Serge Ménard

[Firearms Registry, October 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, recently the Quebec National Assembly unanimously demanded that the firearms registry be maintained, and it condemned the federal government's Bill C-21.

How can the Minister of Public Safety ignore the demands of parents and victims of the Dawson College tragedy, ignore the Quebec National Assembly's unanimous appeal, and pursue its intention to remove hunting guns from the Canadian Firearms Registry? For all practical purposes, this would render the registry useless.

[Firearms Registry, October 4th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I think you will see that this response was not an answer to the question I asked. I understand that the minister is thinking about the question. I hope that he will think about it enough to realize that it would be a real waste to get rid of the registrations already completed.

If he keeps the registrations, is the minister aware that there will be two categories of citizens: those who complied with the law and are registered, and those who defied the law and are not registered?

Personally I think that those who defy the law are as a rule more dangerous than those who comply with it.

[Firearms Registry, October 4th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, for purely ideological reasons, the government has decided to eliminate the part of the firearms registry concerning long guns. But over five million such arms have already been registered.

If his bill is passed, can the Minister of Public Safety tell us what he plans to do with these registrations. Is he going to delete them from the registry so that they will no longer be accessible to the police or is he going to keep them?

[Criminal Code, September 29th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we can generally say that bills introduced by backbenchers are well intentioned. Members are rather radical in the solutions that they offer, probably because it is so difficult for them to take their bills all the way to the House, and it is even rarer that they get them passed. That is perhaps what is happening here.

All members of my party and of this House certainly feel that child exploitation in one form or another—whether sexual exploitation, which is one of the worst forms of violence, or child exploitation for economic or other purposes—is an absolutely reprehensible type of conduct that is naturally condemned. However, the clause at hand deals with only one means of luring children: through the Internet.

However, if the individual continues, if he or she commits other offences, even rape, after luring the child through the Internet, these offences will be liable to tougher maximum sentences, up to and including life imprisonment. This can lead, in many cases, to more than 10 years of imprisonment, so that the judge must apply the maximum five-year sentence for luring. Moreover, he or she can decide to impose a concurrent sentence.

Certainly, when the judge makes the decision, he will consider the added rape or sexual exploitation, taking into account the fact that this started with the luring of a child through the Internet. Luring is thus secondary to offences that people find really reprehensible and that already carry very tough penalties under the Criminal Code. I say very tough, but I see that there are now in this House a majority of members who believe that we are never tough enough in Canada.

This is all too apparent in this bill. It is not that a five-year sentence for luring a child—in addition to the sentence the offender will serve if, in the worst case, he goes as far as committing rape or sexual assault—is deemed insufficient. The worst cases will be treated according to the offence committed. No, that is not the issue. It is that some would like this offence to be in another category. They want to put it in a category where a judge cannot impose a sentence of deprivation of liberty. They want this offence to be punishable by a sentence to be served in the community.

I do not know why this fairly recent provision in the Criminal Code is being attacked. I believe it was approved in 1996 or 1998. I think it was 1998. I do not know of any serious studies that show that judges have abused this provision, especially since they still have recourse to probation, with what is called a suspended sentence.

The difference between a conditional sentence and a suspended sentence is very simple. Under a suspended sentence, the accused is released under certain terms and conditions. No sentence is passed by the judge. If the accused abides by these terms and conditions, the judge will no longer have the ability to pass sentence. But if the accused violates the terms and conditions, he or she will be brought back before the judge to receive the sentence the judge could have passed initially. At that time, the judge may adjust the sentence, imposing a tougher or lighter one.

Under a conditional sentence, the judge gives a sentence of two years or less, which the accused may serve in the community under certain terms and conditions. These generally include a curfew requiring the individuals to be home by a certain time in the evening, the obligation to work, the obligation to support their family, and so on. If the terms and conditions are violated, then the accused has to serve the rest of his or her sentence in prison.

In other words, a person sentenced to serve 18 months at home who abides by the terms and conditions for 17 straight months, and then violates them after 17,5 months, will have to spend two weeks in prison to finish serving his or her sentence.

