So V ote

Jun/14/22 12:21:03 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-5

Madam Speaker, while I might not use quite as broad a brush in condemning my Conservative colleagues as the hon. member did, I think he draws attention to an important ancillary benefit of these changes in Bill C-5. We certainly heard that one of the problems that comes from the existence of mandatory minimums is that they prevent the ability to plea bargain and keep cases out of court that take up valuable space in our courts that could be used for tackling, without delay, the more serious crimes. They increase court delays. They increase court costs. Of course, when we keep someone in custody, as I talked about in my speech, for only a short period time, it is very expensive to do so and, at the same time, guarantees that they will not get the rehabilitation and training they need to successfully rehabilitate into society. It is not a good economic deal, as well as being not a good justice deal, as well as being not a good public safety deal. Eliminating mandatory minimums will help us make progress on all of those fronts.

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Jun/14/22 12:18:56 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-5

Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Windsor West is such a good colleague in all aspects of parliamentary work. I want to take a moment to congratulate him on his work on the first urban national park in his riding. This bill now calls for a mandatory review of what is happening with these kinds of things. I have to say that we had some discussion about the number of years for that review. I believe we ended up at four, but I would have to check. We had a debate between three and five. I think it is important that we take a look at what has happened as parliamentarians with law within a period of three to five years and re-examine whether there is more that could be done, or whether there are things that need to be corrected. That is always an important part of our work as parliamentarians.

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Jun/14/22 12:17:13 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-5

Madam Speaker, I do have a great deal of respect for the hon. member for Calgary Rocky Ridge as a member of Parliament. Again, I think we are talking about something that is not going to happen here. The penalties for sexual assault rarely come in under two years in custody and so anything with two years in custody is not eligible for a conditional sentence. It is not eligible for house arrest. It is not eligible for serving time on weekends. I do share with him the concern about the way sexual assault is treated in our criminal justice and policing system and I do share his concern that we need to do better by victims, not just of sexual assault but of all crimes in our community. In fact, allowing judges to use conditional sentences to get a sentence that fits the crime, fits the offender and fits the community is an important piece of progress in Bill C-5.

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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 12:13:13 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-5

Madam Speaker, that is an important point we have been trying to get across in this third reading debate. The kinds of examples the Conservatives are raising and saying they will be eligible for conditional sentences will not be eligible for conditional sentences. Both the normal decisions of judges and the sentencing guidelines in use in Canadian courts mean that for serious crimes, conditional sentences will not be allowed. For anything where the sentence is over two years, that time will be served in custody and that time will be served in a federal institution. The importance of conditional sentences is that they allow the judges to look at the circumstances of the offender and whether the offence is associated with an addiction problem or whether it is associated with a mental health problem and to come up with a sentence that actually fits the needs of the community to be safer by making the sentence fit the needs of the person who came in conflict with the law. There is an additional benefit to public safety when judges are allowed to use conditional sentences for those less serious and less violent crimes.

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Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, NDP)

Jun/14/22 11:55:24 a.m.
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Re: Bill C-5

Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise virtually to speak to Bill C-5 at third reading, but I have to say that I look forward to the day when circumstances do not force me to give speeches through pinhole cameras, with all the technical problems that go with it. I want to start today by talking about what Bill C-5 is and what it is not. I want to say clearly, as we approach third reading of this bill, that I am happy to speak in support of it because of what is actually in it. Though modest, Bill C-5 is an important contribution to tackling the systemic racism in our justice system. All we have to do is take a brief look at the statistics, which show that despite no more involvement with drugs by certain communities and no more involvement in criminal activities, certain members of Canadian society, indigenous people and racialized Canadians, end up in prison far more often, far out of proportion to other Canadians. The correctional investigator pointed out that indigenous people make up less than 5% of the population, but over 30% of the people in Canadian prisons. Canadians who identify as Black are about 3.5% of the population and over 7% of those who are in prison. The situation is worse when it comes to indigenous women and women who live in poverty. These women make up over 50% of the population in women's prisons. Again, if we look at Black Canadian women, they are about 3% of the population but make up over 9% of the inmates in correctional institutions. Clearly, we have a problem with systemic racism in our justice system. Bill C-5 would also make a modest contribution to the fight against the toxic drug poisoning crisis in our country. Removing mandatory minimums for drug offences and increasing the ability of police and of judges to divert those who are struggling with addiction from prison to treatment will obviously help. Is there more we can do on both systemic racism and the opioid crisis? Clearly there is. Let me talk at the outset about what Bill C-5 does not do, because we have heard many outrageous claims, from the Conservatives in particular but sometimes also from the Bloc, about what the bill does. The bill does not in any way reduce sentences that judges will hand out for serious crimes. Removing mandatory minimums does exactly what it sounds like: It removes the minimum penalty for an offence, not the maximum, not the average, not the normal penalty, but the minimum. The evidence we heard at committee, as well as the evidence in criminal justice, is quite clear. The mandatory minimums do not deter crimes. There are very few criminals who thumb through the Criminal Code to decide which offence offers them the best deal, obviously. We know from research what the real deterrent is, and that is getting caught. All criminals tend to think that they are the smartest in the bunch and will not get caught, but it is that fear of enforcement that is actually a deterrent to crime. The evidence shows us that mandatory minimums, if anything, actually increase the likelihood of recidivism and that in fact their existence makes the public, if anything, less safe rather than more safe. We should pay no attention to those who tell us that Bill C-5 is soft on crime. Instead, let us look for a moment at what it actually does. It removes 20 mandatory minimum penalties: 14 from the Criminal Code and six from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. There are many more mandatory minimum penalties that could be removed, but we heard from experts that these 20 will make a significant difference when it comes to the overrepresentation of racialized and indigenous people in our correction system. New Democrats do support maintaining mandatory minimums for the most serious, violent crimes, where there is evidence that longer times of supervision may make a difference and may be necessary for public safety, but we acknowledge that all mandatory minimums can and do have disproportionate impacts on indigenous people and racialized Canadians. That is why we attempted to amend Bill C-5 at committee to add a waiver restoring judicial discretion in offences with mandatory minimums when it would be manifestly unjust to apply those mandatory minimums. This is in line with the Gladue principles, which require judges to consider the circumstances of aboriginal people when it comes to sentencing. Unfortunately, in the laws that exist right now, the Gladue principles do not apply where there is a mandatory minimum. I do have to point out that I think the member for Rivière-du-Nord, from the Bloc, misremembered what happened at committee. There were several attempts by several MPs and parties to add this kind of waiver to Bill C-5, but due to the narrow drafting of the bill, unfortunately, they were ruled out of order, outside the scope of the bill, so no one voted against adding this waiver. Again, New Democrats do support adding a parallel provision to the Gladue principles requiring judges to take into account the circumstances when it comes to sentencing racialized Canadians as well. This kind of waiver would be a further improvement to our attempts to attack the systemic racism that exists in our justice system. Again, what is actually there? There are 20 mandatory minimums, most of which specify terms of imprisonment of less than two years, that would be removed. What this means is that if there is a mandatory minimum of less than two years, generally not much time would end up being served. When we take into account time that may have been served before the trial process, and when we take into account provisions for earlier release for good behaviour, which is essential for maintaining discipline within our corrections system, then the time served under these mandatory minimums would be very, very short in most cases. It also means that the time would be served in provincial institutions, and those provincial institutions generally do not have extensive rehabilitation programs, due to the short time most offenders spend there. Obviously, if people are in custody only for a few months, they cannot really complete an addictions treatment program. They cannot really get training that might allow them to get a better job when they leave the corrections system. They cannot even complete literacy training, which is often important for those who have come into the criminal justice system, in that very short period of time. There is not enough time spent in custody, under these mandatory minimums, to get any real help that would allow people to be rehabilitated back into society and make them less of a threat to public safety. What there is under these mandatory minimums is a guarantee that the offenders would serve just enough time to lose their job, their housing and often the custody of their children. These are pretty heavy additional penalties that I do not think were ever intended for things like personal possession of drugs. It is just enough time to make it more likely that