- Member of Parliament
- Minister of Justice
Attorney General of Canada
- Liberal
- Parkdale—High Park
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $120,537.19
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, we are listening constantly to communities that are being affected by extortion, particularly South Asians in the B.C. region and in the GTA. What we hear from them is that they need supports. We are providing those supports through aggressive responses under the Criminal Code. Extortion is against the law. Extortion with a weapon attracts a very significant penalty under Canadian criminal law.
What we also understand from them is that organized criminality, including foreign interference and organized crime, is behind these extortion attempts. That is why bills like Bill C-70 will make an important difference. So will the budget measures on money laundering and cracking down on organized crime.
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- May/28/24 3:08:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in the last three months, we have held an auto theft summit. We have invested $170 million in addressing this issue through investments in law enforcement, through investments in CBSA scanners, through investing in information sharing through Interpol. We are working diligently to break up criminal networks.
We are not pursuing failed policies like the Conservatives' approach year after year under Stephen Harper, most of which were struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada.
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- May/28/24 3:07:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will start by saluting the impressive work of the Peel police force for cracking an organized criminal ring that is taking people's cars.
The second thing I want to underscore for the member and her entire caucus is that they cannot selectively listen to law enforcement. What law enforcement tells me and the Minister of Public Safety all the time is that the days of teenage joyrides are over. This is an international organized criminal effort. We need to deal with that and follow the money path.
How are we doing that? We are doing it with anti-money laundering offences and beefing up our strength on money laundering through the fall economic statement and the budget, two things Conservatives are voting against.
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- May/24/24 11:48:50 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the rise in auto theft in our country is not caused by one-off incidents of teenagers taking a joyride; it is perpetrated by networks of organized criminals. That is why we are cracking down on organized crime. These crime rings prey on teenagers to do their dirty work, so we are adding an amendment to the Criminal Code to add a new aggravating factor to make tougher sentences for those who use young persons in the commission of an offence. We are also raising the maximum penalty for those who use violence during a daylight carjacking.
We are going to stop auto theft. We are going to stop organized criminals who are taking advantage of our kids. Enough is enough.
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- May/23/24 11:02:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, many of these questions would perhaps be better put to the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions or the Minister of Health, but what I can say is that we have analyzed the evidence that we have in terms of responding to direct asks for decriminalization.
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- May/23/24 11:02:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this issue has been dealt with as a health care issue since the start, and we have adopted that posture in many of our policies, including responding to the very direct ask by the B.C. government to pursue decriminalizing.
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- May/23/24 10:41:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that as a former Speaker, the member used to consult Speakers' decisions, but I also would appreciate that he knows about Supreme Court jurisprudence. What Bill C-75 did was codify a Supreme Court decision called “Antic”. The law was already in place. We took that law from the court cases and put it into the Criminal Code. That is what codification involves.
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- May/23/24 10:34:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, avoiding court appearances in criminal matters by politicians would also be—
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- May/23/24 10:34:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as a former Crown attorney, he knows that even the mere appearance of the chief law officer of the Crown could render potential suspicion of influence on a process. That is why I would not appear during a live criminal proceeding.
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- May/23/24 10:01:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we listened to British Columbia. We are listening to the hopes and objectives of the Province of Quebec. That is the first thing.
The second thing is to take care not to draw an analogy between the decriminalization of narcotics and requests for exceptions.
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- May/23/24 9:50:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what I appreciate from the member's comments is that he obviously delves into his experience as a past minister of finance in Ontario. He understands, as law enforcement has continuously explained to me, that gone are the days of a teenager off on a joyride, stealing a car from someone's home.
This is an organized effort that is very profitable for international crime ranks. That is what we are dealing with here. In order to address auto theft, we need to address the path of the money.
How are we doing that? There are six measures, and some of them were touched upon by my colleague. We are addressing challenges with prosecuting third party money launderers by amending the money-laundering offence. That is in the fall economic statement that, unfortunately, the members opposite have been obstructing.
Second, we are responding to the rapidly evolving nature of financial crime by adapting the production order for financial data so that it more effectively applies to accounts associated with digital assets. We know what that party thinks about digital assets, because at one point the Conservative leader opined that crypto was the way out of inflation. Thankfully, the Bank of Canada was not listening.
