Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise this afternoon to speak to Bill C-277.
Indeed, as members probably know, I have a 13-year-old grandson of whom I have legal custody. This issue is very important to me because I am aware that for a 13-year-old child, chatting on the Internet is much more interesting than doing homework. Every day I have to bring myself to discipline him to make him understand that too much chatting is not good.
Unfortunately, I believe this bill does not achieve the goals that it sets out to achieve. The Bloc Québécois has always recognized the need to better protect children and it took an active part in the pursuit of this goal, including through the recent addition of provisions on the luring of children to the Criminal Code. However, the increased maximum sentence proposed in Bill C-277 for this offence is aimed specifically and deliberately at increasing the scope of Bill C-9 on conditional sentencing.
In fact, Bill C-277, combined with Bill C-9, will give judges less flexibility and will take away from them the possibility of handing down a conditional sentence in certain minor cases. Currently, conditional sentences allow judges to give a person who is not a threat to society a sentence of less than two years to be served in the community.
Bill C-9, introduced by the Conservatives in the spring, eliminates conditional sentences for offences punishable by a maximum of 10 years or more.
The Bloc Québécois opposes this bill because the list of offences for which conditional sentences would be eliminated is arbitrary and includes offences such as graffiti, counterfeit money, credit fraud, false prospectus and mail theft.
Furthermore, by removing judges' prerogatives to order sentences in the community, Quebec and the other provinces would assume the additional financial burden of having to imprison more people, while that money could be better spent on rehabilitation and prevention.
The Bloc wants to do whatever it takes to protect children from predators. Unfortunately, the Bloc believes that Bill C-277 is not the way to achieve this.
Once again, the ideology of this Conservative government is modeled after the Americans. The government's proposal is based on the slogan Tough on crime. The idea behind this is simple, that is, to put as many criminals as possible in prison where the living conditions are intolerable and to keep them there as long as possible.
According to the Conservatives, this should get the criminals off the streets and dissuade others from committing crimes.
Furthermore, they believe that punishment is the key to controlling crime. The philosophy behind their policy is this: if penalties are lax, crime rates go up; if they are tough, crime rates come down.
However, our American neighbours have proven that this model does not work. The homicide rate in the United States is three times higher than in Canada, and four times higher than in Quebec. California spent $14 billion to build prisons between 1982 and 1993. The prison population increased by 500% and the overall crime rate went up by 75%.
In 1992, the situation was compared to that of Texas, which reacted very differently to the pressure on its prison system in the 1980s. In an economic recession, Texas decided to build fewer prisons and to impose more conditional releases. The only difference noted between the two crime rates was a certain increase in the repetitive nature of offences against property, although certain indications also attributed this to high unemployment rates in Texas during that time.
According to the information available, there is simply no compelling evidence that imprisonment or various periods of imprisonment have a greater deterrent effect, even for property offences. There are even some reasons to believe the opposite: recidivism rates for imprisoned offenders are higher than those for individuals given non-custodial sentences.
This is why the Bloc Québécois disagrees with this way of thinking, and it is not alone. In the 1988 report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Solicitor General entitled “Taking Responsibility”, the committee admits that imprisonment has had no effect on rehabilitation, has not been a great deterrent and has contributed to protecting society only temporarily.
It also says that sure solutions to crime prevention are further sharing of wealth, working on better social integration and relying on rehabilitation. We can also see the success of the Quebec model, based on rehabilitation. There are fewer violent crimes in Quebec than anywhere else in Canada.
In the past, the Bloc Québécois has taken concrete measures on several occasions to better protect citizens. As evidence of this, we have antigang legislation, the reversal of the burden of proof, the reopening of RCMP detachments—thus better border region security—and protection against sexual exploitation and forced labour. The Bloc Québécois pressed the government to give priority to adopting this bill that will provide more legal tools to police officers in the fight against the scourge of sexual exploitation and forced labour. We also have a DNA bank. These are real tools that we can work with. Imprisonment is never the best solution.
Victims of violence are always foremost in our concerns.
Better protection for citizens is also and primarily accomplished by attacking the root of the problem and the causes of crime and violence. Poverty, inequality, and feeling excluded are the breeding grounds of crime.
The report by the Association des services de réhabilitation sociale du Québec deems conditional sentencing to be a tough, safe, and coherent measure that serves as a deterrent. In addition to its punitive value, conditional sentencing promotes the social reintegration of offenders without compromising the safety of our communities.
This measure, which has the support of the public, makes it possible to have a longer period of supervision for offenders jailed for committing similar offences. Abolishing conditional sentencing for more than 160 offences will not lead to improved safety of our communities. On the contrary, in the medium and long term, safety could be compromised.
Incarceration, particularly when unnecessary, can significantly impact offenders and their families in several ways: it can lead to loss of employment, poverty, isolation, worsening of social problems, loss of custody of children, inability to carry out certain responsibilities, loss of independence and so forth. These factors can place offenders and their families in a situation that is even more precarious and that could increase the chance of recidivism or firmly establish a lifestyle based on crime.
Before handing down a conditional sentence, the judge must make sure that the offender does not represent a threat to society. This helps ensure that conditional sentencing is a safe alternative.
It is also said that serving time in prison tends to increase the risk of reoffending, as compared to community-based sentences. That is also true. We are talking about crimes that can sometimes be abhorrent in some instances and pretty minor in other instances, but the judge could no longer use his or her discretion in sentencing. That is really dangerous.
Public opinion is in favour of conditional sentencing, while showing a legitimate concern about the individuals' dangerousness and about certain types of violent crimes. The Supreme Court of Canada has pointed out that conditional sentences are designed not only to punish and denounce, but also to rehabilitate. The highest court of the land further stated that such a sentence provides an alternative which promotes both monitoring and behavioural improvement.
Moreover, this is a sentence that allows people to show that they are able to function properly in society, to take responsibility for their behaviour and to abide by the mandatory and optional terms and conditions of the conditional sentence order.
I will conclude with these words of my brilliant colleague from Hochelaga:
Let me be clear, we are not saying that luring children is not important... It is not that the member's bill... is not important. In fact, it is so important that we supported it when it was introduced by the previous government. We cannot, however, agree with the idea of increasing the sentence from five years to ten so that people who are found guilty of luring children under the Criminal Code cannot serve their sentence in the community—
