Vic Toews

[Justice, November 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, as soon as the minister stood up and said that the American attorney general had no problem with the issue, the American ambassador had to correct him and said that there would be congestion at the border, at a time when we have softwood lumber disputes, pork disputes, and all types of other trade disputes.

The American ambassador has made his position very clear on behalf of the American government. Why is the minister continuing to mislead Canadians?

[Supply, November 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I come from the province of Manitoba where, along with Saskatchewan and Alberta, in 1930 natural resources were constitutionally transferred over to those provinces. That was a good thing in terms of assisting development.

As a representative from a so-called have not province, this is nothing that would hurt Manitoba. It is a good thing that Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia would be allowed to keep their own natural resources in the same way that Manitoba can, so they can develop their industries. The promise by the Prime Minister was 100%.

I am speaking on behalf of a so-called have not province. Why is that not good for Canada? It is good for every province. Perhaps the member could tell us why he thinks the Prime Minister does not agree with it?

[Privilege, November 3rd, 2004]

Yes she is.

[Justice, November 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I take the word of the American ambassador that he stated in public. It is clear that the government is willing to jeopardize Canadian jobs. It also appears that Liberals are willing to sacrifice public safety on our highways since training police officers to detect drug impaired motorists will only be complete in four years.

In the interests of public safety, will the minister promise that the marijuana law will remain unchanged until all necessary officers have been trained and in place?

[Justice, November 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the American ambassador has stated that changes to Canada's drug laws are a border issue for the American government. It is clear that the Liberal government's position on marijuana will harm Canada's jobs that depend on our billion dollar a day trading relationship with the Americans.

Can the minister explain to Canadians why he thinks it is more important to decriminalize drugs than to protect Canadian jobs?

[Criminal Code, November 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the admission by the parliamentary secretary that the problem is serious and that the bill is not a panacea were about the only things he got right.

This is in fact a very serious problem. Drug impaired driving will be fuelled by the companion legislation, Bill C-17, which is the decriminalization of marijuana. Bill C-16 would not address that problem.

Bill C-16 is nothing more than window dressing and a very lame attempt by the government to try to deal with a serious situation that it will be creating on our roads, a situation that will directly lead to more deaths and injuries. I want to say, before I begin my debate on the bill, that by its action the government will be killing and injuring more people on the streets of Canada.

The public should also understand that there is no effective roadside testing device like the alcohol technology that has been developed. When a police officer sees a motor vehicle wandering along the road, if the individual is stopped and there is a smell of alcohol on his or her breath, the officer can demand that the person breathe into a roadside testing device. Those are good indicators of the amount of alcohol. There is either a pass, fail or a warning on the machine.

We do not have that kind of technology when it comes to dealing with drug impaired drivers. Drug impaired drivers are no less dangerous than alcohol impaired drivers. In fact, many people do not realize that when the effects of alcohol and drugs are combined, including marijuana, an even greater impairment occurs.

When people say that they are only going to drink a couple of beers, then smoke marijuana and get into a car, that is much more serious than even taking a lot more drinks. The impairment is multiplied. The government needs to know that information when it turns this legislation loose on our public. The technology for that has not been developed. In fact, a justice official said that the RCMP or the other police officers would have all kinds of physical tests. They will make drivers hop on one leg or they will look at the involuntary reaction in their eyes. What nonsense. What is terrible is that it is coming from legal minds in the Department of Justice of Canada. These individuals know better. They know the poor rate of conviction for impaired driving when there are not these technological devices. That is the kind of nonsense they are trying to tell the people of Canada. They should be ashamed for telling Canadians that this kind of detection will result in more convictions.

As a former prosecutor, I know how difficult it is to convict people of impaired driving. Even in the situation where alcohol is involved and where the smell of alcohol is on people's breaths it is difficult to make a charge when there is no alert or breathalyzer to help.