Third, we also know that modernizing provisions related to the search, seizure and restraint of proceeds of crime is critical, which is also in the fall economic statement.
Fourth, there is a provision in the current budget implementation bill that deals with issuing an order to require a financial institution to keep an account open to assist in the investigation of a suspected criminal offence.
Fifth, there is a provision that would allow for issuing a repeat production order to authorize law enforcement to obtain ongoing specified information on activity in an account or multiple accounts.
The members opposite love to listen to law enforcement. I would urge them to do this, at least on this one occasion, because law enforcement is asking for these tools that they are actively voting against.
The last piece is an offence that would explicitly criminalize operating a money service business that is not registered with FINTRAC. That is really critical because that is something that again helps us to track the money.
With the learned knowledge of my friend, in terms of his background in finance, he has applied a critical lens to what we are doing on auto theft. If members think that we can tackle this one at a time, by targeting adolescents who have been deployed by an organized crime ring, and solve the auto theft crisis, the members are sorely mistaken.
In order to do this, we need to operate on multiple fronts, including tracking the money. That is what these auto theft provisions would do. That is why we are behind them and are proceeding with them with pace. We just wish the Conservatives would get on board.
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- May/23/24 9:39:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, with respect to the decriminalization situation in B.C., Canadians need to understand that a request was put in by the B.C. government and received by us. We adhered to that request. When the request was made to change or modify the program in the past three to four weeks, we also received that request and made the changes.
The concerns outlined by the member opposite and the concerns outlined by the British Columbia government are shared by us and our government. Any individual would share those pressing safety concerns. That is why we have modified the application, and for the member's edification I will say that we have also rejected an application on a similar basis that was launched by the City of Toronto.
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- May/23/24 9:31:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, under the current process, the minister relies on a recommendation from the Criminal Conviction Review Group. That is the system we have now.
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- May/23/24 9:19:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I absolutely can. I will say that cross-party collaboration is happening, at least, between the federal and the provincial governments, with my counterparts in Ontario and Quebec, where I have a strong collaborative relationship with Attorney General Doug Downey. What we have said is that we need to be working together. That is why we are investing in law enforcement, which assists the province.
That is why we are making changes to the Criminal Code. What are those changes? We are introducing an aggravating factor where, if an adult organized criminal is using a child or an adolescent, we will ensure that they are subject to a tougher penalty. We are ensuring that if one does a carjacking, a violent car theft in broad daylight, one is subject to a tougher penalty of up to 14 years. If there are threats of violence or the involvement of organized criminality, that will trigger differential penalties.
In addition, the possession and distribution of the device that is used, the key fob theft devices, etc., will trigger additional penalties. These points are critical for tackling the pressing issue of auto theft. They have been welcomed by the law enforcement community and partisan people of every political stripe around this country at multiple levels. The only people who do not seem to be welcoming and embracing these changes are those in the official opposition, and it leads me to wonder why.
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- May/23/24 9:03:15 p.m.
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Madam Chair, what I can further indicate with respect to bail decisions is that the Criminal Code provides that one can bring a review application for a bail decision—
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- May/23/24 9:01:37 p.m.
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Madam Chair, what I would emphasize is that bail is governed by certain fundamental precepts that are in the Criminal Code of Canada. It is about ensuring that people are not a flight risk or likely to repeat an offence. It is also demonstrating the community's denunciation.
In Ontario, individual bail determinations are mainly made by justices of the peace.
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- May/23/24 8:33:15 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the hon. member should know that is categorically incorrect, and I encourage him to read the Criminal Code. If someone commits an extortion with a prohibited firearm, that person is subject to a mandatory minimum.
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- May/23/24 8:27:34 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I work diligently on Criminal Code reform, including bail reform, to ensure to keep Canadians safe.
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- May/23/24 8:22:35 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I would like to clarify something to the member across the way. When we amend the Criminal Code to increase a maximum prison sentence we are sending a message to judges and the justice system that we very strongly condemn auto theft.
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- May/23/24 8:21:04 p.m.
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Madam Chair, from the situations that have been described to me by police officers in Quebec, we need to target the Criminal Code. We are making changes—
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