Marc Lemay

[Business of Supply, May 11th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I hope the member is listening, because I will respond, but first I want to say that I will share my time with my extraordinary colleague from Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel.

The member for Lévis—Bellechasse can fill in his colleague seated next to him. Five amendments were proposed in the Meech Lake accord. That is the starting point. Quebec is at a crossroads now because the Meech Lake accord was not signed. If the Meech Lake accord had been signed, things in Canada and Quebec would be quite different.

Quebec's demands were: first, the recognition of Quebec as a distinct society and of the existence of the French fact and the English fact; second, a constitutional veto for Quebec and the other provinces regarding certain major amendments to the Constitution; third, a province's right to opt out, with full compensation, of any federal program in areas that fall under provincial jurisdiction; fourth, increased provincial powers in the area of immigration; fifth, provincial input in the federal government's appointment of the three Supreme Court judges from Quebec. We will come back to that fifth point.

It is unacceptable for the Conservative members from Quebec to say that they cannot support legislation that would require Supreme Court judges, not to be bilingual, but to be able to understand the proceedings of the Supreme Court in both English and French. That is completely unacceptable. That point only reinforces my belief that the only option for Quebec is to become sovereign, because we would then be able to administer our own taxes and our own laws.

I heard members say, as an excuse, that if we required Supreme Court judges to understand the two languages, it would prevent unilingual francophones from sitting on the Supreme Court. When I hear such ridiculous statements—and that is exactly what I have heard, maybe not in the House, but in committee—I find it totally unacceptable.

I do not know of a single lawyer or judge in the Supreme Court who was a unilingual francophone. However, I can say that I know at least three who spoke only English. These were Supreme Court judges. How did they understand proceedings in the Supreme Court? The Lord only knows, but I sure do not.

It is important to read this motion. I will repeat it for my colleague who does not understand:

That this House acknowledge that federalism cannot be renewed, since 20 years after the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, Quebec still does not have the power to choose three justices on the Supreme Court of Canada, or to opt out with compensation from federal programs in its areas of jurisdiction, nor does it have a real veto over constitutional amendments and its status as a nation still has not been recognized in the Canadian Constitution.

I heard my colleague say earlier that he was proud of the fact that Quebec was recognized as a nation within a united Canada. That is not a nation. A nation is France, Spain or Portugal. Those are nations that have shared central powers, for instance, regarding the army in some cases, a common currency—the Euro—and defence, for example, as well as other areas.

To be a nation, it means having all the powers a nation has. We will never have them all with this government. An extremely important factor for this government is the federal spending power.

When the Constitution was drafted in 1866—it was ratified in 1867, but the work began in Charlottetown in 1864—one of the powers that was granted to the central government was spending power. This power is extremely important to the central power because it allows it—and this is the crux of the problem—to invade areas of provincial jurisdiction and Quebec jurisdiction.

These include, for instance, education, culture and of course, the whole area of immigration. Yes, immigration comes under federal jurisdiction. That remained, but there was an agreement with Quebec. That deal is being scuttled more and more. The federal spending power has no limits and allows the federal government to invade areas of provincial jurisdiction.

How is it that Ottawa has a health department with 10,000 public servants, yet it does not run any hospital? The only hospital that was under federal jurisdiction was the Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue Hospital in the riding of my colleague the member for Vaudreuil-Soulanges. It will soon be under Quebec jurisdiction because Veterans Affairs no longer wants to take care of it. Why? Because it is too expensive. According to Veterans Affairs, there are fewer veterans. That is false. It all puts a strain on things.

Today I looked at the whole justice file. This entire file is extremely important and sensitive. The current government is making altogether regressive laws, but we know that the administration of justice comes under provincial jurisdiction. So what happens? The provinces will have to pay more and more to enforce the absolutely regressive laws that the Conservative government wants to adopt.

One thing is extremely important. If Quebec were a nation, as they on the other side seem to be saying, it would not be standing, practically hidden behind the curtains, at UNESCO meetings. During international meetings, Quebec could be seated at the table and could take part in the discussions.

The best example is the French fact. How can the government be the one looking after the French fact and the French language around the world when it is not even able to look after bilingualism in its own organizations?

We asked for a law. All we asked here, in the House, was that Bill 101 apply to federal institutions in Quebec. For those who do not know—and there seem to be many on the other side—Bill 101 is a law that allows Quebeckers to speak French in their workplaces and that ensures that French is the language of work. How it is possible that they are not even able to enforce this law? They are not able to apply it to federal civil servants who work for federally regulated agencies or companies in Quebec.