There are situations though where there is no alcohol involved and it is simply drugs and that becomes even more difficult for the purpose of trying to prove that an individual is impaired by his driving through drug use. Hopping on one leg or involuntary reaction in the eye can be excused in many ways and the justice department lawyers, who have been telling that to the justice minister, know that and should be ashamed of themselves.

The statistics are overwhelming in respect of the acquittals for impaired driving. Some provinces will not even bother prosecuting an impaired driver if there was no breathalyzer or no alert. Impaired driving used to be called section 234 when I was prosecuting and .08 was section 236. That was the way it was done. The impaired driver was simply stayed and the prosecutor tried to get them on .08.

There is another thing that Canadians do not realize. Take a look at Martin’s Annual Criminal Code and see how many technical defences there are to impaired driving and .08. It is more difficult to convict someone of impaired driving and .08 than an average murder or an average rape. It is a much more difficult offence.

What will the government do now? It will accelerate the amount of drinking and driving or the use of drugs and driving through these twin laws, Bill C-17 and Bill C-16.

The parliamentary secretary says that we will train the trainers. Is that not interesting. Manitoba and Quebec have the same problem. The government is shutting down RCMP stations in Manitoba. In my home town of Steinbach the RCMP highway patrol was shut down. In Selkirk, Manitoba, the RCMP highway patrol is shut down. Of the 65 highway patrolmen and women in Manitoba, 35 are off highway patrol, leaving long stretches of highway without highway patrol.

Train the trainers: Who will the trainers to train? There are no more RCMP officers left on our roads because of the government's nonsense about things such as the gun registry. It has poured $120 million of money into a gun registry, but it has not hired police officers. The government thinks the bureaucrats will run the justice system. If we do not have police officers out there, our justice system does not work, and the government does not understand that.

Train the trainers: Who will train the trainers? The police will train the trainers. We take more police officers off the street to do the training. Who will pay? It will be the provinces who will pay. In the same way the federal government has downloaded every responsibility in justice on to the provinces, the province will now pay for that training the trainers.

What did the government say? It said that the police would take care of this. It is dumping the problem on the police. It is interesting that in Manitoba the federal government cut the number of highway patrolmen and women to 35. Then it says that the police can take care of this issue.

How will the police officers take care of this issue? They cannot even attend fatals. First responders are out there, not police officers. They deal with gasoline spills, oil spills, bodies on the road, with no police officers available. Train the trainers: we cannot even get police officers on to our street. What nonsense to be telling Canadians that the government is serious about the problem of crime in the streets.

It breaks my heart that 16 years ago the province of Manitoba embarked on an ambitious fight to reduce the amount of drinking and driving on its highways, through administrative suspensions and seizure of motor vehicles. There was no help from the federal government. Certainly the Liberal government has done nothing. The provinces have done it because the federal government does not care about the deaths on our highways.

The federal government has dumped the problem on the police. The administrative suspensions have reduced the number of deaths on the highways. They have reduced the injuries on the highways. I fought to protect those laws in Manitoba. Now those laws have been adopted across Canada. The government is going back on the progress the province made.

The government should immediately withdraw not only this bill, but also Bill C-17 until proper technology is in place. I care about the people in my riding and I care about Canadians even if the Liberals do not. If they do not want to do it, they should step aside. We would get rid of the bill and we would ensure that the technology was in place before we went ahead on something like this.

[Contraventions Act, November 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time to add a few comments to the record.

I have a few concerns with the bill. First, the bill will increase demand. That is what law enforcement officials are telling us: that the taking away of these penalties or reducing the criminal penalties will fuel demand. At the same time, production is kept illegal.

What does that mean? We are ensuring that organized crime has an increased amount of market share. So this bill is tailor-made for organized crime--let there me no mistake about that--when we increase demand and keep the production illegal. Let's not fool ourselves on that.

I have talked to the schools in my area about this, and they are very concerned. They believe that this bill is also tailor-made to encourage small-scale trafficking among youth. That is what this is going to do. Thirty grams of marijuana or 15 grams of marijuana is enough to ensure that trafficking goes on in our schools on a small scale.

