44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 14, 2022 10:00AM
- Jun/14/22 12:15:19 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, I am going to take a moment here to do what the Conservatives like to do and use an anecdote.
What about the case of a woman who is travelling with her boyfriend and he is involved with drug trafficking and he puts the drugs in her bag? When they come across the border, she is caught. Does she deserve a mandatory minimum sentence for importing drugs, or can the judge take into account the circumstances here that she may have been financially dependent on her boyfriend, or she may or may not have known he was trafficking drugs? As the law currently stands, she is going to end up in serious custody and do serious time in detention.
Just like the Conservatives like to give those extreme examples, there are many examples of where the law right now catches people and sentences them to mandatory prison time, when it is obviously not in the interest of the public to do so.
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- Jun/14/22 12:30:58 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.
I would like to hear his comments on the allocation of resources. If we take people out of the prison system in the hope of rehabilitating them and turning them into useful members of society, we must have the resources to do so. I am thinking, for example, of social services, which are under provincial jurisdiction. My colleagues can no doubt see where I am going with this. Once again, I am raising the issue of health transfers.
No doubt the government expects to find efficiencies in the prison system. Will this allow my colleague to pressure his government to finally provide decent funding for social services and health services?
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- Jun/14/22 12:31:56 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, that was a good question in terms of the supports needed. Obviously, when we need conditional sentencing or we need diversion programs, we will need those supports. Let me also say that they will cost a lot less than incarcerating somebody and throwing away the keys for five years.
For those provincial jurisdictions that save on under two-year prison sentences where they are now incarcerating fewer people, they can afford to use those funds to help rehabilitate them, give them diversion programming and give them conditional sentences to help make them better human beings and better members of society.
When it comes to health transfers, the federal government always has been there and always will be there for the provinces.
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- Jun/14/22 1:47:14 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, I could be incorrect, but I do not believe sexual assault is included in the package of reforms. Having said that, when we put people in front of the criminal justice system we need to rely on our judges to be able to provide sentences that are appropriate.
I know the hon. member was part of a study we did on indigenous women in the criminal justice system, and getting rid of mandatory minimum penalties was one of the recommendations that came out of that report. It is seeing women be sentenced to time in prison when time would be far better spent treating their addiction, dealing with mental health issues and dealing with those core issues rather than sending them to a federal institution.
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- Jun/14/22 1:49:15 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the work we have been able to do together in this place.
When it comes to mandatory minimum penalties, I do not agree, first of all, that the bill should be split. This is an important aspect of ensuring that women are not being sent to prison when they should not be sent to prison. The intent of this bill has been misconstrued in the debate today. I heard debate earlier from the Conservative Party that is giving Canadians the impression that public safety would be at risk, and it would not be.
Public safety would actually be enhanced if we are not sending people to prison. In my speech, I talked about how prisons are used to recruit people into gangs. If a young man, and it is predominantly young men, goes to prison and is not a gang member when he goes in, in all likelihood he will be a gang member when he is released. If we can find alternatives for those individuals, our public safety is greatly enhanced.
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- Jun/14/22 1:50:27 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, one of the areas we heard about over the course of this debate was people who are arrested and sent to prison for possession of narcotics for personal use. Often, what happens after they are eventually released is that they are prevented from being able to move on with their lives with respect to having criminal records and being able to find gainful employment.
Could the member elaborate on how this would help people be able to correct the behaviour, get on with their lives and become productive members of society?
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- Jun/14/22 1:51:16 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, the hon. member's question gives me the opportunity to talk about two women I met at the Edmonton Institution for Women. Both women had been trafficking in drugs. Both women were trafficking drugs because they were poor, had developed drug addictions of their own and had a man who was controlling them. They ended up in prison. They specifically told me that they were there because of mandatory minimums. With those women, we need to deal with the poverty issues they were facing and the drug addictions. They are not being served by sitting in the Edmonton Institution for Women.
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- Jun/14/22 3:23:40 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, this question allows me to raise a vital point.
The sentence for robbery is a maximum of life in prison. Breaking and entering has a maximum sentence of life in prison. These are offences that we often see. Robbery is taking property by force from somebody. Sexual assault is taking a person's dignity by force, a person's sexual inviolability, yet sexual assault has a maximum of a 10-year sentence, while robbery has a maximum of life imprisonment. Why the discrepancy?
Parliament needs to act on this.
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- Jun/14/22 3:49:24 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, I absolutely agree. Those are the areas we are trying to work in.
When there is an imbalance and we look at the fact that 9% of people who are in prison are indigenous, we have to ask why and look at the root cause. I agree with my colleague completely.
That is why I said, in response to the previous speaker, that we could be sitting down, quite possibly around this beautiful table, figuring out how to solve some of these problems, doing it together. All of us in this House are looking for the same answers to find a solution to decrease the crime in our communities.
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- Jun/14/22 3:51:07 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, in a younger life, my wife and I lived and worked with men coming out of prison, and we worked with people on the streets.
What we saw was the enormous amount of public money that gets wasted when police sit all night in an emergency ward with people who should be in detox or when people were jailed over the weekend. There is a failure to deal with the mental health issues we see in people on the street and in marginalized communities.
We talk time and time again about fixing this, but it always thrown at us that we are being soft on crime or that we are hugging the thugs. I would like to ask the hon. member about the larger sociological issues of a society that treats people as disposable, locking them away in places such as the jail in Thunder Bay, without the support networks to actually get people off their addictions and back into civil society?
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- Jun/14/22 5:08:33 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, on why Liberals are not accepting amendments, one would have to talk to the Liberals who are on that committee. Again, I do not have all the details, so I am unable to provide an answer to that, but I will say, to the member's first point, I realize that today the Bloc has come on board, but that was not the case a week ago. That was not the case two weeks ago. As a matter of fact, this morning, the member for Shefford said that this might not be the right time to look at mandatory minimums, given the recent crime rate. She said that.
It is very clear to me that the Bloc is just recently kind of on board with this. For the member to suggest that it is all in and it always has been, I think it is a massive stretch.
I will say, on the last point that she made about investing money, I agree completely. It costs money, and we have to invest in the right things. I would suggest that, instead of investing in more prison guards, which, by the way, would be great for my riding, what we should be investing in are the tools and resources and programs to help rehabilitate people. At the end of the day, that is what is much better for society.
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