Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise to speak in favour of Bill C-26. As members know, the NDP will be supporting this bill at second reading to send it to committee. We believe that legislation can play an important role in preventing child sexual abuse, as it can help to deal with and counter crimes in a whole range of areas. However, where we disagree with the Conservatives is that this is all that it does. I will be pointing out in the 10 minutes I have that a number of other actions that the Conservative government has taken actually contribute to a rise in certain criminal rates.
Legislation can certainly help to deal with it in part, but when the resources are no longer available, there can be a counter effect. As the justice minister has admitted to, the government, which has been in power now for almost a decade, in this case has put in place a range of things that have tragically contributed to an increase in the rate of sexual offences against children.
New Democrats will be supporting the bill going to committee. As we always do, we will be bringing forward reasoned amendments, after listening to witnesses who come before committee, to make sure that the bill is as good as it can possibly be. That is our responsibility as parliamentarians. We would all agree on that.
This bill is important, and we hope that the government will consider amendments at the committee stage. We certainly hope that government will take a very thoughtful approach on this bill. This is an extremely important issue, one that all Canadians feel parliamentarians should be working together on to achieve and resolve, which is lowering the rates of child sexual abuse in Canada. There is no doubt about that.
To do that, the government can offer legislation, which is what it has done. New Democrats have responded by saying we will support this legislation going to committee, and now it is back to the government side to accept the amendments that will be offered. New Democrats work very hard in committee. We thoroughly examine the evidence and bring forward the best possible amendments. However, tragically, we have seen in case after case that the government has refused those amendments. It has simply said that it is not going to accept any amendments on bills.
As a result, so far this year, we have seen that half a dozen pieces of legislation have been rejected by the courts. If the Conservative government had accepted the amendments offered by the NDP, the legislation would not have been recalled. However, because the government has an “our way or the highway” attitude on so many pieces of legislation, the courts have said that legislation does not hold water and cannot undergo the careful scrutiny that courts require.
New Democrats hope that this will not be the case on Bill C-26. Since we are supporting it going to committee, we hope that the government will say it will look at the reasoned amendments that can make a difference to improving this bill.
However, it is not just a bill and not just legislation that will lower the rates of child sexual abuse in this country. The rise of 6% over the last couple of years is a very disturbing trend.
What are the other decisions that the government has made that may have contributed to that rise? I mentioned earlier, in speaking with my colleague from York South—Weston, about the ending of the National Crime Prevention Centre, a centre that did good work across the country in seeking to achieve a lowering of the crime rate. That is something that has happened over the last few years, and I have risen in the House before to speak to it. It is a slashing of funding. There have been tens of millions of dollars that have been taken out of crime prevention funding. This is wrong-headed, for the simple reason that for every dollar invested in crime prevention programs—and other countries have seen this, the Scandinavian countries, and countries in Europe—we save $6 in policing costs, courts costs, and incarceration costs.
Let us look at that formula. As a society, we had $100 million in crime prevention funding slashed by the current government, and yet for every dollar that was invested in crime prevention, we saved $6 as a society in policing costs, court costs, and incarceration costs. However, even more, the greater benefit is the fact that the crime is not committed in the first place. We are not only investing our money prudently, as a society, to reduce the crime rate, but we are also avoiding having the victims in the first place. That has to be the result that all members of Parliament share. Certainly on this side of the House, the NDP has been the foremost proponent of investing significantly in crime prevention programs. We see the benefit of not having the victims in the first place, and we see the benefit of investing that $1 to save $6 in policing, court, and incarceration costs.
For the government to slash crime prevention, as it has over the last few years, has been simply wrong-headed, and I believe we are seeing some of the results. There is a 6% rise in child sexual abuse when crime prevention is slashed. I believe there is a connection between those two things.
That is not all that has been slashed under the current government. The government side may say that it is a question of resources, but the reality is that we all know what the government is investing in heavily right now: tax cuts for the very wealthy in society. We believe that veterans deserve services, that costs to veterans should be paid, and that crime prevention should be invested in. Those are choices on the part of the government. We also make choices as a society. However, rather than investing billions of dollars in tax cuts for the very wealthy, we say that it makes a lot more sense to put that money into things like supporting services for veterans, as we saw earlier today, or putting crime prevention programs in place.
It is not just crime prevention; it is also addiction programs that have been slashed under the current government. That is another tragedy. The government is slashing both crime prevention and addiction treatment. At the same time, the Conservatives are asking why child sexual abuse rates are rising. However, that is not all. The community resources that are supposed to counter the abuse of children have largely been cut as part of the overall cuts to crime prevention programs.
As well, the whole issue around policing is something on which we disagree with the government. The government promised to put more police officers on the streets of the cities across the country, and the current government has manifestly failed in providing that kind of support. When I talk to my local police officers, a problem that they continually raise is the underfinancing of policing.
On that note, there is the issue of the public safety officer compensation fund, an NDP initiative that I brought forward in 2006. The Conservatives voted for it. It is now 2014, yet we still do not have a public safety officer compensation fund in place to support the families of fallen police officers and firefighters who die in the line of duty. The Conservatives voted for it before they became government, and they have now waited for eight years and have still not brought that in. On this side of the House, we say that is a shame. The public safety officer compensation fund needs to be put into place, and the families of fallen firefighters and fallen police officers need to be taken care of.
The record of the current government goes beyond the concern that the Conservatives seem to have expressed in bringing forward Bill C-26. They brought forward the bill, which we support, but they are not doing the other things that could do much more, along with the bill, to reduce the child sexual abuse rates in this country. The current government has put in a number of pieces of legislation on a wide variety of issues, and yet it is not having the impact that was obviously intended. That is because legislation is only a small part of how we combat crime, reduce crime rates, and put in place an effective crime prevention strategy.
We are going to be in an election in less than 11 months. In fact, the election date is already set for October 19, 2015. Canadians will be putting the current government aside and looking for a change of agenda in Ottawa. That is what the NDP offers. We will be investing in crime prevention programs. We will be investing in and keeping commitments around policing. We will be putting in place addiction treatment programs. We will be providing community resources to counter abuse of children. That is the kind of platform that people can get around, to ensure that we lower the rates of abuse against children.
