44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 14, 2022 10:00AM
- Jun/14/22 4:44:53 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, although it may be true that the former Conservative government did launch the truth and reconciliation report, it is extremely unfortunate that, once it received the results from that report and the recommendations contained therein, it had absolutely no interest and said publicly that it would not move forward with any of the recommendations, but I digress.
In any event, I would actually like to start my speech today, if I could be indulged for a moment, as this is one of the first times I have had the opportunity to rise to give a speech since the last provincial election, by congratulating Ted Hsu.
Ted was the Liberal candidate for Kingston and the Islands running for the Liberal Party. He was elected as the member of provincial parliament in the last election. Ted's name is not unfamiliar to this place, because Ted was elected under very similar circumstances here in 2011. In the provincial election two Thursdays ago, Ted was elected as one of only two new Liberal MPs in the Province of Ontario. Back in 2011, he also was elected to this place as one of only two new MPs who were Liberal, the other being the member for Charlottetown. They both entered into the House at the same time. My best wishes to Ted as he embarks on this new journey in his life as the member of provincial parliament for the riding of Kingston and the Islands. I am glad to see a strong Liberal voice representing the riding of Kingston and the Islands.
I have had the opportunity to be here throughout the entire debate today, listening to the various claims that have been made throughout the House, and I cannot say I am surprised with a great degree of the rhetoric that I have been hearing. One of the things I would like to touch on first is a comment made by the member for Humber River—Black Creek. She did that only about an hour ago in this debate.
She said that she had been here a few decades ago, when mandatory minimums were being introduced and brought on board, and that she was supportive of them at the time. She thought they were the right things to do. I say this because we have heard a lot of rhetoric from Conservatives, indeed before today's debate but in particular today, about the fact that mandatory minimums were not just introduced by Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, but by Liberals in the past.
The reason it is so important to point is that we have one of those Liberal MPs who was here back then saying she was in favour of it back then, but has since come to realize that mandatory minimums are not serving the purpose we thought they would when they were introduced. I think it takes a lot of courage for a politician to come forward and say they have changed their mind on this and that this is not an effective way of dealing with problems we have when it relates to sentencing individuals.
I want to thank her for those comments. I think we can learn a lot as time goes on. We evolve through the various policies we have and our approaches to them. I think that if the Conservatives would take a look at what is going on in other parts of North America right now, they would realize that Canada certainly is not unique in starting to understand and turn against the idea of mandatory minimums, not just because in many cases they are deemed unconstitutional, but also because they are not producing the results they were intended to.
I am very concerned about that rhetoric, but it really comes down to this: When Conservatives are putting forward this notion that there will be endless lineups of people who should be incarcerated out on the streets, they are trying to paint this picture that some of the most heinous crimes out there will result in people being given house arrest or literally not being sentenced as a result of not having a mandatory minimum. That is absolutely false.
What Conservatives are doing is preying on the emotional side of this debate. They are preying on the fact that they know this will touch a chord and hit a nerve with people, and it will have their emotional side see a reaction as a result of what the government is proposing.
That is what they are trying to feed off right now. That is what they are trying to capitalize off politically. It does not come as a surprise to me. Many issues come before this House under exactly the same circumstances, and we see it time and time again.
In my opinion, it comes down to a fundamental difference between small-c conservatives and progressives, or in this case capital-C Conservatives and capital-L Liberals. It is a fundamental difference. If there is one issue that clearly divides Conservatives from Liberals, this would be the issue. It comes down to incarceration.
Conservatives believe that the answer is to impose a penalty: Lock them up and throw away the key. Give them a mandatory minimum that will force them to sit in their cell for x number of days, and at the end of their time, they will have completed their sentence and they will somehow be rehabilitated. That is the Conservative approach. I can appreciate the approach. The Conservatives certainly would not be the only political party that has taken that approach.
I happen to think the solution is different. I come from a riding that used to have seven correctional institutions in the area, but the Conservatives closed Kingston Penitentiary the last time they were in government. What we have is this scenario in which the default response is just to put people in prison and leave them there. Then, after a set time has elapsed, based on what politicians believe is an amount of time that would properly do the job, suddenly people would be rehabilitated and walk out of there as new, changed individuals.
Liberals look at it differently. We believe in helping to rehabilitate individuals when possible—and most of the time it is possible—so that they can be reintegrated back into society and become productive members of society.