There is some disinformation that has been provided that the reason we are doing this is to get rid of criminal records. Every member of the House knows that at present there are conditional discharges available and absolute discharges available for the possession of small amounts of marijuana, and that is in fact what is given for these kinds of offences. To suggest to the Canadian people that this is the reason we are doing that is simply wrong. There are enough mechanisms in the current law to avoid criminal records.

The other point is the health issue. My colleague from Churchill has indicated that marijuana is just as bad as alcohol and tobacco. I don't know if it is just as bad, but I don't see the justification for putting yet another drug onto society. I am concerned about that. We have not looked at the health issue.

Health professionals are telling us that present-day marijuana is a very addictive drug. When I was growing up people always said that it was only psychologically addictive. No. Marijuana is physiologically addictive. And in the hands now of organized crime, which cures marijuana in methamphetamine and uses it in that way, we are ensuring that our children are going to be addicts.

I am not saying alcohol is good and I am not saying tobacco is good, but neither is this. Why are we doing this to our society?

If none of those arguments impress anyone in this House, let's take a look at the trade issue. We deal with the Americans in the amount of $1 billion a day. The Americans have made it very clear to me and others that there will be repercussions in terms of the passing of the bill.

We can say we are an independent nation and we can do what we want, but remember, they are our biggest customer. Eighty percent of our goods are going across that border. I would rather see those goods go across our border and ensure that the people in my riding have jobs. Quite frankly, I think we are blindly going ahead on the basis of disinformation, and especially in the absence of a national drug strategy.

I am going to reserve my comments on the drug impaired driving bill, Bill C-16. I will be speaking to that bill, which is a tremendously bad bill, and again is a matter of disinformation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for this time.

[Justice, November 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, he still has not answered the question.

What guarantees have the Americans made that it will not aggravate the trade relationship, which the government continues to aggravate?

The underground marijuana trade between Canada and the U.S. is already $4 billion a year. What assurances and what guarantees can the minister make that decriminalization will not result in a worsening of our trade? How will he guarantee Canadian jobs?

[Justice, November 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, this Liberal administration is famous for its ability to aggravate our billion dollar a day trade relationship with the United States. The proposal to decriminalize marijuana continues with this Liberal tradition.

Has the justice minister received guarantees from his American counterparts that Canada will not experience adverse trade ramifications as a result of his marijuana proposals?

[Criminal Code, November 1st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to address Bill C-13, an act to amend the Criminal Code, the DNA Identification Act and the National Defence Act. The purpose of this bill is to broaden the provisions governing the national DNA data bank.

However, I must say at the onset that this bill falls short of what the official opposition, the Conservative Party of Canada, feels is necessary to effectively combat crime. We are joined in those concerns by members of the police right across this country.

I just heard the speech of the parliamentary secretary, indeed nothing more than wishful thinking. Unfortunately, his government is not prepared to take the steps that are necessary to take full advantage of this very important crime fighting tool.

The original legislation, Bill C-3, that created our national data bank was enacted in 1998 and officially opened July 5, 2000, and is maintained by the RCMP. This DNA identification, if used to its full potential, could be the single most important development in fighting crime since the introduction of fingerprints.

For example, DNA played a major role in solving the Holly Jones case last year which resulted in a first degree murder conviction in June. However police, attorneys general and crown attorneys have long argued that the legislation, as enacted, denied law enforcement the full use of this technology.

Bill C-3 did not allow for the taking of DNA samples at the time of charge, as fingerprints are, and it did not permit samples to be taken retroactively from incarcerated criminals other than designated dangerous offenders, multiple sex offenders, and multiple murderers. Bill C-3 did however provide potentially dangerous exemptions authorizing judges not to make orders even in situations where there have been convictions.

Although some amendments contained in Bill C-13 are improvements on the status quo, they do not raise in any substantial way and answer the concerns that have been raised by the police and the attorneys general.

Amendments contained in Bill C-13 would add several offences to the list of designated offences for which a national DNA data bank order can be made. This of course is a positive step, but it begs the question, why can this DNA data bank not include all indictable offences as is the case for fingerprints?

