SoVote

Mar/30/22 4:05:27 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-5

Mr. Speaker, this is an important bill. I agree with the hon. member that this is a substantive criminal justice reform bill that would effectively reverse a series of policies that frankly did not work, and that are being abandoned everywhere around the world, particularly in the United States, which served as an inspiration for the previous Conservative government to bring in these kinds of minimum mandatory penalties. I was in Washington last week and met with a number of bipartisan groups and think tanks working on criminal law reform. The basic message from all of them was that incarceration does not work. We need to shorten incarceration periods and minimum mandatory penalties, and the kind of flexibility that conditional sentence orders offer is precisely the kind of reform that they are suggesting, and that we are suggesting. Even states such as Louisiana have abandoned minimum mandatory penalties, because they simply do not work. The idea that this is in some way soft on crime or does not protect victims is completely false, for a number of reasons that I would be able to elaborate upon.

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Context: House Hansard - 49 - Mar/30/22

Hon. David Lametti

Mar/30/22 4:27:47 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-5

Mr. Speaker, I will also refer to the heckle by the hon. member from the other side. With respect to MMP subsection 95(2) of the Criminal Code that was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that taking out the minimum mandatory penalty has had no impact on the overall total amount of sentencing that has been handed out by judges. It is false to say that judges always go to the minimum. What we are doing is what the hon. member wants us to do, which is help give judges the ability to give appropriate sentences so that we can rehabilitate. This is the point the hon. member is trying to make. We need to look at alternatives to incarceration. I mentioned I was in Washington. The growing consensus is that we need to massively reduce incarceration rates to get better outcomes for communities, increase public security and rehabilitate victims. That is the belief we have in the criminal justice system. It is the animating belief behind this bill, and it is something that I hope hon. members will share. It is certainly shared across the United States and in many other jurisdictions, like the United Kingdom.

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Context: House Hansard - 49 - Mar/30/22

Mr. Frank Caputo (Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, CPC)

Mar/30/22 5:30:58 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-5

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the citizens of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo. My hon. colleague and I do agree on a number of points, one of which is that there is a necessity to keep and to lower incarceration rates for marginalized people. Now, where he and I part company is when he frames the discussion as one around retribution. The courts in this country have consistently highlighted the need for denunciation and deterrence, and part of denunciation and deterrence comes by way of sentencing. When we are talking about shooting at people, these are not the low-risk, first-time offenders, necessarily, that the hon. member highlighted. How does he reconcile those concepts?

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