Peter Milliken

[Dangerous Offenders, December 13th, 1995]

The hon. member for Calgary Southeast is exactly the same. How can I continue with this constant yelling? Could you please call for some order, Mr. Speaker. I leave it to you.

As I am trying to say with all this yelling that is going on, the fact is the crime rate of the United States is higher than ours in spite of the lock up policy and it is rising. In other words, any reasonable person who approaches these facts would conclude that the policy of locking people up and throwing away the key, as is advocated by the hon. member for Surrey-White Rock-South Langley, would result in an increased crime rate and more recidivism. That is exactly the American experience.

The hon. member wags her head now. Confronted with facts, she says no, that cannot be right. But the fact is it is right. All she has to do is look at the figures. Why does she not read these figures? I have never heard her cite these figures in one of her speeches. I have never heard the hon. member for Wild Rose talk about this. I also do not hear the hon. member for Calgary Southeast bother herself with facts in her speeches either. All we hear are these opinions made up out of the air.

What I am convinced the Reform Party members-

[Dangerous Offenders, December 13th, 1995]

I wish the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster would listen to what I say. If he would listen to the facts instead of yelling all the time, he might learn something. By constantly yelling he does not gain anything.

[Dangerous Offenders, December 13th, 1995]

Hon. members opposite oh and ah. I know they would love to see the crime rates go up to bolster their arguments that people should be locked up. The fact is the crime rate has gone down.

We have had people locked up for longer periods, it is true. You can ask the solicitor general about the fact that our prisons are overcrowded, but I am saying to the hon. members opposite-

[Dangerous Offenders, December 13th, 1995]

If the hon. members opposite would stay quiet for a minute and listen to some facts, they might learn. Instead, when they are confronted with facts they yell and shout and try to pretend that they cannot hear them because it hurts them to hear facts.

Let me reiterate what I said. I said that in the United States the imprisonment rate is four times what it is in this country. Their crime rate is significantly higher and is rising. Our crime rate has gone down in the last few years, thanks in part to the magnificent efforts of the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General of Canada.

[Dangerous Offenders, December 13th, 1995]

He says he will not learn it from me. All right. Never mind taking it from me. Take it from the experts, the people who work in the system. If the hon. member would listen to them he would not be spouting the nonsense he is spouting now and that he was spouting earlier.

He has obviously convinced the very gullible member for Surrey-White Rock-South Langley who has swallowed his line, hook, line and sinker. The poor soul has been totally distracted by the hon. member for Wild Rose and his silly nonsense on locking people up and throwing away the key. That is all we ever get from

the Reform Party. We had it earlier today. Now we have got it in this motion.

Let me turn to the motion before the House. What we have now is a system where under the Criminal Code if a person has committed a particularly serious offence and is known to be a dangerous offender or there is some risk that the person may be a dangerous offender, we give a discretion to the attorney general of the province in which the prosecution is taking place to bring an application to have the offender declared a dangerous offender.

That discretion is given to the attorney general of each province who is an elected official, a member of the cabinet in the province. Presumably, he or she is a person who has won the trust and confidence of the people, and a lot more trust and confidence than has been earned by the hon. member for Surrey-White Rock-South Langley. The hon. member's party has not been elected as a majority party anywhere and is not likely to be, so she may not have the advantage of being elected attorney general. I must say I would pity the people in the province in which she ever became an attorney general.

Nevertheless, the discretion is now given to the attorney general of the province to decide whether to bring this application. The hon. member wants to take away that discretion. She wants to put the discretion in the hands of a group of psychiatrists and if the psychiatrists say the person cannot be cured or has a particular kind of problem, bango, you lock him up and throw away the key.

The hon. member for Calgary Southeast wags her head. I am correct in what I am saying. The hon. member for Surrey-White Rock-South Langley is not wagging her head. She knows I am right. She knows I have accurately described the motion she has put to the House. Frankly, it is a very sad commentary in this day and age, considering that the age of enlightenment which took place 200 or 300 years ago came upon mankind and gave us some notion of justice and fairness, that members of Parliament are now giving this idea that locking up people solves the problem.

I know the Minister of Justice will likely come out with some of these figures in his speech a little later. However, I want to point out to the hon. member for Surrey-White Rock-South Langley that the United States take the policy that she advocates fairly seriously. They lock people up and they throw away the key.

The hon. member will find, if she looks at the figures and I know she does not like to do this because facts are always a problem for the Reform Party. Mr. Speaker, you know that as well as I do. There is nothing worse than a set of facts to face some of the hon. members opposite. It makes them quail and shake because facts are something they do not want to know about.

In the United States the imprisonment rate for persons convicted of criminal offences is four times what the rate is in Canada.

[Dangerous Offenders, December 13th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, this motion is typical of the Reform Party and the nonsense we have had to put up with from this group and its obsession with law and order issues. It is obsessed with the notion that if we lock people we will solve the crime problem of the country; lock them all up and we will not have any crime.

Unfortunately we have lots of experience in world affairs in the last 300 or 400 years, and probably a good deal longer, indicating that policy does not work.

The Reform Party, however, sticks its head in the sand, goes back to the middle ages and takes the view that if we lock people up, whip them, chain them and beat them to death, somehow we will solve the crime problem.

Crime has been a problem throughout human experience. It is not something that just happened in 1995. It is not something that just happened in 1993 or whenever it was the Reform Party formed itself. It has been a problem with human existence since Cain and Abel.

Hon. members opposite might have forgotten the story of Cain and Abel, but I will not recite it for them tonight. There was a murder then. There was no death penalty. I do not recall that Cain got the death penalty. He got punished but he did not get the death penalty.

Hon. members opposite rant and rave about locking people up and throwing away the key. The hon. member for Wild Rose stood up this morning to introduce a private member's bill that would take away the right of parole, the right of statutory release and all kinds of things that are what we call carrots to try to get people to improve their behaviour while in prison. He wants to take that away, lock them up for the maximum time we can lock them up and hope that when we spring them on society after 12 or 25 years in prison somehow they will be reformed and that society will not suffer.

Some of us happen to know better than the hon. member for Wild Rose. If he would listen to some reason once in a while instead of spouting the constant nonsense he does from his seat he might learn something from the experience others have had with the criminal system.

[Dangerous Offenders, December 13th, 1995]

It is not a bill, it is a motion.

[Motions For Papers, December 13th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I ask that all notices of motions for the production of papers be allowed to stand.

[Questions On The Order Paper, December 13th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.

[Committees Of The House, December 13th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, since we are almost at the end of the session, I should like to take the unusual step of thanking my hon. colleagues opposite for their co-operation in arranging for all the routine motions that we have on a regular basis.

The hon. member for Roberval, the hon. member for Laurier-Sainte-Marie, the hon. member for Bellechasse, the hon. member for Lethbridge and the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan have spent a lot of time going over these documents in advance. I thank them for their co-operation, as well as all hon. members who patiently listen while we go through this rigmarole on a regular basis to have the motions adopted.