Michael Cooper

[Criminal Code, October 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise to speak to Bill C-46, the government's alcohol and drug-impaired driving legislation. I had the opportunity to study Bill C-46 at the justice committee. One thing was very clear, coming out of the justice committee and based upon the evidence from a number of witnesses. Law enforcement is not ready to implement aspects of Bill C-46 related to drug impairment in time for the government's arbitrary and rushed July 1, 2018, timeline to legalize marijuana.

Once Bill C-46 is passed, it will require that some 65,000 police officers across Canada get trained and understand Bill C-46. That will take time and it will be costly. We heard the need for some 2,000 drug recognition experts. At present, only 600 drug recognition experts are in Canada. In answer to a question I posed to Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness officials at the justice committee, it appears that only approximately 100 more drug recognition experts will be trained by July 1, 2018.

There are issues surrounding per se limits for THC, whether these per se limits are appropriate and what the per se limits should be. The government has not addressed that yet. There are nine months until the July 1 rollout. There are serious questions about the correlation between THC levels and drug impairment. On the question of public awareness, the marijuana task force, as part of the public health approach that it took, called upon the government to launch an immediate and sustained public awareness campaign. Where is the campaign? It has not been sustained. It has not been fully rolled out. We are just nine months away.

Therefore, given these and other reasons, no wonder the law enforcement community has called upon the government to delay the legalization of marijuana beyond July 1, 2018. After all, law enforcement will not have the tools, resources, and time to deal with the multiplicity of issues that will arise from legalization. Quite frankly, it is really frustrating that notwithstanding that very resounding message, the government refuses to back down and is moving full steam ahead with legalization, even though law enforcement will not have the tools, will not have the resources, and will not have the time to keep our roads safe.

What will that mean for the health and safety of Canadians?

When legalization occurs, more and more Canadians are going to use marijuana. That is a fact. As a result, there will be more drug-impaired drivers. Without the tools, resources, and training to enforce the laws, including laws that would come onto the books once Bill C-46 is passed, it will mean more injuries, more deaths, and more carnage on our roads. The government will bear partial responsibility for those injuries, those deaths, and the carnage that is sure to ensue.

With respect to part 2 of Bill C-46, which deals with alcohol-impaired driving and makes a number of changes to the Criminal Code respecting alcohol-impaired driving, I congratulate the government for some of the measures it has introduced.

Bill C-46 would eliminate certain defences that have been abused by impaired drivers. It would increase the maximum penalty for impaired driving causing bodily harm from 10 years to 14 years. That is welcome. However, I am disappointed that Bill C-46 does not tackle the most serious offence related to impaired driving, and that is impaired driving causing death.

Bill C-46 does absolutely nothing to strengthen penalties for impaired driving causing death. One might say, if we look at the Criminal Code, the maximum sentence for impaired driving causing death is life behind bars. That sounds pretty good. It sounds appropriate that that should be the maximum penalty. The only difficulty is that very few individuals convicted of impaired driving causing death are sentenced to life behind bars. In fact, I am not aware of a single case. There may be one or two, but I am not aware of one and, if there are any cases, that is a rare exception to the rule. What we see instead are impaired drivers who get behind a 2,000-pound or 3,000-pound weapon and take the life of one or more human beings as a result of their choices to drink and drive, and they get off with a slap on the wrist.

There was a case in Saskatchewan involving a mother and her son who were killed by an impaired driver. The individual responsible got a $4,000 fine and not one day behind bars. There have been cases where individuals have walked free with as little as a $1,500 fine for taking the life of another human being. That is an absolute joke. It is fundamentally unfair and fundamentally unjust. It is why more than 100,000 Canadians have signed a petition calling for Parliament to act. It is why the families of victims who came before the justice committee called upon Parliament to take steps to move forward with mandatory sentences. It is why our previous Conservative government introduced Bill C-73, which would have provided for a six-year mandatory sentence for impaired drivers who kill. It is why I introduced an amendment to Bill C-46 at the justice committee to provide for a mandatory sentence of at least five years, which was the minimum sentence that the victims who appeared before our committee asked for.

Sadly, every single Liberal MP voted against that common-sense amendment. It is one thing to vote against an amendment, but they did not even try. They did not even put forward an alternative. They just shrugged their shoulders and accepted the status quo. The victims and their families deserve better from the government on Bill C-46.

I am hopeful that once the bill is passed through the House, which it inevitably will be given that we have a majority government, that the Senate can get to work to try to fix the bill and help ensure that the victims will finally have some justice.

[Criminal Code, October 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things I was very disappointed about in Bill C-46 was that it would not increase penalties for the most serious impaired driving offence, namely, impaired driving causing death. On this side, we put forward a reasonable common-sense amendment at the justice committee to provide for a five-year mandatory sentence for impaired driving causing death in the face of the fact that individuals convicted of this very serious offence, in some cases, were walking free with nothing more than a $1,500 fine.

