44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 28, 2023 10:00AM
- Nov/28/23 6:09:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to say from the outset that our thoughts are with Paul Bernardo's victims and their families.
What we saw a few months ago was sad. I think that everyone here in the House is trying to ensure that someone like Paul Bernardo, who has a long record of assault and murder, who had no conscience and who committed horrific crimes, should never be able to leave prison and walk among ordinary folks.
We know full well that this will never happen, either. I think that is quite clear. The correctional service was also very clear on that. The crimes he committed are heinous.
Our thoughts are with the victims.
That being said, it is also important to note that the NDP brought forward a motion at the public safety committee that all members of Parliament around the committee table agreed to for the study we are currently working on. I think it is fair to say that all parties are working together to get to the bottom of the transfer of offenders like Mr. Bernardo to ensure that it never happens again. Tomorrow, we will be having other hearings. The recommendations will go to the government. I am confident that we have learned a lesson from this situation and will not encounter it again. It is extremely important for the victims, for the community and for us all.
The question is whether this bill offers some type of solution. I am very concerned by its use of a flawed process within our correctional services that is really the foundation of this particular bill. I do not know if it was because it was rushed to be produced. However, the fact is that it hangs on the designation of a dangerous offender, when we know that, in our correctional system, the definition of “dangerous offender” is deeply flawed. It needs to be fully investigated, judges need to be trained and there needs to be a shift in how we designate dangerous offenders.
A number of my colleagues, including the parliamentary secretary who spoke, have raised the broader concerns that are before the public. We have a correctional system that is, according to the correctional investigator of Canada, Dr. Ivan Zinger, “nothing short of a national travesty.”
According to an article on his report, “More than 30% of inmates in Canadian prisons are Indigenous — even though aboriginal people make up just 5% of the country’s population”. That is why Dr. Zinger described the situation in our correctional facilities as a travesty.
Moreover, the “figure is highest in the prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, where Indigenous people make up 54% of the prison population.” Furthermore, “Numerous factors — including poverty rates and racism in policing — contribute to the imbalance in convictions.”
The article continues:
And once in detention, Indigenous people face another set of systemic inequities: Indigenous offenders are more likely to be sent of maximum-security facilities and are disproportionately the recipients of harm, both self-induced and in incidents involving “use of force”. They are also much more likely to be placed in solitary confinement.
What makes the findings even more troubling, said [Dr.] Zinger, is that the proportion of Indigenous prisoners has steadily increased. Since...2010, the Indigenous population in prisons has grown by nearly 44%....
Let us come to the definition of “dangerous offender”, because that is the cornerstone of the bill before us. Here we see that the travesty that was raised so eloquently by the correctional investigator is even more manifest.
A CBC News article notes:
Advocates say...Indigenous people are disproportionately harmed by dangerous offender designations and are not given adequate support.
“All they want to do is put a dangerous offender designation on and then, just put him away where you'll never hear from [them],” said Congress of Aboriginal Peoples national vice-chief Kim Beaudin.
There were 860 offenders designated as dangerous offenders under the responsibility of Correctional Service Canada...[and] 36.3 per cent were Indigenous, according to CSC....
The number of Indigenous dangerous offender designations has increased 58 per cent....
We have a deeply flawed designation of dangerous offender such that an indigenous offender is 12 times more likely, even committing the same crimes as someone who is non-indigenous, to be designated as a dangerous offender. That is the travesty the correctional investigator was referring to. That is a fundamental problem that needs to be addressed.
As PressProgress reported just a little while ago, the prairie provinces are failing to address systemic racism in the criminal justice system. When we have a situation where 4% of the population makes up almost half, or 36.3%, of the dangerous offender designations, there is a problem with the kind of designation taking place. The concerns around systemic racism in the criminal justice system, including with sentencing and judges, are things that as a society we need to take on. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was very clear that this is a fundamental problem.
The travesty that was referred to by the correctional investigator needs to be tackled. However, instead of informing the bill by that in any way, it uses a term that has become fraught with peril given the horrible overrepresentation of indigenous people among those with a dangerous offender designation. This is a huge problem and is something I believe the mover should have thought through and consulted on.
