one they could afford with those incomes and that tax regime. When they both got hit with the increased taxation burden, they had to give up the house, something they had planned for through their entire lives. It had a devastating impact on them.

When I was campaigning in one of the elections, an elderly man told me about his brother, who had been forced to give up living independently because he had been hit the same way. For his whole life, he had planned for the way he was going to live his life. He had a small apartment and was living on his own. Because of the taxation burden he was forced to bear because of this new regime, he was forced to give up living independently in his apartment and move and share a room in his brother's house. This man said the only time his brother comes out of his room, and this had been going on for well over a year, is to come to meals and to go to the washroom. Other than that, he is embarrassed and depressed.

Those stories are repeated over and over again. The really sad part about this is that the government knows full well what is happening. There were three private members' bills put forward. On two different occasions, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, the member for Calgary Southeast, put private members' bills before the House that in effect would have put those people back into the position they were in at the time the treaty was signed, when the Liberal government attacked them. He was a champion for them. This was picked up more recently by the member for Essex, again, a government member. He also had a private member's bill before the House in the last session.

Both of those members lobbied the government heavily.When the Conservatives became the government of the land, when they took power, what happened is pretty simple: absolutely nothing. There were no changes. This is a simple change. It does not even require legislation. Those private members' bills are not absolutely necessary under the legal regime we have in this country. This decision can be made at the cabinet level with one meeting. The government fully understands what it is necessary to do. It knows about the unfairness. It knows about the injustice for these people.

One can only conclude that the government does not care about them, and in much the same way as the Liberal government before it, in a very cynical fashion. The government knows that the longer it draws this out, the more these individuals, who are in their later years, will pass away every year. The fight for fairness and justice keeps dwindling because they will become more elderly and there will be fewer of them. That cynicism is extremely regrettable. It does not bode well for the government or the two members who championed this, or at least allegedly championed it. We do not have the results we need, so the injustice and unfairness continue for literally thousands of people.

I want to make one final point on the subject. This is not a big ticket item. With all the tax breaks that were given in this budget, this would have been minuscule. When we look at the billions of dollars in tax breaks in this budget that went to major corporations, and international corporations in most cases, we can see that this would have been minuscule. That will continue now indefinitely. This size of tax break, which is really not a break at all but simply some justice for this group of taxpayers and citizens of this country, is a relatively small amount of money. The government is showing its inability to reflect any sense of fairness or justice for that group.

I know that my time is just about up, but I want to assure the recipients of this social security benefit that next week after the break I will be tabling a private member's bill, and this battle will continue. If the Conservative Party is not prepared to fight and get us justice and fairness, other members in the House are prepared to continue to fight for it.

[Privilege, May 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I rise again to request consideration by the Speaker of this case of privilege involving the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and the attack that he made on the credibility of the member for Toronto--Danforth.

Since the initial discussion that we had on this earlier today, I have had confirmation from a member of our caucus that the conversation that the parliamentary secretary alleges to have taken place, and that he claims he overheard between that member and one of the other members of our caucus, in fact never took place.

She was not with the member for Toronto--Danforth at the time the conversation was alleged to have taken place, so the parliamentary secretary could not have overheard it.

This is damaging to the reputation of the member for Toronto--Danforth. As I mentioned earlier this morning, this continues the pattern of members of the government making statements about what other people said and then it turning out not to be true. It directly affects the ability of the member for Toronto--Danforth to do his job as a member of Parliament.

I am asking that the Chair take this under consideration. Mr. Speaker, if you are prepared to find that there has been a potential breach of privilege, I will move the necessary motion.

[Firearms Registry, May 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I get to ask the questions at this point.

The member is missing the point. If the government goes ahead with its scheme now and loses that vote somewhere down the road, it is going to be repeating the same type of mismanagement and the mistakes that the Liberal government made with the program. It is going to spend a lot of money making the changes and then it will have to put it all back.

Again, will the government today commit to abide by the vote when it finally gets the legislation before the House?

[Firearms Registry, May 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the government's gun registry scheme is making an end run around democracy and this Parliament. It does subvert democracy, but I think more important at this point is that it is going to cost millions and millions of taxpayers' dollars, because the government is intent on going ahead outside of the democratic process.

The Conservatives will not bring the legislation forward because they know that if they bring the legislation forward, and they know they have to, they know they are probably going to lose it in the House. They are not going to get the approval of the House.

Will the government table the legislation immediately and will it commit today to abide by the result of the vote on that legislation?

[Points of Order, May 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order arising from conduct in the House yesterday. I am doing it at this point as I did not have the opportunity to raise the point yesterday because of an order the House was following with regard to the address by the Australian Prime Minister.

Yesterday the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister stood in the House and appeared to quote statements made by the member for Toronto—Danforth.

Mr. Speaker, I am looking for some direction from you as to the best procedure, but I would suggest that what we require is a withdrawal of those comments by the parliamentary secretary and a direction that Hansard be corrected. I will leave that in your hands.

What occurred at that time was some debate on other points and then the accusation by the parliamentary secretary that the member for Toronto—Danforth had uttered certain words. The parliamentary secretary said that the member for Toronto—Danforth would do ill-will to Mr. Morgan, who was in a prospective appointment by the Prime Minister, as a result of certain comments that Mr. Morgan had made. The parliamentary secretary was alleging that he was quoting the member for Toronto—Danforth saying, with regard Mr. Morgan, that he was going to do him ill-will and then went on to say that the member for Toronto—Danforth would tear him to pieces. He used those types of words. He was alleging he was quoting the member for Toronto—Danforth.

The only tearing to pieces that we see here is the truth. In that regard, we also are seeing a pattern and I think there is the necessity of drawing it to the attention of the House. This is not the first time this has happened. We are seeing this type of smearing of members of Parliament on a regular basis by members from the government side. We had the situation with the member for Saskatoon—Wanuskewin putting words into the mouth of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

I am being very categorical. The member for Toronto—Danforth never spoke those words and that was a complete fabrication on the part of the parliamentary secretary. We are asking for a determination to be made on the basis of the facts and for the parliamentary secretary to withdraw the comments, to apologize and for Hansard to be corrected.

[Petitions, May 15th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from members of the Windsor-Essex county community regarding the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, which they found so offensive.

The petitioners call upon the government to investigate the possibility of appropriate legislation that would prevent the publications of that type of offensive cartoon at some point in the future.

[John Atkinson, May 8th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great sadness that I rise today to pay tribute to Constable John Atkinson, a Windsor police service constable who, on Friday afternoon in the process of intervening to stop a crime, was fatally shot.

This tragic incident has my community reeling with shock and sorrow. The city of Windsor is collectively mourning the loss of this dedicated and committed public servant, father and husband, a community-minded individual who, over his 14 years of service as a member of the Windsor Police, received 35 letters of recognition and 6 divisional commendations for his excellent work, a true testament to the type of man and officer he was.

The outpouring of love and sympathy, not only from local residents but from throughout the province and, in fact, the whole country, is recognition of Constable Atkinson's courage and heroism.

On behalf of myself, the member for Windsor West, members of this House and all the people of Windsor I express my deepest condolences to his family, particularly to his wife Shelly, his son Mitchell and his daughter Nicole. We mourn with them. Our thoughts and prayers are with them.