Such is essentially the case in Great Britain, where in England and Wales, for example, police have the power to take and retain biological samples from those charged with or informed that they will be charged with any recordable offence, which is essentially any offence which might carry a prison term. They can in fact order the taking of DNA where a police inspector has reasonable grounds to suspect the involvement of the individual in a recordable offence. The DNA sample will tend to confirm or disprove the person's involvement in a particular offence.

Police have asked for the ability to collect a DNA sample at the time of charge, as is done with fingerprints, instead of upon conviction. There is no evidence or jurisprudence suggesting that such provisions would be in violation of the Constitution.

In the United Kingdom there is legislation pending that would allow police to automatically take a biological sample from anyone arrested for a reportable offence. This would eliminate the requirement for an inspector's assessment and approval. Such approval would then be necessary only in a case where a suspect had not yet been arrested. In Britain, DNA is not only used to convict the guilty but in fact to eliminate suspects and to prove innocence.

This bill also fails to sufficiently broaden police powers to take samples from those convicted of designated offences before the DNA data bank came into force. We can have this discussion, whether DNA should be taken upon the time of charge or upon conviction; however, there is not even an automatic taking of DNA where there has been a conviction, where a person's guilt has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Currently this is permitted only in specific circumstances such as with dangerous offenders, multiple sex offenders and multiple murders.

The case of James Doherty illustrates why these powers need to be broadened. In 1992 Mr. Doherty murdered two women in Courtenay, British Columbia. In 2003 the crown attorney requested that a DNA sample be collected and a judge complied, but Doherty appealed on the grounds that the murders had taken place at the same time. He was saying that because these two murders occurred as part of the same event, the current law would exclude the jurisdiction of a judge to order that.

It would seem that multiple murders must take place in different events. In effect, this is the same old Liberal theory that someone should have at least one free murder or one free sexual assault.

Our party believes that we do not get a free murder or a free sexual assault if there is evidence that could either convict or eliminate an individual as a suspect, then that DNA evidence should be taken.

An additional concern is the ability for a convicted offender to appeal to the court in order to prevent the collection of DNA. Even convicted murderers and repeat sex offenders can now request a hearing after conviction that DNA should not be taken.

The Liberals are trying to jam up the court system so that it discourages crown attorneys from actually proceeding on these kind of hearings. With respect to secondary offences, the onus is on the Crown to prove that it would not be contrary to the interests of justice to have a convicted offender give DNA. This is in the case of convicted offenders. Even when they are convicted of primary offences, murders, serious sexual assaults, there is still an ability to have a judicial hearing after conviction.

We know what is going to happen. This will clog up the justice system. This is a deliberate attempt to ensure that DNA is not used as effectively as it should be. This does not deal with any charter argument. This is simply a feeling by Liberals that convicted criminals still have these rights in order to avoid responsibility for other crimes for which they may be responsible. This is one more impediment to effective law enforcement.

A 1998 study predicted that the data bank would receive samples from an estimated 19,000 individuals a year convicted of primary offences. It also said we will get about 10% of those convicted of secondary offences. Instead it is not even meeting those goals. It is getting half of that number.

In contrast, England's database contains more than two million DNA profiles and each week 1,700 hits link suspects to crime scenes. Why do we not do that? I will tell members why. Our government is simply not interested in effective law enforcement.

The other point that I want to raise is the issue of resources. The Liberals will not resource the RCMP. For example, today the Minister of Justice announced a new drug driving law. In fact, the minister knows that RCMP officers are being taken off the highway. For example, in Manitoba, 35 of the 65 highway patrolmen are being moved out of highway patrol. It does not matter about the laws. There are no resources.

This minister knows that. Not only is the government putting forward bad laws, it is not prepared to put the resources in to support our police whether it is DNA, whether it is impaired driving, whether it is murders or whether it is rapes. It is unfortunate that the government would rather let the victims suffer than ensure that a guilty murderer or multiple sex offender is brought to justice.