This raises all sorts of questions. There are many possible answers, but only one is realistic. We feel it is obvious that Quebec will never receive its fair share as part of this country. I am not the one who said it. “I appreciate that the House is based on proportional representation.” That was said on May 17, 2007. “But I wonder whether there might be special measures to protect Quebec, which represents the main linguistic minority in Canada”. That did not come from us. It was said by Benoît Pelletier, Quebec's minister of intergovernmental affairs.

I would like to finish with a quotation that I feel is important: “My dear friends, as the days and weeks pass, one thing becomes crystal clear in our minds: Quebec is our one and only country.”

[Points of Order, May 6th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same point of order. If possible, I would like to add to what my colleague just said.

The member from Labrador presented this very important amendment. We are asking the Chair to accept this amendment, which is very important to the development and the future of aboriginal communities.

If I may, I would like to talk about something important. Two days ago, a group of about 100 aboriginal women left Wendake, a Huron community near Quebec City, headed for Parliament. They will stop in Trois-Rivières, Montreal and Gatineau, before arriving here on June 1. They are marching to speak out against Bill C-3. Why? Because this bill does not do enough—that is what they told us in committee—and because Bill C-3 will continue to allow the systematic discrimination that aboriginal women have been subjected to since 1876.

When I spoke in this House after Bill C-3 was introduced, I told the government that it could expect amendments to this bill, because it was very important to listen to what the aboriginal peoples had to tell us. We did our job.

There are things in life that I do not understand, and this is one of them. We, the politicians, are criticized for not doing our job. But when we do our job, we are told that we did it too well. Something is wrong here. It is true that Bill C-3 is a response to the McIvor decision of the British Columbia Court of Appeal, but it is important to read this decision in its entirety, which the legislator, the Conservative Party, does not seem to have done.

I wonder why the Conservative Party did not read the full decision. Because if it had, it would have realized that the judges of the British Columbia Court of Appeal say that this is the issue before them and that they are going to rule on it. They rule that Ms. McIvor has been the victim of discrimination under section 15 of the charter since 1985. Therefore, the problem has to be addressed. The judges add, however, that the discrimination against aboriginal communities and specifically against aboriginal women under sections 6.1 and 6.2 of the act will continue unless the government puts an end to this discrimination. I am not the one who said this; it was the judges of the British Columbia Court of Appeal. That is what we did, and my colleague from Labrador proposed amendment No. 1, which is extremely important and would put an end to this discrimination.

I believe that you have the power to accept this amendment. I will not repeat my colleague's arguments, which are very solid and which I agree with completely. As my anglophone colleagues would say, I concur with my colleague. I concur with his legal arguments. It seems clear to me as well that you can go as far as we were asked to go thanks to amendment No. 1.

But it gets worse, Mr. Speaker. If you rejected this amendment, what would happen? Women would no longer have any recourse and would have to keep on going to court. But the Conservative Party, in its wisdom, closed the door to potential court action by cutting funding for the court challenges program, which Ms. McIvor had used to stand up for her rights.

So what will happen? If this amendment is not accepted, not only will aboriginal women continue to be discriminated against, but the government will be taken to court again, and it will be another 20 years before we end this debate.

[Criminal Code, May 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I will repeat myself for the benefit of my Conservative colleagues. It costs $52,205 a year to keep someone detained. There will be an additional 13,000 people detained. My colleagues will do the math. It is 13,000 inmates multiplied by $52,205.

I did not make this up. I got it from a study entitled, Adult Correctional Services in Canada, conducted by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, and which we can find in the 2005-06 report of the Adult Correctional Services in Canada, Juristat, Volume 28. I hope my colleagues will wait because I have not finished. It gets better.

I can see why a person would want to bend the truth when they do not want to tell the truth, but statistics do no lie. I am not making this up. “Another Statistics Canada study found that adult offenders who spent their sentence under supervision in the community were far less likely to become reinvolved with correctional authorities within 12 months of their release than those who were in a correctional institution”. Those are not my words. That is what Statistics Canada found.

When we are told something that is not true we must stand up and debunk it. That is precisely the problem with this bill. It does not tell the truth and will not solve our problems.

