House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2008, with 46% of the vote.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police April 24th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives promised to reopen the RCMP detachments that were closed in Quebec by the former government. They made that promise before and during the campaign and it is in black and white on page 26 of their election platform.
Does the government intend to keep its promise and reopen the RCMP detachments?
Canada--U.S. Border April 10th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, first we had the Ontario tourism minister accusing the Prime Minister of giving in to President Bush on the mandatory passport issue. Now we have Jean Charest, Premier of Quebec, challenging the Prime Minister's position of quietly accepting an American law that would make it mandatory for Canadians and Quebeckers to carry passports to cross the border.
Given the fallout of such a measure for the economy and tourism, will the government take up this issue again and demand that the Americans find a solution other than using passports at the border?
Public Safety November 24th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, she has already been given the flight numbers. Refraining from simply answering a clear question is a form of admission.
How is it that a small country of less than 300,000 inhabitants like Iceland knows, but Canada does not? To fly over Iceland from the United States you have to fly over Canada. How is it that this small country dares to express its concern and that the Canadian government prefers to stay in the dark?
When it comes down to it, the minister is refusing to answer us in an attempt to buy time. What does she have to hide?
Public Safety November 24th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, Canada's air surveillance system is so effective that no plane can fly over the country without being detected and tracked. By consulting the flight plan, we can easily deduce whether the plane may have been used to transport prisoners. The media have been reporting on this for nearly a week and the government has been asked some very specific questions in this House on whether planes carrying prisoners have flown over Canadian territory.
Can the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness finally answer us with certainty as to whether this is true or not?
Public Safety November 23rd, 2005
Mr. Speaker, we understand that she does not know, but what we would like to know is this: does she want to know? Several countries have expressed concerns and are calling upon the United States for explanations because they fear human rights have been violated.
Is the minister herself not concerned by that possibility? Rather than repeating that she has no information, ought she not to be concerned with wondering whether this impacts on Canada's international responsibility, or whether the horrible experience of Maher Arar is not being repeated because of her indifference?
Public Safety November 23rd, 2005
Mr. Speaker, the minister has already told us on several occasions that, to her knowledge, there was no information indicating, and no real reason to believe, that CIA prison planes had landed in Newfoundland. There can be no flights over Canadian territory without our knowledge and without the filing of a flight plan.
I have two very simple questions for the minister. Was she aware of the existence of those flights? Was she aware that CIA-owned aircraft had used Canadian territory to carry out their operations?
Public Safety November 22nd, 2005
Mr. Speaker, will the minister commit to inquire?
Let us be clear. Can the Minister of Public Safety tell us if, indeed, aircraft N221SG and N196D did transit through Canada, and if they were carrying prisoners that the Americans call terrorists?
Can the minister at least get that information?
Public Safety November 22nd, 2005
Mr. Speaker, yesterday we asked the government about landings in Newfoundland by U.S. prison planes. The Minister of Public Safety told us that she had no information on that. Iceland knows, Spain knows, the European Union knows, Normand Lester from the daily Le Journal de Montréal knows, and so do several other media, but the minister responsible for public safety does not know.
How do we explain the fact that the Minister of Public Safety is so ill informed and that, moreover, she refuses to ask Washington to provide explanations?
Air-India Flight 182 June 23rd, 2005
Mr. Speaker, 20 years ago today, 329 passengers on an Air India Boeing 747 died in intolerable circumstances. Among the victims were 278 Canadians.
This tragedy, the most devastating terrorist attack in Canadian history, is still wrapped in mystery and many questions remain. No one has yet been sentenced or held responsible for this unspeakable tragedy.
Only one thing is certain: this was a terrorist act. Although a pure accident can cause as much loss of human life and tremendous pain for the victims' loved ones, I think that when a tragedy like this is intentional, planned in full knowledge of the fact that the victims were innocent people who could not do anything about the situation that someone wanted corrected and were in no way responsible for it, the pain is even harder to bear. Our sympathy for the afflicted families is all the greater in that the pain we share is commingled with a tremendous sense of horror.
The terrorists' motives were apparently at least partly religious. But in all the great religions, the supreme being is believed to be infinitely good and infinitely just. Is it possible to believe such a being could approve of the summary execution of hundreds of innocent people? Is it possible to believe that the response to injustice is even more injustice? Is that one of the cornerstones of the new society we are trying to build, in which the most important rule, as in all the great religions, is to love one's neighbour? Do people not realize how greatly they discredit the cause they claim to advance in this way?
Unfortunately, there is an absurd belief that terrorist acts can be justified in today's world. Any one of us could be a victim of such acts. At this time, we can only express our deepest sympathy.
However, more must be done. We must try to comprehend the incomprehensible. And for that, we must first know everything that can be known. While the explosion of the Air India Boeing 747 was a terrible tragedy for everyone, nothing can compare with the suffering of the victims' families for the last 20 years and the permanent void left in their lives. Today we think of them. It is to them that we extend our heartfelt sympathy. It is because of them, the anger they still feel, their constant pain, that we ask the government to finally shed light, once and for all, on this tragic event.
Twenty years ago, 329 people died for being on the wrong flight at the wrong time, collateral damage in a crisis about which they could do nothing. We members of Parliament have the ability and therefore the responsibility to act and do all we can to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again.
To the families and friends, to those still affected by the events of June 23, 1985, I offer once again my most heartfelt sympathy on behalf of the Bloc Québécois and the people we represent.