At the public safety committee, we are working through ways to ensure the transfer that occurred a few months ago never happens again. To have a bill that would create many more problems by effectively doubling down on a system fraught with systemic racism, to the point where an indigenous offender has a 12 times greater likelihood of being designated a dangerous offender than somebody who is not indigenous, should be of concern to all of us.
My colleague, whom I respect very much, made a number of partisan comments. I want to reply by talking about the justice system in a more adult fashion.
First off, one of the ways we maintain public safety is to ensure those who are sentenced in our correctional institutions stay there. I note that the six worst years for the number of escapees in Canada from our correctional services, from maximum-security and medium-security prisons, all occurred under the Harper regime. Every single one of them did, which is three times more than what we are seeing today. When the Conservative Harper government, the Harper regime, was running our nation's prisons, the threat to public safety was horribly greater than what we are seeing now and what we saw prior to the Harper government. The worst years on record were all from the Conservatives.
Second, I note that other countries, such as Norway, had high recidivism rates that were lowered by taking the approach Canada has taken. Norway's recidivism rate, based on the United States, was over 70% and is now down to 20%, which is the lowest in the world. Canada is at 23%. Those approaches work.
The Conservative intent of always importing Republican-style American approaches to the justice system has been a massive failure. The U.S. has the highest rate of recidivism in the world, with 76.6% of prisoners rearrested within five years. If what we are really talking about is public safety, this failed approach from the Conservatives, failed in terms of prison escapees and recidivism rates, is not something that should be replicated.
We will continue our work at the public safety committee to ensure that something like the Bernardo transfer never happens again. However, the approach we need to take is one that puts public safety at the top level. This bill would not do that.
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Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise in my place today to participate in the debate with respect to Bill C-351, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, maximum security offenders. My Conservative colleague, the member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, has done an incredible job in bringing forward this important bill, which builds on the private member's bill I introduced last June.
On June 14, I introduced Bill C-342 at first reading in the House of Commons. I felt motivated and compelled to introduce this private member's bill after learning that Canada's most notorious criminal had been transferred by Correctional Service Canada from a maximum-security institution to a medium-security prison. In my community, the name Paul Bernardo is synonymous with evil, given the heinous crimes he committed not only in the Toronto area but also in St. Catharines. His actions are so vile that I will not speak of them here. What I can say is that he and his ex-wife took the lives of three young women in Niagara, and the families and friends of those victims have been left to deal with the insurmountable loss, pain and grief he caused for over 31 years now.
Bernardo is a monster who belongs locked up in maximum security for the rest of his life. This prison transfer, which was a downgrade of Bernardo's prison security classification, is completely abhorrent, unimaginable and unacceptable. This decision, which was made last spring by CSC officials, sparked outrage from residents of Niagara, whom I help represent, and from Canadians far and wide across the country. Local municipalities in Niagara, including the cities of St. Catharines and Thorold, passed municipal resolutions to notify the federal government of their alarm and their grave concern regarding Bernardo's prison transfer to medium security. Thorold officials also demanded that Bernardo be sent back to maximum security where he belongs.
In response to this shocking news about Bernardo's downgrade, I tabled Bill C-342, which is common-sense legislation that proposes to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to require that all court-ordered dangerous offenders and mass murderers be permanently assigned a maximum-security classification. It also proposes to repeal the language of the least-restrictive environment standard for assigning inmates to prisons and replace it with the language of “necessary restrictions”, which is used in the public safety legislation passed by the previous Conservative government to support safe streets and communities.
While Bill C-351 is similar to my bill, its key difference is that it adds a coming-into-force clause, which would see it come into force three months after royal assent. This clause is necessary to make sure that prison transfers such as Bernardo's would not happen again and that this act could take force as soon as possible after it is passed in Parliament.