the offenders would return to the behaviour that got them into trouble in the first place, rather than become successfully reintegrated into their community. Instead of mandatory minimums, Bill C-5, and this is important, would grant additional access to conditional sentences, so judges may choose conditional sentences over those mandatory minimums right now. This means that judges may assign penalties like serving time on weekends or serving time under house arrest. This is important, because the Conservatives are again distorting what the bill would do. Judges are allowed to use conditional sentences only in those cases where the penalty being assigned is less than two years in custody. The kind of extreme examples the Conservatives are giving of things that would be subject to conditional sentences simply are not in this bill. What a conditional sentence might do, if people serve time on weekends, is allow them to keep their job and be able to continue supporting their family. Time served under conditional sentence in house arrest might allow people to be the primary caregiver of their children and remain in the home so their kids do not go into custody. It could allow them to keep their family together. We have all seen the terrible impacts on both indigenous Canadians and racialized communities of kids ending up in care in a system that has just as many problems with systemic racism as our justice system does. Again, Bill C-5 does nothing that would reduce the amount of time judges hand out for serious crimes, nothing at all. Judges' discretion and sentencing guidelines mean that serious crimes would continue to get serious time in custody even after Bill C-5 passes. The third aspect of Bill C-5, the third major thing it would do that is actually in the bill, is that it would increase the ability of police and prosecutors to use warnings and diversions instead of charges when it comes to drug possession offences. The use of alternative measures, like warnings and referrals to counselling for low-level criminal offences, not only avoids wasting expensive court time and evades further delays in our court system, but there is the obvious connection made to diversion and avoiding future involvement in criminal activities. The obvious benefit of diversion is that it allows people to get drug treatment and get out of the addiction problems that led them into conflict with the criminal justice system. All of these aspects of Bill C-5 would increase public safety and not, as opponents of the bill would have us believe, put public safety further at risk. No one denies that there are many crises in public safety we need to address, but what Bill C-5 does is create room in our criminal justice system to address the most serious crimes by taking the less serious crimes out of the justice system and allowing judges to apply penalties that would be the most appropriate, not just for the offender, but for making sure that offenders do not reoffend, thus helping defend or protect public safety in the community. These three things, the elimination of 20 mandatory minimum penalties, increasing access to conditional sentences and increasing access to diversion, are why New Democrats said we would support the bill at second reading. Frankly, we were not that excited about this bill, because we had hoped the Liberals would be bolder when it came to tackling the problem of systemic racism in the criminal justice system. People may often hear that Parliament is dysfunctional and that we do not co-operate, but what we proved at the justice committee is that there can be co-operation to improve bills. At committee, we proposed four amendments, two of which were adopted, and I can say that personally I am now a lot more excited about the bill. The first amendment adopted requires that records be kept on the use of discretion when it comes to diversion. That is important because keeping records on diversion will open up the use of police discretion to study and accountability. It will ensure that we can check that discretion is not just being used to favour those who are already the most privileged in society, but is being used fairly when it comes to indigenous people and racialized Canadians. The amendment also guarantees that warnings and diversions cannot be used in further court proceedings. That is an important factor in that it guarantees there is a real incentive to complete things like diversion. The final amendment that was adopted tackles the question of criminal records for the personal possession of drugs. Bill C-5 would now guarantee that within two years all of these records will disappear, so that those who are often denied housing, employment, the ability to travel, bank loans and mortgages or the ability to volunteer with seniors or children will actually have those criminal records removed and be able to pursue rehabilitation into society that would allow them to make their way forward in life, just like other Canadians. The Liberals previously set up a record suspension process for marijuana when it was legalized, but I have to point out that that process cleared the records of only 484 of the hundreds of thousands of people with records for simple possession. Bill C-5 will now clear them all. It will clear them all without an application process and without a fee. Our amendment also dealt with future conditions for the personal possession of drugs, which is still possible after the government ensured the defeat of Bill C-216, the private member's bill of the member for Courtenay—Alberni, which would have decriminalized the personal possession of drugs completely. Since those convictions are still possible, what Bill C-5 now does, with our amendment, is guarantee that any new convictions will disappear from criminal records two years after the end of any sentence resulting from those convictions, and not result in a lifelong criminal record that has all those negative impacts I just talked about. This process, which the government is calling the “sequestering of records”, will make sure those criminal records do not show up in criminal record checks, and 250,000 Canadians will benefit directly. Let us not listen to the naysayers who are trying to stir up public safety fears about Bill C-5. It is more than a little frustrating, when the bill will actually do so much more to help make our communities safer. It is frankly maddening to see opponents of this bill ignore its real impact in beginning to address the systemic racism that afflicts our justice system and makes the lives of so many indigenous and racialized Canadians that much harder. Is this bill everything that community advocates hoped to see? No, it is not. The Liberals could have been bolder, as I said before, in addressing both systemic racism and the opioid crisis, but is Bill C-5 a significant step forward in addressing these concerns? I believe it is, and that is why New Democrats are happy to support Bill C-5 at third reading today.