Does the hon. member think it is fair and just that individuals accused and convicted of this offence walk away with a $1,500 fine?

[Justice, October 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, sentences handed down for impaired driving causing death are an absolute joke, with offenders walking away with fines as low as $1,500. Instead of standing up for victims, Liberal MPs voted to defeat a Conservative amendment to Bill C-46 to provide for a five-year mandatory sentence for impaired drivers who kill. Why does the minister think it is okay for impaired drivers who kill to walk away with a slap on the wrist?

[Supreme Court Act, October 19th, 2017]

Justice Sopinka is another, as the member for Durham correctly points out.

While the purported objective of Bill C-203 is to ensure that nuances of oral argument are not lost in translation, I would submit that the likelihood of nuances being lost are much more likely to occur in the event that Bill C-203 were passed. If translators at the Supreme Court, who are among the best translators in Canada, make mistakes, then what is the likelihood that a judge hearing a highly technical, highly complicated legal argument in his or her second language might also miss nuances of oral argument? Common sense dictates that it is a certainty, and I submit it is a certainty that will occur much more regularly if Bill C-203 is passed.

Then there are serious practical issues. Would a test be administered to determine proficiency in English and French? Who would be the arbiter of that test? What would happen to the current nine members of the Supreme Court? Would they have to take a test? If they did not pass, what would then happen? That is just touching the surface of some of the practical issues that would be faced.

While Bill C-203 is well intentioned, it is a fundamentally flawed bill. I fully agree that being able to understand English and French is a highly valuable skill for a Supreme Court justice to have, and I believe that it should be a consideration that goes into determining whether an applicant should be appointed. However, linguistic characteristics must not trump experience, competence, and excellence in the law, not to mention the many other personal characteristics that are essential for a jurist to serve on the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of Canada.

As I say, Bill C-203 is well intentioned, but the problem with it is that it searches for a problem that simply does not exist, to the detriment of appointing the most qualified candidates to the Supreme Court of Canada, and it is on that basis that I oppose Bill C-203.

[Supreme Court Act, October 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise to speak to Bill C-203, introduced by the member for Drummond. Bill C-203 would amend the Supreme Court Act to require that judges appointed to the Supreme Court understand both English and French, without the aid of an interpreter.

The Supreme Court as an institution already fully functions in both English and French. All services and communications of the court are provided in English and French. All those who appear before the court are free to use English or French in written or oral submissions. All judgments of the court are issued in English and French. All factums submitted to the court are translated, and during oral proceedings, judges and lawyers at the court have the benefit of simultaneous translation.

Therefore, it begs the question, if the court as an institution already is fully functional in both English and French, what benefit would Bill C-203 serve? Proponents of Bill C-203 seem to make the crux of the argument that judges who rely upon professional translators may somehow miss nuances in oral argument, which in turn would lead to rendering of improper decisions.

The Supreme Court was established in 1875. For 142 years, the Supreme Court has heard and decided upon thousands of cases. During the debate around this bill and identical bills that were introduced in previous Parliaments, not one proponent of the bill could cite a single case that was decided wrongly, definitively on the basis of translation errors. There is not one case. Moreover, in the event that a case was decided wrongly, there is a remedy available. That remedy would be a rehearing of the case.

Therefore, it again begs the question that, if there is no case that has definitively been decided wrongly on the basis of a translation error, and if there is already a remedy available in that very unlikely event, what purpose would Bill C-203 serve? I submit that in the face of those facts and the evidence of what Bill C-203 is, however well intentioned, it is a bill in search of a problem that does not exist.

What Bill C-203 would do, however, if it were passed, is create many problems. First, it would significantly reduce the pool of qualified candidates for appointment to the Supreme Court. The fact is that, outside the provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick, very few Canadians are fluently bilingual.

Indeed, had Bill C-203 been the law, some of Canada's most distinguished jurists would never have been appointed to the Supreme Court, including Chief Justice McLachlin, not to mention former chief justices Duff, Laskin, and Dickson. Justice Moldaver would not be qualified to sit on the Supreme Court, as he presently does. Justice Major from Alberta, who served on the court with distinction for 13 years, would not have been qualified. I could go on.

[Justice, October 16th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice claims to support mandatory sentences for serious offences. However, Liberal MPs voted to defeat a Conservative amendment to Bill C-46 to provide for a five-year mandatory sentence for impaired drivers who kill.

Was the minister insincere when she claimed that she supports mandatory sentences for serious offences or does the minister believe that impaired driving causing death is not a serious offence?

[Export and Import Permits Act, September 21st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right. There has been a lack of a carve-out. As a result, it has created some very legitimate concerns in light of the vague and ambiguous language contained in the bill.

The Liberals should not have signed the treaty before they got that carve-out. That was the position of our government. Even if they went ahead and signed the treaty, at the very least they could have included language in Bill C-47 to raise objections to any interpretation that would result in the application of the treaty to civilian recreational firearms users in Canada.