[Criminal Code, May 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, they have to listen from time to time. It would be worth reading what Julian V. Roberts and Thomas Gabor wrote in “The Impact of Conditional Sentencing: Decarceration and Widening of the Net” in volume 8 of the Canadian Criminal Law Review on pages 33 to 49. I am not the one saying this; it was in the studies the minister was asked to do. One of the studies states:

A 2004 study found that conditional sentencing has had a significant impact on the rates of admission to custody, which have declined by 13% since its introduction.

This represents a reduction of approximately 55,000 offenders who otherwise would have been admitted to custody. I am not the one saying this; the government is.

[Criminal Code, May 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague needs to take the time to listen to me. What he just said is not true, and I will explain why. The bill title is not correct: An Act to amend the Criminal Code (ending house arrest for property and other serious crimes). What my colleague does not understand is that people who commit arson are not entitled to conditional sentences. There are minimum sentences of more than two years for arson. As soon as there is a minimum sentence, the offender is not entitled to a conditional sentence.

I do not mind giving a law course. Where the law provides for a minimum sentence, there is no possibility of a conditional sentence. Is that clear enough?

This is true of a number of offences, including the one the member referred to. There are minimum sentences for offences such as setting fire to a vehicle or home.

[Criminal Code, May 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak again about Bill C-16, which was known as Bill C-42 barely a few months ago. Two years ago it was Bill C-9.

There are always questions about the administration of justice. How can justice be better administered? How can we ensure that dangerous criminals stay behind bars as long as possible? We will not find positive answers to these questions in Bill C-16.

For those who are watching, I should explain what we are talking about. When an individual is brought before a court for having committed an offence, a break and enter for example, the judge has a myriad of options, ranging from a simple fine to jail time. Somewhere between those two options is parole and absolute discharge.

When it comes to detention, the Conservatives need to stop kidding us. I am sure that the translators, who are wonderful, will put this correctly in English: a conditional sentence is still a sentence. And that brings us to the final types of sentences a judge can impose—a fixed term sentence or a conditional sentence. Since the Conservatives are not familiar with this, I will explain it to them.

In 1996, a number of attorneys general and ministers of justice—including the current Minister of Justice, who was in Manitoba at the time—determined that this was expensive and that some people were jailed too long for nothing.

We must understand one extremely important thing, which I will repeat because the members opposite do not understand: a conditional sentence is a sentence of imprisonment. The Conservatives are saying that offenders serve their sentence at home with their feet up doing nothing. I will come back to that. They are bending the truth, if not totally lying to the public when they say such things. It is absolutely not true.

I practised law in 1985, 1990 and 1995, and from 1996 to 2003. I argued many cases and learned a lot about the system. For example, an individual is brought before a judge, who hands down a conditional sentence. It might be a good idea for certain Conservative MPs to read and consult section 718 of the Criminal Code, which is not being amended by this bill. This section is the basis of conditional sentencing. It reads:

The fundamental purpose of sentencing is to contribute, along with crime prevention initiatives, to respect for the law and the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society...

These words are important and our favourite Conservatives need to understand them:

...by imposing just sanctions that have one or more of the following objectives:

(a) to denounce unlawful conduct;

(b) to deter the offender...

(c) to separate offenders from society, where necessary;

We see that the third objective does not come first.

The fourth objective is, “to assist in rehabilitating offenders”. Those are not my words. That is what it says in section 718 of the Criminal Code. Do the Conservatives want to abolish section 718 while they are at it?

Then there is the fifth objective, “to provide reparations for harm done to victims or the community”. An intelligent judge—and God knows, judges are intelligent—who has read and understood section 718 knows how to apply it. Let us be clear about something once and for all. It is a shame my Conservative friends are not listening to what I am saying.

A conditional sentence can only apply to sentences of less than two years.

Less than two years. Is that clear enough?

The very title of the bill is reprehensible. It is absurd. It does not apply to hardened criminals or those who commit dozens of break and enters. It applies to sentences of less than two years given for offences such as petty theft, auto theft and joy-rides. These sentences are usually given to young people who do not understand. They are not hardened criminals. Judges want them to consider their actions. We are not talking about thieves who commit armed robbery. That kind of crime buys a minimum of four years in jail because a weapon was involved. Anyone who uses a weapon to commit theft gets a minimum of four years in jail. Is that clear enough?

This bill is worse than backward; it drags us back nearly 30 years. The Conservatives' mentality is dangerous because it would move us backward.