What surprises me the most about the Conservative response is that they do not even have to accept the social argument here. They do not even have to, from a Conservative perspective, believe in rehabilitation. They do not even have to do that. However, one would think that at the very least, their interest would be tickled by the financial benefit. Incarceration costs a lot of money. I know this as an individual who has six prisons within a 40-kilometre radius of my home. It costs a lot of money to keep people incarcerated. If we can rehabilitate people and reintegrate them into society, they can become productive members of society and actually give back.
There is a real, solid, financial argument there that I would think would interest Conservatives when it comes to talking about our correctional facilities, but I fail to see it. They do not ever seem to come forward with that.
My idea that all Conservatives care about is “lock them up and throw away the key” does not come just from this debate around this issue but from a whole host of issues. Let us look at the whole prison farm issue.
Prison farms have been seen, not just by inmates and former inmates but indeed by community activists and people throughout the community at large, including many farmers in southeastern Ontario, as productive ways to help rehabilitate individuals. However, the Conservatives have absolutely no interest in them. They do not want to see the opportunities. They almost look at inmates participation in these programs as some kind of luxury that they do not deserve.
I know this because we lived through this in Kingston. We had activists going out and standing in front of Collins Bay Institution every Monday night since the prison farms were closed until they were reopened under this government. Every Monday night they would go out there and hold a protest. These were not former inmates; these were concerned citizens from my riding and beyond.
What is the response now that the prison farms have been reopened and are being utilized, giving opportunities to inmates who in their own words and testimonies say that the farms rehabilitated them to become productive members of society again? What is happening? The member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston is standing up Friday after Friday, followed by late show question after late show question, to challenge the prison farms that are helping farmers in his own riding. He gets up week after week and challenges them.
There is no doubt in my mind that if Conservatives were to get elected again, one of the first things they would do with respect to correctional facilities is close those farms.
We are seeing this behaviour, and it is a pattern that leads to the simple conclusion that all Conservatives care about in terms of our our correctional institutions is providing a sentence to somebody, locking them up, throwing away the key, and when the sentence has expired, the individual, according to their logic, will suddenly be rehabilitated and can go back to society. However, it does not work that way, and the proof is that we see people continually going into and out of our correctional institutions through this revolving door.
I will go back to the rhetoric that I have been hearing, and I have heard a lot of it today, particularly as I was listening to various members. There were things that they were saying. The member for Kildonan—St. Paul specifically said that this bill will let criminals off the hook. How can somebody rationally think that from looking at the bill? The bill would put the power in the hands of judges, so to make a comment like that is just saying that they do not trust judges to do their job. That is what Conservatives are essentially saying: They do not have the trust in judges to perform the responsibilities that are given to them through those appointments.
The member for Yellowhead, when talking about conditional sentencing, suggested that those who were convicted of human trafficking would be able to stay at home under house arrest. That is absolutely ludicrous. Conditional sentencing, as included in this bill, specifically gives the opportunity for a judge to allow for an individual to be under house arrest. However, I would invite those members who have been giving their speeches to go back and read the bill, because it says that a conditional sentence would allow an offender who does not pose a threat to public safety to serve their term of imprisonment in the community under strict conditions, including house arrest and curfew.
Furthermore, unlike other sanctions, the conditional sentence orders would allow courts to focus on rehabilitation by requiring an offender to attend an approved treatment program. The bill is saying that in certain circumstances a judge, under the judge's discretion, can decide that a person is not going to be rehabilitated if we lock them up and throw away the key and that it might be better to put the person under house arrest so that they are not allowed to leave their house but also have to complete a set number of things while they are there. That is called “rehabilitation”. That is trying to get at the core of what the problem is.
Of course, Conservatives will want to spin that, such that a person could murder, be a rapist and do all this stuff and then just sit at home watching Netflix. That is the way they like to portray this bill. Indeed, if we listened to some of the speeches today, that is exactly what they have been saying. The bill specifically points out, as it relates to the conditional sentence orders, that for offences of advocating genocide, for torture, attempted murder, terrorism and serious criminal organization offences, CSOs would continue to be unavailable. The bill addresses some of the rhetoric that we are hearing from across the way, as if we need to be very clear about that.
It really concerns me that rather than trying to have honest discussions about what is in the bill, we instead hear a huge amount of rhetoric coming from the other side of the House, with the intent, as I indicated earlier, to play off people's emotions, to drum up fear and to manufacture outrage. That is exactly what Conservatives are doing and they are doing it with the intent to motivate and rally the troops, probably for the member for Carleton so they can go to his website and sign up to support him, but that is—
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