44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 2, 2023 10:00AM
- Feb/2/23 10:56:47 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues for the opportunity to have this important debate about bail reform. Before I come to the remarks that have been prepared for me in advance, I want to take a few moments to acknowledge the grief, trauma, loss and the sense of suffering being felt by communities across the country. I had the chance to visit with many communities, whether it was out west in Vancouver or out east in the Atlantic communities with the families and the victims in Portapique and Truro.
More recently, it was in Quebec City, with all the families and survivors at the commemoration of the sixth anniversary of the mosque shooting.
It is also in my hometown, where we are seeing a recent spate of violence in our public transit system. It is imperative that we have a thoughtful discussion based on a number of pillars. Yes, we need to take a look at our policies and our laws.
I want to commend the Minister of Justice for many of the reforms he has advanced to improve the administration of justice so that we can focus on serious offenders who do, in many instances, need to be separated from the community for protection. Also, I want to underline the work that he and our government are doing to address many of the systemic challenges that have led to overrepresentation in federal incarceration facilities, as well as provincially, when it comes to indigenous peoples and racialized Canadians. We cannot have these discussions in isolation.
I have grieved with families. I have grieved with the community of law enforcement officers who have lost five of their own. We owe it to them and to every single Canadian to make sure we are informing our discussion on the basis of principles that are underlined in the charter, but equally by the experiences of those who have suffered. It is in that spirit that I hope we can have this debate today.
My colleague, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, has spoken about an openness to receiving proposals with regard to the bail system. I have worked on the front lines of the criminal justice system. I have seen how these laws are applied in a very real, practical and tangible way. Even as we navigate the proposals being put forward by the various constituencies, including the law enforcement community, I hope all members will appreciate that there is no one cure-all for the challenges we face. We need to take a look at the entire suite of laws and policies, not only with regard to bail but also with regard to how we are tackling gun violence.
There is a bill currently being studied by the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, Bill C-21, which would equip law enforcement with additional tools to tackle gun violence by raising maximum sentences against hard traffickers and by giving law enforcement additional surveillance tools to interdict the organized criminal networks that would seek to traffic illegally firearms that make their way into our country, potentially to be used in violent crime to terrorize our communities.
We also need to take a look at the other investments the government is making to support law enforcement in keeping our communities safe, including a $450-million allocation over the last few years for CBSA. That will enable law enforcement agencies to acquire the resources, the technology and the techniques that they need to build on the progress that they have made in the last two years where they have seized a record number of illegal firearms.
Beyond those investments, I do think it is important as well to talk about prevention. One of the challenges I find around the debate on public safety is that we place great emphasis on laws and policies. We talk about Bill C-21. We talk about the acts that have been passed, and led and shepherded by my colleague, the Minister of Justice. We talk about Bill C-75, which, by the way, was a piece of legislation aimed at addressing the systemic and chronic backlogs in our court system so we could focus on the most serious offenders who commit the most serious crimes and pose the most serious risk to public safety. That was the genesis of Bill C-75.
The purpose of Bill C‑75 was to reduce the case completion times.
To hear some colleagues from the Conservative Party mis-characterize that bill as catch-and-release legislation does a disservice to this debate. We do not need slogans; we need concrete solutions. I would submit to the chamber that this is precisely what the Minister of Justice and this government have been doing. I would also say the same thing with respect to Bill C-5.
We heard a colleague from the NDP point out that the last time the Conservative government had the reins of government, it introduced a number of policies that were reviewed and then struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada. We do not need a return to the failed policies and overreach, which detract and diminish from the independence of the judges to assess on the merits and based on the facts and circumstances of each offender who comes before them. What we need is a thoughtful, constitutional approach to this matter, and that was the point of Bill C-5. It was not to promote catch-and-release policies, which has been overly simplified and distilled. That may play well on YouTube or in social media, but, again, it does a disservice to the complexity of the challenges that are faced when it comes to keeping our community safe.
As we focus on laws and policies, we do not talk enough about the underlying root causes. We do not talk enough about the need to provide additional support for mental health care, homelessness and poverty. We do not talk enough about the need to provide additional skills, experience and confidence to those who are most at risk of being exposed to criminal elements, which I have seen across the country and in my own community.
When I had the chance to travel to James Smith Cree Nation and grieve with those families, community members told us that they knew their own, that they knew how to ensure they could take care of them and put them on the right footing. It is only through collaboration and partnership with those communities through initiatives like the building safer communities fund, a $250-million federal initiative that is administered out of Public Safety Canada, that we can start to address these challenges at the root cause so we can stop crime before it starts.
In the context of the debate we are having today, we need to put as much emphasis on looking at preventative strategies, which we can work together on to advance, to see crime come down. No matter which side of the debate we are on, no matter which party we belong, no matter which constituency we represent in the chamber, the one thing I am assured of is that all Canadians are unified behind the common cause of wanting to reduce gun crime, wanting to reduce any kind of violent crime, which may find its stem in the systemic challenges that I have discussed. We need to come together to have that debate and not resort to slogans, bumper stickers or any of the other catchy phrases that we heard in the to and fro of the heated debate in the chamber, but have an actual and thoughtful debate that is based on facts and constitutional principles. That is precisely what I hope we can do today.
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- Feb/2/23 11:08:02 a.m.
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First, Mr. Speaker, I wholeheartedly share my colleague's concern about the loss of Officer Pierzchala. I grieved with his family and the entire OPP community. That was the fifth in a series of months last year, and it was among the most difficult functions that I exercise in this office.
I assure the member, and I hope she takes it at face value, that I understand the trauma, the grief and the suffering that is being felt not only by the law enforcement communities but by communities right across the country, including indigenous and racialized communities that have been systematically marginalized as a result of policies whose design and intent was to do just that. That is wrong.
With regard to the member's specific question on bail reform, I hope she will have heard the Minister of Justice, and I will reiterate it, that we are in direct lines of communication with law enforcement. I have spoken to the president of the CACP. I have spoken to other senior leadership in law enforcement. We are going to sit down and look at those proposals very carefully in a specially convened meeting of federal, provincial and territorial partners. That is where the work will be done on the merits.
However, it is not the only thing we need to address. We also need to address the other preventive strategies that I discussed in my remarks as well.
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- Feb/2/23 11:10:25 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking my colleague and her party, the Bloc Québécois, for their co-operation on Bill C-21. I hope we will continue in that spirit so we can get this bill passed. It is just one pillar in a comprehensive strategy created on this side of the House to reduce gun violence.
The member asked me what else we plan to do, besides this bill, what other options are on the table, and what we plan to do about the border. Over the past two years, the federal government invested $450 million in a prevention strategy. Some of that money was invested in Quebec. As Minister of Public Safety, I went to Quebec and announced a $40-million investment, in partnership with the Quebec government and municipalities, to identify the root causes contributing to violence on the street.
There are plenty of opportunities for the government and Quebec to work together, including with the Bloc Québécois. I am always willing to work with my colleague.
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- Feb/2/23 11:12:50 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the short answer is yes. In fact, I have met with battered women's groups and shelters in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. We have met with municipal leadership there. I had the chance to meet with the new mayor. We are looking forward to being able to make, I hope in the not too distant future, some announcements around the building safer communities fund, which speaks to the core of our issue around prevention to address the systemic issues that have far too long plagued our justice system.
We need to ensure that we put an appropriate focus and emphasis on those who have been marginalized: women, members of the 2SLGBTQI community, indigenous peoples, racialized Canadians. That has to be part of this debate, and that is precisely what this government will do. Let us keep all Canadians safe.
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