That is not the worst of it though. When the Minister of Justice told the committee that this was what attorneys general wanted, committee members asked him if every attorney general in Canada agreed with him. He had the nerve to say that the majority agreed. The problem is that he did not study the issue. The Minister of Justice just came up with this bill. Initially, it was Bill C-42. Now it is Bill C-16, but it is the same bill. Only its number changed. The Conservatives did not study the issue. God knows that I can say so because I was a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights when we studied Bill C-42. We asked them if they had done any studies suggesting that this kind of bill is useful and necessary and that attorneys general and crown prosecutors want it. The answer was no.

So why are they introducing this type of bill? For one reason and one reason only—to respond to the Conservatives supposed target population, which is asking them to be tough on crime. The problem is that when you are tough on crime, you also need to be smart on crime. You have to understand these sentences and these demands. When the bill is studied again, they will trot out the same numbers again. Numbers can speak for themselves. Hold on tight, you are in for quite a surprise.

I will give the real numbers for those who are listening. I did not make these up; they come from the Department of Justice. Actually, they are from the Department of Public Safety, which is practically the same thing. They work hand in hand. This needs to be heard. The average annual inmate cost—I am going to take my time, Mr. Speaker; you can add this to the time I have been allotted—for persons in provincial or territorial custody—the provinces, Quebec, Yukon, Ontario—including remand or other forms of temporary detention was, listen carefully now, $52,205 in 2005-2006. I will repeat that in case the Conservatives did not understand. It cost $52,205 per year to keep someone in a provincial prison. But the best is yet to come. The cost of monitoring an offender within the community, including conditional sentences, probation, supervision, fines and release was $2,398.05 in 2006-2007. I will translate that into plain language since they did not understand. I will repeat it.

It costs $52,205 per year to keep someone in prison, while a conditional sentence costs $2,398.05 per year. The government's figures show that the recidivism rates for individuals who receive conditional sentences have significantly decreased. I am repeating that because they do not understand. The Bloc is not the one saying this.

However, if we were to adopt this bill as is tomorrow morning, we would have 13,000 to 15,000 more prisoners in our provincial detention facilities. That is many hundreds. I hope they know how to count on the other side. Let us take the lower number, 13,000, and multiply it by $52,000. I hope they know how to count. That money could be invested in rehabilitation programs and we could offer appropriate services to the people who need them.

The worst is that regions like Yukon and the Northwest Territories will pay the price because, unfortunately, those regions have a lot of crimes committed by aboriginals. There is a high rate of imprisonment among aboriginals.

In 1996, the government was smart. This government was not in power in 1996. The government implemented conditional sentences because it had thought it through and had conducted studies. It said this was about actual prison sentences. The offender must be found guilty of an offence not punishable by a minimum sentence.

It is clear that if someone commits murder, we will not waste our time. That is what the Conservatives do not understand. Conditional sentencing applies only to sentences of less than two years for which there is no mandatory minimum term of imprisonment. Possession of a firearm for dangerous purposes carries a minimum sentence of three years. That is not an eligible offence and conditional sentencing would not apply. Let us take, for example, multiple charges of impaired driving. If the court imposes a sentence of more than two years, this does not apply. It applies only to people who are imprisoned for less than two years.

Whether our Conservative friends like it or not, when we see the real figures, we can see that judges have taken their role so seriously that, since 2000, they have tightened up monitoring and imposed stricter conditions for an individual to be eligible for conditional sentencing.

When conditional sentences were first being developed, around 1996 or 1997, people were very concerned about whether an individual would respect all the conditions that were set. It was out of respect for the victims—the Conservatives like it when we tell them these things—that the criteria to qualify for a conditional sentence were tightened to include custody. It is a form of imprisonment. It might be at home or at a detention centre or reception centre. The individual's schedule is monitored. The monitoring system is very important in such cases. The individual is regularly and continuously monitored.

To demonstrate this, for days on end, many of my clients were woken up at 3 a.m. by the monitoring service that called to ensure they were at home in bed. Once that was confirmed, the service wished them a good day and hung up.

They are prohibited from having anything other than a land line phone. When cell phones came on the scene, someone could gallivant all over the place and answer as though he was at home. Now conditional sentences prohibit cell phones, because the individual must be reachable at home. So what happens when someone breaches one of the conditions of his conditional sentence? This is very important.