Had the same person received a suspended sentence and violated the terms and conditions after 17 months, the judge would have said, “I gave you a break; now, I am sentencing you to imprisonment”.

The Bloc Québécois is among those who have most actively promoted this change to the Criminal Code. We believed that the legislation had to take into account new technologies and the new ways they provide of luring children. The Bloc Québécois therefore supported the establishment of a new offence. This needs, however, to be set in a broader context. We also have to look at the offence of using a computer to lure a child from the perspective of sexual assault. I think members will agree that sexual assault is a more serious offence than luring a child. Bear in mind that a child is under the age of 18 or 16—

[Maher Arar, September 29th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, “We hope the Americans will follow our example”; is that what the minister calls a formal complaint?

It is utter confusion in this matter. While the Minister of Public Safety makes hollow assurances about filing a formal complaint, his colleague, the Minister of Foreign Affairs is making vague suggestions about the possibility of filing a complaint in the more or less distant future.

What is the government waiting for to put an end to this ambiguity, to do what needs to be done and file a complaint right away next week?

[Maher Arar, September 29th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in committee the Minister of Public Safety made hollow assurances that he would file a formal complaint with the United States for the way Maher Arar was treated. However, in the House, the minister said he had sent a letter suggesting to the Americans that they remove Maher Arar's name from their list. This does not constitute a formal complaint.

What is the Minister of Public Safety waiting for to file a formal complaint with U.S. authorities, which the O'Connor report clearly recommends?

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police, September 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, RCMP officers made false reports, passed on false information that meant that an honest man was tortured and incarcerated for an extended period in squalid prisons. They created doubt in the minds of the public and even of some ministers about Mr. Arar's relationships with terrorists. As punishment for what they did, some were promoted and now are being congratulated by the RCMP boss, Mr. Zaccardelli.

Does the minister realize that by placing his confidence so readily in Mr. Zaccardelli, he is sanctioning what was done and joining in the congratulations to those who are responsible for this tragedy?

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police, September 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, to our astonishment, the Minister of Public Safety is proclaiming publicly that the government has full confidence in Mr. Zaccardelli, even before he has testified before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

Yet the commissioner has admitted that while Mr. Arar was rotting in Syrian prisons, the victim of false information from the RCMP, he himself was convinced of Mr. Arar's innocence.

How can the government have full confidence in someone who can find nothing better to do than congratulate his officers whose mistakes and false information had such disastrous consequences for Maher Arar?

[DNA Identification Act, September 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, to begin with, like the previous speaker, I think this is an excellent idea that should be implemented. My objections have to do with the method chosen: a private member's bill. This is quite often a long process and one that is rarely successful. I think this idea deserves better. I hope that this law will be in effect in about a year.

This bill does raise constitutional problems. The mover thinks that there is a way to solve them, but we still have to know how, which he has not gone into much. I have some suggestions.

First, what is the constitutional problem? This House justified the DNA Identification Act as being an exercise of the authority granted it by subsection 91(27) of the British North America Act. I have an opinion issued by the Library of Parliament in 2005. It has therefore been known for some time. It reads: “Unlike the already-established National DNA Data Bank, the indices created by Bill C-240 would not be created for criminal identification purposes”.

This goes without saying. Obviously, we want more than that.

The opinion continues: “As such, they would not come under the criminal law power accorded to Parliament by section 91(27)”.

It says too: “A question has arisen, therefore, as to whether C-240 [this was the predecessor of the current bill] is ultra vires the powers of Parliament as it would deal with a matter of local concern.”

So that is what is in subsection 92(16).

Nevertheless, it says: “Missing persons investigations in Canada are led by local police [this too, is an argument akin to what the previous speaker said] and provincial coroners have jurisdiction over unidentified human remains. Barring an inter-provincial or international element to the disappearance of the person found, the matter would be one of local concern and, therefore, be within provincial jurisdiction.”