[Export and Import Permits Act, September 21st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the member raises a good point because what we are actually going to see in the bill with respect to the export regime is less transparency, less openness, and less accountability than the existing regime in place.

Again, it raises questions about Bill C-47. It is a bill that arguably waters down the existing regime, and as the hon. member points out, raises questions about openness and transparency with respect to exports.

[Export and Import Permits Act, September 21st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, simply put, it is not this bill that will do that. This bill will potentially target law-abiding firearms holders.

As I alluded to, Canada already has a very robust regime in place, one that is working. Second, on the issue of whether it would establish a back door firearms registry, one of the questions I would have of the government is where is the language in the treaty that would exclude firearms for civilian purposes? It is nowhere to be found. What we have are clauses that are vague, overly broad, ambiguous, and raise more questions than answers.

The hunters, anglers, and fishermen of our country that use firearms for recreational purposes every single day deserve a lot more from the government.

[Export and Import Permits Act, September 21st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-47, an act to amend the Export and Import Permits Act and the Criminal Code. In essence, what Bill C-47 would do is implement the Arms Trade Treaty, which was signed by the government.

Without more, I oppose Bill C-47 for two broad reasons.

First, I am not satisfied that the Arms Trade Treaty and Bill C-47, the implementation of that treaty, would actually strengthen Canada's arms control regime.

Second, I oppose the bill because of serious concerns and questions that have been asked by law-abiding firearms owners and users in our country, concerns and questions that the Liberal government has refused to answer with respect to whether the legislation would result in a backdoor gun registry.

I will first address the issue about whether the bill would actually strengthens Canada's arms control regime. The fact is that Canada has long had a very strong arms control regime. It is a regime that has been in place for about 70 years. It is a regime that is robust. Canada is a leader when it comes to arms control with respect to our export regime.

As the hon. member for Durham highlighted in some detail, the scope of the that regime includes the Trade Controls Bureau, which has operated since 1947. What does the Trade Controls Bureau do? It governs, tracks, and controls the export of military weapons and arms out of Canada. It has worked very well. Under the import and export regime that Canada has with respect to arms control, the items subject to control are listed. They include military weapons, nuclear, chemical, biological materials, among other things. Canada does not just list those items subject to control; it tracks the export of controlled items. We track it by way of the CBSA, through Statistics Canada, and we track it in a very robust way, one that is consistent with international standards, including the World Customs Organization. That is the standard by which Canada tracks. While Canada tracks, one of the things lacking in the Arms Trade Treaty, as the member for Durham correctly pointed out, is transparency and tracking.

We then not only have the Trade Controls Bureau, we also have what is called an “Area Control List” that, by way of order in council, can block the export of not only weapons but anything from Canada to another country. Right now, North Korea is on that list.

What we have is again a very strong and very robust regime. It is one that has worked and is working. There are questions about whether this bill would in fact improve upon what Canada has. However, in some respects it would water it down. I cannot support a piece of legislation that arguably would weaken the very good regime that Canada already has.

As has been raised by a number of hon. members in the House, there are serious questions about whether this bill would, through the back door, re-establish a gun registry. We know of course what a disaster the long-gun registry was, as introduced by the previous Liberal government. It was a registry that targeted law-abiding firearms owners, cost the taxpayers of Canada some $2 billion, and did absolutely nothing to prevent firearms from getting into the hands of criminals. On the contrary, it in fact made the situation worse by creating a black market for various firearms. When the firearms community, every firearms organization in Canada, unanimously raises questions about whether this bill would impede law-abiding firearms owners by way of a back-door firearms registry, those concerns have to be taken seriously. However, instead of listening to the firearms community, instead of consulting with law-abiding firearms owners, the current government would prefer just to dismiss them out of hand.

I heard my friend, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the member for Fredericton, when he stood up in the House. I respect that hon. member, but he asserted that the claim that acceding to the treaty would create a back-door gun registry was phony and bogus. I say let us look at the language of the Arms Trade Treaty and Bill C-47. Let us start with article 2.

Article 2 states:

This Treaty shall apply to all conventional arms within the following categories

It then lists a whole series of categories. At the end, article 2.1(h) refers to small arms. Small arms include any firearm that could be operated and used by an individual, so it would include a rifle or any number of firearms that are lawfully used by Canadians for civilian recreational purposes every single day.

We then go to article 12, which says:

Each State Party shall maintain national records, pursuant to its national laws and regulations...[in terms of] conventional arms covered under Article 2.

As I mentioned, article 2 includes small arms.

We then go to Bill C-47 and look at the substance of it, and we see, among other sections of this bill, proposed subsection 10.3(6), which says that every person or organization under the act, which would include a broker, is required to retain records for a period of some six years.

Bill C-47 goes a lot further than that because it provides for the specific manner in which those electronic records must be kept by way of an electronic database.

I see I am out of time, but it raises very serious questions about this issue. I would be happy to pick up from where I left off in questions and answers.