What the Conservatives fail to grasp is that the person is sentenced, for example, to an 18-month conditional sentence, with certain conditions that are set, approved and signed by the court. The individual who breaches the conditions is arrested and serves the rest of the sentence without being eligible for parole. What does that mean? I will explain it for my Conservative friends. Take the example of an individual who is arrested and is given an 18-month conditional sentence. If he does not respect the conditions on the first week-end, he is arrested and jailed, and has to serve the rest of his sentence without possibility of parole. I can assure you, as I have represented a number of these clients, that the court will be very reluctant and hard pressed to release them under other conditions.

I would like to end by telling my Conservative colleagues that eliminating conditional sentences for 39 offences is not the way to reduce crime. This propaganda must stop. This means one thing and we must realize it. If individuals, if the Conservatives, if the Minister of Justice wish to impose jail sentences rather than conditional sentences, it is because they do not trust the judges. That is extremely dangerous. In fact, we need to realize something: if we are unhappy with a judge's sentence, we can appeal. That is what the appeal courts are there for. The government should stop beating around the bush and just say that they do not trust them. We believe that we must trust our courts and, above all, that we must keep conditional sentencing, which is a good measure, one that works well and reduces crime.

[Criminal Code, May 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the end of the speech given by my colleague, whom I thank. I also want to thank him for the work he does. We sit together on the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, and he is a goldmine of information because he lives in the Yukon. He represents a huge area.

Does my colleague know whether there are any studies specifically for the Yukon on the impact this bill would have in terms of the number of inmates who would no longer be entitled to a conditional sentence? Can my colleague tell us how many criminals—because they are the ones who get conditional sentences—would be directly affected if this bill were passed as is? I will come back to this point in a few minutes when I speak on behalf of the Bloc Québécois.

[Petitions, May 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of a number of my constituents, I am pleased to present a petition regarding the possibility that the minister responsible for Canada Post might put an end to the moratorium that is keeping alive—if I may say so—a number of small post offices in various small communities.

Dozens of my constituents, from Belleterre, in Rouyn-Noranda, to Moffet, Latulipe and even Winneway, a very important aboriginal community, are calling on the government to maintain the moratorium. They are urging us to review this bill and to carefully re-examine the potential closure of several post offices in small communities.

[First Nations, May 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the Amun march is continuing today. Aboriginal women left Wendake, near Quebec City, for Ottawa and will be passing through Trois-Rivières, Montréal, Laval and Gatineau, and arriving at Parliament on June 1.

This 500 km march is a protest against the injustices suffered by aboriginal women because of the Indian Act, in spite of Bill C-3, which does not correct all the discrimination that they experience.

The purpose of the march is to heighten public awareness and, above all, to send a clear message to the government: no to discrimination against first nations women. They must be allowed to pass their Indian status to their child without being required to divulge the father's name and they must retain their rights even if they marry a non-native, and thus avoid expulsion from their community.

My Bloc Québécois colleagues and I salute the courage and determination of these women and we wish them a safe journey.

[Sébastien's Law (protecting the public from violent young offenders), May 3rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, that is what is so ironic. Both my colleagues are right.

Clearly, someone who is under 18 will not be sent to prison with adults, at least not until he is 18. That is the subtlety and the irony of this bill. Will an 18-year-old be smarter once he has spent three or four years in a reception centre and then finished serving his sentence in an adult prison? I do not think so. The government would have us believe things that are completely unrealistic and unacceptable.

We believe that young people should be treated like young people, in other words, like people who are not too bright and who have committed crimes. Society knows that they need much longer time-outs, but before we send them to an adult prison, we need to do everything we can to get them back on the straight and narrow.

But that is not what the government is going to do if this bill is passed as is. If it is passed, young offenders will be handed a heavy four-year sentence. A 17-year-old offender will spend a year in a reception centre and serve the rest of his time in an adult prison. What the members opposite are forgetting is that there is no parole for young offenders, and this bill does not provide for any. What is even more ironic is that young people could get heavier sentences than adults for the same sort of crime. That is unacceptable.

The more I look at the bill, the more I realize that it must be studied, chopped up, amended and transformed in committee to meet the needs of our young people, not tailored to get political support as the other side is trying to do.

It is very strange that when the Conservatives are low in the polls, they come back with the old tough on crime mantra and introduce more crime bills. They are planning to introduce another bill on suspended sentences. That is not the way to deal with crime in Canada. In Quebec, we believe that youth justice should focus on rehabilitation.