Attractive as I find this very commendable and worthwhile idea, I remember that the researcher submitted several options. I do not know which are preferred by the person who introduced the bill we are dealing with today. I do know, though, which one Quebec prefers.

In one of the first options, it says: “The jurisdictional problem arises, however, in the creation of a new human remains databank, the data for which would be furnished by local police officers and coroners. Local police officers and coroners are subject to provincial jurisdiction and to legally require them to forward DNA remains anywhere would require provincial cooperation.”

I know that this is not Quebec’s preferred option. However, one option would be, namely: “Another possibility for establishing a national missing persons index is for the Department of Justice to work with its provincial and territorial counterparts to develop uniform legislation to govern the operations of such a database and to facilitate the establishment of provincial and territorial indices linked in a network. This would be somewhat similar to the American approach in which each state has its own data bank and is connected to a virtual national DNA data bank.”

In the United States, criminal law is a state jurisdiction, in contrast to our federation where it is under the federal Parliament. If they have managed in the United States to create 50 networked databanks, I cannot see why, with all the goodwill that has apparently been expressed, we could not create 10 or 12 networked databanks here—if the Yukon and Northwest Territories are included.

I see too that many other problems have been raised in connection with this bill.

Very optimistically, the mover of this bill says that we could easily introduce several amendments that would resolve all these problems. I do not believe that would be the best way to proceed. In my opinion, if the bill were to become a government bill, the government could send it to its own research service.

Government officials could propose a bill in which all the amendments that should be included were presented in a much more coherent context. Moreover, if we were to insert amendments here and there in the bill, we would risk losing consistency. If, from the beginning, officials drafted a bill based on consultations with the provinces to ensure that all the provinces would adopt laws that could be harmonized, we would have a much more effective bill. In addition, the process would not take as long.

This bill is a successor to Bill C-240 which was introduced by the current Minister of Natural Resources. The path is now a great deal shorter for the minister to convince his cabinet colleague, the Minister of Justice, to raise this matter.

Moreover, there is an institution in Canada that meets every year to examine the possibility of harmonizing our laws. At one time, there was even talk of standardizing provincial laws in appropriate cases. In French, this group is known as la Conférence pour l'harmonisation des lois au Canada, and in English it is the Uniform Law Conference of Canada. There are meetings every summer and I, personally, have attended many times, often as an adviser to the Quebec government when I was in private practice. I have also attended as the Quebec Minister of Justice.

In my view, this is the proper forum to discuss this subject. Perhaps these were the discussions that the mover referred to earlier. If that is the case, there first have to be discussions in order to draft a bill that would be acceptable to all the provinces, and finally to present the bill to Parliament.

It seems to me that if we followed that approach, we would see results a great deal more quickly. It would be surprising if the number of private member’s bills that are adopted amounted to more than a few percentage points. I am not sure if anyone has ever published statistics on that topic.

However, if the Minister of Natural Resources—who was in favour of it—were to sell the idea to the Minister of Justice, if his staff were to submit a bill jointly and if they could get the consent of the provinces, we could have such a bill a year from now. But I doubt that we get such results so quickly if this remains a simple member’s bill.

The members of the public who support this bill, and who are fed up with constitutional quarrels, do not see that these are objections that we are raising. Basically it is a reality that we must deal with and that I am very familiar with, and that is why I made an effort to find a way that was faster, more efficient and surer of achieving results in much shorter times than are proposed here.

We live in a federation and, as members know, this is not my first choice of system of government for Canada. I prefer a true confederation. Moreover, they must have known this when they gave me my first office in the Confederation Building. In any case, that is not the reason. In a federation, there are more obstacles than in a unitary system and this case is proof of this. In my opinion, the solution that I submit to the mover is the best one. This is why I cannot support the bill as it is drafted and as it will be submitted.

[DNA Identification Act, September 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, clearly, we are all very sensitive to the issue raised by the hon. member in his private member's bill. This is the second bill we have seen on this subject.

Has the hon. member considered the constitutional problems raised by this bill? If so, does he have any solutions?