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Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, NDP)

Jun/14/22 11:37:46 a.m.
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Re: Bill C-5

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to hear that the member for Rivière-du-Nord has changed his position on Bill C-5 since he did vote against the bill at committee. I want to ask him about another vote at committee. He voted against my amendment that would add a provision to Bill C-5 to remove criminal records for personal possession for about 250,000 Canadians. Does the Bloc still oppose removing criminal records for personal possession of drugs?

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Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, NDP)

Jun/14/22 11:16:05 a.m.
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Re: Bill C-5

Madam Speaker, I take particular exception to the remarks by the previous member that completely distort what is going on in Bill C-5. They distort not only what is going on in Bill C-5, but the position of police in Canada on the bill. Both the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Police Federation, which represents RCMP officers, appeared in committee and supported this bill. What is going on here by Conservatives is an attempt to distort the actual impacts of the bill and create some crisis in public safety when, in fact, the bill would do exactly the opposite.

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Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, NDP)

Jun/14/22 10:47:07 a.m.
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Re: Bill C-5

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the parliamentary secretary for the good work that we managed to do together at committee to improve the bill. We have just seen a couple of examples from the Conservatives and the Bloc of the attempt to somehow say that Bill C-5 threatens public safety. I wonder if the parliamentary secretary could talk about the actual evidence we heard at committee on the impact of mandatory minimum sentences and how their impact, if anything, actually improves public safety by eliminating them.

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Context: House Hansard - 85 - Jun/9/22

Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, NDP)

Jun/9/22 11:19:12 a.m.
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Re: Bill C-5

Madam Speaker, there has been some discussion about why it is urgent to pass this bill and there is the idea that we can somehow just let this drift on. If we do not pass this bill soon, it means that additional people will be sent to detention or prison under the mandatory minimums. Those people, through no fault of their own, will end up losing their housing, losing their jobs and having their kids apprehended. There is an urgency here that we correct this mistake. It does not matter to me who made it in the past. It is urgent to eliminate these 20 mandatory minimums so that people can get sentences that are appropriate to their crimes and get things that will help reintegrate them back into the community instead of forcing them into worse situations.

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Context: House Hansard - 85 - Jun/9/22

Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, NDP)

Jun/9/22 10:59:41 a.m.
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Re: Bill C-5

Madam Speaker, there are very important things in Bill C-5 in the reduction of mandatory minimum sentences, which have terrible impacts on indigenous and racialized Canadians. However, I have to correct the record for the Conservatives and the Bloc members, who seem not to have paid attention to what happened in committee. We did work collaboratively in committee, and government members accepted two amendments from the NDP, which have strengthened the bill. One of those amendments would get rid of criminal records for personal possession of drugs within two years, and the other strengthens the accountability mechanisms through record-keeping when police use their discretion to avoid charging people. Those are two important improvements in the bill. When they talk about how Parliament is supposed to work, that is exactly how it worked in committee. We got a better bill, a stronger bill, and today I am going to support this motion for time allocation, because we have to get this done on behalf of those Canadians who suffer from the mandatory minimums that were introduced at one time by the Liberals but also, primarily, by the Conservatives.

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Jun/1/22 6:17:51 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-5

Mr. Speaker, I enjoy working with the member on the justice committee. Of course I support all those measures he is talking about. The law on mandatory minimums is not the solution to everything, but it is a solution to systemic racism and it is a partial solution to the opioid crisis. Do we need more measures to interdict the illegal importation of guns into our communities? Absolutely, I support those kinds of things, but the reason that this does not create public confidence is that some people are putting forward the myth that somehow eliminating mandatory minimum sentences makes our communities more dangerous. It does precisely the opposite.

