Randall Garrison

[Criminal Code, September 18th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to add my personal congratulations to the new Minister of Justice. I have worked with him in a number of capacities in Parliament and have always found him to be reasonable and a hard-working member of Parliament. I am sure he will bring the same to his new job.

I would also like to congratulate the new parliamentary secretary, who is sitting next to him, with whom I have also had a good relationship in the past. I look forward to our making progress on issues important to Canadians with these two new people in place in justice.

The minister said today a lot about getting this done today. I am going to express my hope that there is actually a plan rather than rhetoric involved with the idea that we pass this today. Certainly, New Democrats understand the urgency of tackling bail reform, both in the violent crime area and also in assisting those who get trapped in the justice system because they cannot get bail.

Does the minister actually have a plan for advancing this today?

[Points of Order, June 21st, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask for unanimous consent to allow the member for Edmonton Griesbach to read his unanimous consent motion to the House.

[Government Response to Petitions, June 19th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I ask for unanimous consent to table, in both official languages, a report shared in advance with all parties last week, entitled “White Paper on the Status of Trans and Gender Diverse People”.

[Committees of the House, June 15th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I feel like I have wandered out of the wilderness into a strange country here today. When we are talking about victims, the justice committee heard from victims and victims advocacy organizations very strongly and came with a unanimous report with 13 recommendations. As I said earlier, there are procedures in the House to hold ministers accountable, and a concurrence report is not normally one of those.

My question for the member is this: What action is she going to take to make sure that the tactic the Conservatives have adopted today does not harm the ability to make progress on the 13 recommendations coming from victims that are contained in this report?

[Committees of the House, June 15th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for highlighting recommendation 11 in this report. It is now in Bill S-12 in the Senate.

I wonder if she shares the optimism that I feel. A lot of the matters dealt with in Bill S-12 have already been discussed multiple times in this chamber. When that bill eventually arrives here, does she believe that all parties can work together to get its provisions enacted quickly?

[Committees of the House, June 15th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, as I have said several times now, and I will say it again, when we are talking about ministerial accountability there are very good and robust measures in the House, question period being among them, where we can deal with questions of accountability. I do not think that a concurrence motion on a unanimous report is the place to do that.

His question about victims is an important one, but I want to give a caution here. There is a difference between listening to the victims of crime about what will help them recover and about what is needed for them to participate fully in the system, and taking traumatic incidents in our society and exploiting them for political purposes. I worry that this is what we see happening today.

[Committees of the House, June 15th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is really tempting me off what I am trying to do here, which is to say that, once this motion for concurrence has been moved, I would like us to focus on the recommendations in the report and the ability to move forward on those.

However, she is absolutely right. I do not believe that the motion for concurrence was moved for those reasons. I think it was moved to displace other business of Parliament that is also quite important, which I hope we get through before we rise.

We can really make progress on improving support for victims of crime if we all continue to work together as we did on this report.

[Committees of the House, June 15th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, my friend raises a very important point, and I want to give a very specific example, because I think often restorative justice is not taken seriously, which is why it is not funded seriously.

We had a very horrific incident of anti-Semitism in my riding, where some horrible graffiti was inscribed on The Chabad Centre for Jewish Life and Learning. It was done by two non-rocket scientists who were fairly young. It was done on camera, which they apparently did not notice, and they were fairly easily apprehended.

The police worked with the Chabad Centre for Jewish Life and Learning to create a restorative solution to the problem, which was that these two young people, who had been influenced by online publications and who I think had no real idea of the harm they had done, sit down with the members of that congregation to understand the harm they had caused. I really commend that community for taking a very horrific incident and, as a whole, trying to turn it into something positive.

[Committees of the House, June 15th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, there are always issues of importance, issues of the day perhaps that are in the media, but there are many mechanisms in this Parliament to deal with those. The purpose of moving concurrence in this report seems to be to divert other business of Parliament and not focus on the recommendations of the report. That is why I have not been talking about those other issues. I hope we can remain focused on the recommendations of the report and let the parties in this Parliament use the other mechanisms available for dealing with other issues.

[Committees of the House, June 15th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I am going to stick to the member's question a bit more about what we heard from victims, because it is important to remember that this report is based on what we heard from victims of crime.

There are two general themes in what we heard. One of those was that victims wanted to ensure that justice was done, absolutely.

However, there is a second theme of victims that gets missed in some of the debates in the House of Commons. That second theme that was almost always there was that they wanted to ensure that no one else would become a victim of the same thing that happened to them. That compassion for others that almost all victims have displayed is how their trauma and terrible experience can be used to inform public policy so that this does not happen to any other family and does not happen to any other community. That is an important part of this debate and it is an important part of what is reflected in the report, which I hope we all respect.