Criminal Code June 16th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, this is another private member's bill aimed, once again, at increasing sentences by setting very high minimums. It aims to increase the minimum sentences for offences that are certainly serious. Basically, it concerns the offence of leaving the scene of an accident that might have caused physical injury or death. They hope once again to solve a problem, which has not grown especially worse in Canada over the last few years, by imposing minimum sentences of seven years.
What kind of a model is being used? I would remind the House again that experience proves that high minimum sentences are not effective. Every time I raise this matter, though, I have the feeling that I am talking to a blank wall, except when I talk about it informally with members of my own party. Sentences of this kind are of no use. The only possible result is longer trials.
Nevertheless, we have a striking example here in Canada of the uselessness of minimum sentences. When I was young, I had never heard of marijuana. In fact, I never heard of it until I took my bar exams in 1966 and was starting to work in the crown attorney's office. It was around then that people started to use marijuana. The marijuana that could be found growing wild in Canada did not have any hallucinogenic effect. So all the marijuana that people consumed came from abroad. Do you know what the minimum sentence was for importing marijuana? Seven years. That should have dissuaded people. But instead, we had flower power and marijuana consumption steadily increased.
In 1982, I think, the Supreme Court decided that a minimum of seven years for importing marijuana was so severe that it was unconstitutional. So the minimum sentence disappeared. There was no particular increase in marijuana use at that time, though. It just continued.
First, people do not know what the minimums are. Then, they want minimum sentences, because they think everyone is like us and generally obeys the law. Most of the prison population, however, is totally different. When I was minister of public security, I asked that sociological studies of the type of clientele we had be redone. We could talk about a lot of things. I do not want to arouse sympathy needlessly, but these people can be described for the most part as social misfits.
In addition, I ask the hon. members whether they know what the minimums are. Do they know what they are for failure to register a firearm? Even we the legislators do not know what the minimum sentences are. How can they have an effect on the people in our prisons, who are for the most part unaware of these things and likely to commit such crimes.
A minimum sentence in any case would have an impact on a hit and run. Most people who lose it after hitting someone—because it is pretty traumatic—and flee the scene, later turn themselves in to the police. However, when they realize the minimum sentence is seven years for this kind of offence, I am not so sure they will do that.
The other example we have in Canada is the death penalty. Since we abolished it, the homicide rate has gradually declined. This shows clearly that other factors affect criminal behaviour.
There is another success in Canada. Not a total success, but still a success. It is the rate of drunk driving offences. There are far fewer today than there were 20 years ago. Nothing has been done about minimum sentences for this sort of offence. But roadblocks have been set up. The Supreme Court has determined that the Constitution permits it.
So roadblocks began to appear. These, of course, made it possible to test a goodly number of drivers. I remember, when the roadblocks first started, sometimes 10% or 12% of drivers were nabbed for impaired driving. Now thousands are stopped at roadblocks, but I recall two recent ones in Montreal where only four impaired drivers were detected.
People's attitudes have changed. For instance, when my children go out partying with friends, there is a designated driver. I never heard of such a thing when I was young. Attitudes have been changed through education.
I am focussing particularly on roadblocks because these stop people before they commit crimes. Again, most of the time people are far more concerned with being stopped than with the sentence they might end up with. Most of the time they do not expect to get caught.
I found a striking historical example in the case law of the British Columbia Appeal Court. The judge referred to the time when pickpockets were hanged in England. Their fellow pickpockets were at their busiest during the hanging. What a deterrent that was, don't you think? People may be deterred by fear of punishment, but are far more likely to be deterred by the likelihood of getting caught than by the imposition of a minimum sentence.
So the only effects this has are to fill up our jails and force judges to impose minimum sentences. I do not get the point, frankly. The people who propose these sentences seem to totally mistrust judges. They feel Canadian judges are the worst and are liable to give criminals who appear before them nothing but a slap on the wrist. They are absolutely determined to force minimum sentences on the judges in order to get them to take action.
This is not the case. It does force judges to impose sentences they feel are unfair, because they are locked in and must impose the minimum sentence.
Before imposing minimum sentences, further reflection is needed. This tendency to impose minimum sentences is very popular in the United States. Does anyone here think that the crime rate is much higher in Canada than it is in the United States? The more minimum sentences are imposed, the more the crime rate increases. Just check the statistics. The crime rate in Canada is comparable to that in the United States, except for homicide. The homicide rate is three times higher in the United States than it is in Canada. For the rest, the statistics are quite similar. Do you know how many people are in jail in the United States compared to Canada? Roughly seven times more people are imprisoned in the United States than in Canada.
The most recent statistics I found that are available internationally date back to 2001. From memory, the incarceration rate in the United States is 686 per 100,000 population, compared to 101 per 100,000 population in Canada. Do you want other global comparisons? For the European Union it is 89 per 100,000 population and in Japan, 50. In fact, the incarceration rate per 100,000 population in most civilized countries, except the United States, is around 100. If I recall correctly, it is slightly higher in England and Portugal. In some cases, the rate is as low as 50. Yet these countries have similar crime rates.
I understand that it is an easy way to gain popularity, and lord knows the United States overdoes it, which is what gives that country an incarceration rate similar to Russia's or some other such country that we would never want to live in. Minimum sentences have absolutely no effect on the crime rate in these countries.
It is obvious—perhaps because it is easy for me to convince my colleagues—that we will not support such a bill which, once again, is unnecessary and will create injustices and will certainly not resolve the problem it claims to address.