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Jun/1/22 6:16:11 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-5 Bill C-216

Mr. Speaker, that may sound like a tough question, but for me, as someone who has been a public advocate of decriminalizing all drugs for more than a decade, that is an easy question. I think all drugs should be decriminalized, and that is what we put forward in Bill C-216 today. If we actually look at the statistics on the mandatory minimums that are applied by judges, we see that most of them are for things like simple possession or trafficking to support people's own drug habit. I am sorry that I do not have the statistic in front of me, but something like 61% are for those offences. They are not for the offences that the Conservatives have combed through the code to find and fearmonger on by saying that eliminating those mandatory minimums means that those serious crimes would not be punished by jail time. They would be.

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Jun/1/22 6:14:36 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-5

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary and I worked very co-operatively during the hearings on this bill to try to find some serious improvements, and the government has certainly stepped forward to accept them. I am going to use an example that is maybe a little counterintuitive to show why I think this is so important. The government has an existing program to expunge criminal records. In two years, of those 250,000 records, the government's program expunged 484 records. That is why I was insisting that this process has to be automatic, with no application and no fee. These records simply disappear. Both the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Public Safety met with me personally to discuss this, and I thank them for their support.

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Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, NDP)

Jun/1/22 6:04:16 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-5 Bill C-216

Mr. Speaker, I am really pleased to rise to speak on Bill C-5 today. Sometimes the debate strays away from what is actually in the bill and goes into a lot of other things. I would just like to remind everybody what the bill is doing. It is attempting to attack systemic racism in our criminal justice system by eliminating 20 mandatory minimum penalties, all of those in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and a few relating to firearms and tobacco offences. It also expands access to conditional sentences through things like house arrest and serving time on weekends, which is important in rehabilitating people who, for whatever reason, became involved with the criminal justice system. The third thing it does is provide more discretion for police to provide warnings and diversion instead of charging people, who then end up in jail. All of these three things are key steps in reducing the impact of systemic racism. In our corrections system, nearly 35% of those who are imprisoned are indigenous, but indigenous people make up less than 5% of our population. We know that about 7.5% of those in prison are Black Canadians, but they only represent 3.5% of the population. Something is clearly going on here in a systematic manner that produces these much worse outcomes for racialized and indigenous people. Who is in favour of this bill? This is something nobody else has really been talking about here. I know why some people do not raise this point. Most important to me is that the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police is in favour of this legislation, because they know that mandatory minimums do nothing to make communities safer. Two other organizations I want to mention that are very much in favour are the John Howard Society and the Elizabeth Fry Society. These are two very valuable non-profits that work with those who have served time to help re-integrate them back into the community. They gave very powerful testimony at committee about the impacts of mandatory minimums. Who is opposed to them? The Conservatives and the Bloc are clearly opposed to this bill that would reduce mandatory minimums. They often fly off into what I would call a fantasy world, where the idea is that if we take away mandatory minimums, somehow people would not get prison sentences and somehow serious criminals would not end up in jail. That is not what would happen with mandatory minimums or their removal. Judges would still assign serious time for serious crime. That is not what we are talking about here. The fact is that mandatory minimums—and most of those that would be removed are of less than two years—would result in people going into provincial corrections systems, which have very limited rehabilitation programs. It also means, when we take into time served for good behaviour and other facets of our criminal justice system, that people would serve only a few months. Even if there was an addiction treatment program, even if there was a skills training program, the time is too short for those to be successful. However, the time is not too short to make sure that people lose their housing. The time is not too short to make sure that people lose their job. The time is not too short to make sure that people's families are put at risk. Often the people who go under mandatory minimums are the sole providers for their families, so their kids are at risk of apprehension while they are in prison. All of this contributes to huge social problems that are not necessary. If we do not have a mandatory minimum, we could use conditional sentences. Someone could stay in their own home, maintain their job, serve their time on weekends, and actually become a productive member of society again, rather than having their whole life turned upside down, which would put them on a path that only leads to further addiction and further crime. We know that is the record of mandatory minimums. The academic studies all show the same thing: Mandatory minimums, if they do anything at all, actually make recidivism worse, because people have fewer options as a result of serving those mandatory minimums. The evidence is quite clear: They do not work. Should the government have done more? Yes; as a