After eight years of the Liberal government, events like Bernardo's prison downgrade reveal just how out of balance and broken our public safety, corrections and justice systems are and just how far off track the federal government is from its public safety obligations. It is also telling that we cannot even get unanimous consent from all parties in the House to send Bernardo back to maximum security where he belongs. Last spring, I tried twice to get unanimous consent from the House to achieve this outcome, and both times my motion was rejected.
Disappointingly, members of the Liberal government decided to not support our common-sense solution. In fact, one member was quoted in our local Niagara Falls Review as saying that we need to have an adult conversation about this and not be playing politics. They asked for an honest conversation.
Well, this is the time to have that honest conversation. We are in a parliamentary debate about a bill that, if passed, would send dangerous offenders and mass murders such as Bernardo back to maximum-security prison, just as the people in Niagara and their municipal elected representatives have requested, and just as law-abiding Canadians want to see happen. The fact that this prison downgrade took place is evidence enough that something is broken with our core institutions. They need to be fixed to not only correct the mistake of transferring a monster such as Paul Bernardo but also ensure it never happens again in relation to that vile monster and the other dangerous offenders and mass murderers now serving time in maximum-security prisons.
While Bernardo is the primary subject of this debate with respect to Bill C-351, many other dangerous offenders and mass murderers have also been transferred from maximum- to medium-security prisons.
Canadians remember the names of Laura Babcock and Tim Bosma. They are innocent victims who were abducted and killed by Dellen Millard and Mark Smich in July 2012 and May 2013 respectively. The national outrage about Bernardo's prison transfer helped prompt Laura’s mother, Linda Babcock, to speak out on behalf of her family and the Bosma family last June. In May 2021, just five years after his conviction, Smich was transferred to Beaver Creek Institution, a medium-security prison in Gravenhurst, Ontario. It is absurd to believe that someone who commits two first-degree murders can be transferred out of maximum-security prison at all, never mind so quickly, yet here we are again.
This perplexing pattern of dangerous offenders and serial killers being downgraded in our prison system is deeply disturbing. It ultimately erodes faith, trust and confidence that law-abiding Canadians place in their public safety, corrections and justice system to protect them. There is only one political party proposing practical policy solutions to fix these issues and restore confidence in our institutions. The other parties, including the Liberals, can choose to support us or they can be silent by their complacency and ignorance of the deeply troubling problem at hand.
Just because the current policies are weak does not mean these policies cannot be strengthened like they were before. Just because this Liberal government let the Bernardo transfer happen does not mean it has to double down to keep Bernardo in medium-security prison.
This is not a Conservative versus Liberal issue. This is an issue we should all be able to agree upon as elected parliamentarians who work to achieve the common and public good for the country. This government has an obligation to law-abiding Canadians and it must start prioritizing the interests of victims of crime over criminals and protect public safety and our communities. Conservatives are calling on members of all parties to support this legislation so that it can pass as quickly as possible. We must do the right thing. It is about standing up for the victims’ honour, their dignity, their memory and their loved ones. It is about doing what is right for law-abiding Canadians who want to keep their loved ones, families and communities safe. Bill C-351 gives us a chance to do what is right and to do what Canadians expect of their elected officials.
Marcia Penner was one of Kristen French’s best friends growing up. Today, she is a prominent business owner in Niagara-on-the-Lake in my riding, and she is a steadfast victims advocate.
On June 8, Marcia wrote to the CSC commissioner, Anne Kelly. In her email, she wrote, “Paul Bernardo is a monster, and one that is beyond rehabilitation. He is a serial pedophile rapist, abductor, and murderer. He has been deemed a dangerous offender. The worst of the worst. If he doesn’t fit the mandatory requirements for maximum security for his entire prison stay, then please tell me who does.”
Marcia is right. If monsters like Paul Bernardo and Mark Smich are not eligible to stay in maximum-security prison for the rest of their living days, then which dangerous offenders and mass murderers are?
Politics aside, let us support doing what is right. Bill C-351 presents us with this opportunity. I hope members from all parties can come together to support this bill, which is common-sense legislation that will help restore Canadians’ trust and confidence in our public safety, corrections and justice system.
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