New Democrat, I agree it should have done more. The government should have done more earlier today when it had the chance to vote on our bill, Bill C-216, which would have decriminalized personal possession of drugs. That would have helped to address systemic racism, because we know that Black Canadians and indigenous Canadians are overcharged and charged at much higher rates for personal possession of drugs when their rates of drug use are not in fact higher. It would have helped tackle that. I do not think it is enough to say that we are going to reduce mandatory minimums; the government should have voted for Bill C-216. We should have made better progress. I am happy to see the government grant an exemption to British Columbia under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and I think it will lead to great success in tackling the opioid crisis, but I just do not understand why the government was not prepared to do that for the more than 70% of Canadians who live outside of British Columbia. I was glad to hear the Prime Minister say, in answer to a question, that the Liberals are prepared to consider other exemptions, and certainly New Democrats will be asking them to step up when that time comes. What was in Bill C-5, as I said, was modest, and so I wish the Liberals had done more on Bill C-216, but I also wish they had done more on the bill, and that is why I proposed two amendments at committee, which I thank the government for accepting. The first of those, to me, is the most important. It is an amendment that says not only do mandatory minimums cause problems in racial injustice, but the resulting criminal records make things much worse. There are 250,000 Canadians who have a record for personal possession of drugs. What does this mean? It means that sometimes this record affects someone's hiring. Very often it affects their housing, whether it is social housing, which does not allow people with criminal records, or whether it is landlords who refuse to rent to them. It prevents people from getting bank loans and mortgages. It forces them into the hands of what I call loan sharks, otherwise called payday lenders. It prevents people from travelling. However, the one I have heard the most in my community is that a criminal record prevents someone from volunteering with kids or seniors, even though it may have been a personal possession charge from 20 years ago and has nothing to do with the way the person has turned their life around. In fact, some of those people might be the perfect people to volunteer with youth and show them a positive way forward. I thank the government for agreeing. What we agreed on is what it calls a sequestration of records, meaning they will be held separate and apart and will not show up in criminal records. Within two years, we will be wiping out the records of 250,000 people, and I think that is enormously important for rehabilitation and building safer communities. The second amendment I moved had to do with the expanded discretion for police. Here, New Democrats had a worry that was shared by many in the community, because discretion by the police is often subject to that very same systemic racism. The bill originally did not require record-keeping at all for the use of discretion; my amendment suggests that the police have to keep records on who they grant diversion to and who they warn. Then we will be able to see if this discretion happens just to privileged white folks or is being used fairly among all Canadians. The second part of that amendment says we will keep records, but those records cannot be used in future proceedings against individuals. Why say that? It may seem counterintuitive. If it is really a warning, then it is a warning, not a conviction, and so it should not be used in future criminal processes. It will make warnings much more powerful for people who get them and diversions much more powerful for people who get them. If someone successfully stays out of trouble with a warning or they successfully complete drug and alcohol counselling as part of their diversion, then this will never come back to haunt them again. It will encourage success in those programs. I thank the government for supporting those two measures. I fail to understand why the Conservatives and Bloc oppose those two amendments, but I also fail to understand why they are opposing this bill altogether. I know time is running short, but I want to go back to what I think is most important here. I have to say that I know people like to put forward their records as prosecutors and as police when they are talking about these things. I taught criminal justice for 20 years and I worked very closely with the John Howard Society and the Elizabeth Fry Society on the question of rehabilitation of people, and we know what works. We know that when people can stay with their family and when people can have a job and maintain their employment, all of those things push them out of the criminal lifestyle and into the community. This is an important initiative in making all communities safer. Despite people saying that the bill removes mandatory minimums on serious crimes, I say no, the judges will still give out serious time for serious crime. What it does is take away the injustice of those mandatory minimums falling most heavily on indigenous people and racialized Canadians.

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Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, NDP)

Jun/1/22 5:46:38 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-5

Mr. Speaker, I want to reflect on what happened just before we started this debate on Bill C-5 because there are some modest measures in Bill C-5 that would help address the opioid crisis, but the government just defeated Bill C-216, which would have decriminalized personal possession of drugs. The Prime Minister said earlier today that, in reference to the section 56 exemption for British Columbia, he would be prepared to work with communities who are interested in such an exemption. Is the government really telling us today that, instead of just eliminating penalties for possessions, it will work positively with communities to grant exemptions in addition to those in British Columbia?

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