Hon. Céline Hervieux-Payette:

Honourable senators, I rise today to speak against Bill C-59 based on fundamental principles. I was inspired by a letter that was sent to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on December 17, 2010.

The Church Council on Justice & Corrections condemned the Conservative government for its handling of criminal justice issues, saying that it is not serving victims, offenders or Canadian society. I share that opinion.

I would like to read you several paragraphs of this letter that Christian bishops of various denominations sent to the Prime Minister. I do not intend to read the entire letter, just the paragraphs that are completely relevant to Bill C-59:

The Church Council on Justice and Corrections (CCJC) is most concerned that in this time of financial cuts to important services you and the government of Canada are prepared to significantly increase investment in the building of new prisons.

Proposed new federal laws will ensure that more Canadians are sent to prison for longer periods, a strategy that has been repeatedly proven neither to reduce crime nor to assist victims. Your policy is applying a costly prison response to people involved in the courts who are non-violent offenders, or to repeat offenders who are mentally ill and/or addicted, the majority of whom are not classified as high risk. These offenders are disproportionately poor, ill-equipped to learn, from the most disadvantaged and marginalized groups. They require treatment, health services, educational, employment and housing interventions, all less expensive and more humane than incarceration.

Bill C-59 will require costly measures. I have been given figures, but not by the government. We are still waiting for the official figures. However, at the very least, we have learned from government reports that the estimated average annual cost per offender is $88,000.

If the person remains in jail for the entire term of his sentence, the annual cost will increase by $130 million, not to mention the cost of additional facilities because we will have to keep an additional 1,500 people in prison per year.

The letter continues:

The Canadian government has regretfully embraced a belief in punishment-for-crime that first requires us to isolate and separate the offender from the rest of us, in our minds as well as in our prisons. That separation makes what happens later easier to ignore: by increasing the number of people in jail for lengthier sentences you are decreasing their chance of success upon release into the community.

I will skip the next paragraph and continue:

Increasing levels of incarceration of marginalized people is counter-productive and undermines human dignity in our society. By contrast, well supervised probation or release, bail options, reporting centres, practical assistance, supportive housing, programs that promote accountability, respect and reparation: these measures have all been well-established, but they are underfunded.

We are spending $130 million to jail people who should be starting their rehabilitation.

Their outcomes have proven to be the same or better in terms of re-offence rates, at a fraction of the cost and with much less human damage.

Public safety is enhanced through healthy communities that support individuals and families. We, therefore, respectfully ask you to modify your government's policy taking into consideration the impact it will have on the most disadvantaged, its lack of effectiveness, and its serious budgetary implications.

The bill was introduced on February 9, 2011, whereas this letter is dated December 17, 2010. Either the Prime Minister does not read his mail or he does not listen to people whom I consider to be completely objective and very knowledgeable about the issue.

I think this approach in Bill C-59 has already been proposed, but for high-stakes white collar crime. We are not talking about misappropriating $50 from a bank account. We are talking about crimes involving $100,000 or more. Our party had already agreed to delaying permission for those prisoners to begin their rehabilitation.

This proposal was made by the Liberal Party 18 months ago, but it was ignored. Mr. Lacroix has been released in the meantime; now he is in a halfway house. This is someone who defrauded and robbed good people of several million dollars. If the bill had passed at the time, Mr. Lacroix would still be incarcerated and reflecting on the all the harm he caused to those whose savings he stole.

Let me tell you about the people who will be affected by Bill C-59. Some 61 per cent of the people who will be affected are women, one third of whom are Aboriginal, and often they have addiction problems. That is a far cry from criminals like Earl Jones and Vincent Lacroix.

So 1,500 people will end up behind bars without a chance of receiving rehabilitation services or addiction treatment and all at the taxpayers' expense at a time of budgetary cuts. I find this approach completely reactionary and even backward. We are going back 50 years, as though no studies had been done. Studies justifying this bill will have to be tabled in the committee charged with examining this issue. To my knowledge, no serious sociological or psychological study has been done by human behaviour professionals proving that this approach works. We saw what happened in the United States when a similar system was applied. The Supreme Court ordered the State of California to release 40,000 prisoners because there was so much confusion and such great expense that today the state is practically bankrupt.

I do not believe that the government should focus its priorities on keeping individuals who are already victims of society in prison. I am talking about people other than women, many of them Aboriginal, and youth in particular. Do we really want to leave these youth, who are just starting out, in prison longer? I suppose that is how they will learn to commit more serious offences, since it is often said that prison is a school for crime.

The John Howard Society does not support this bill, which specifically targets people who have committed serious crimes, such as white-collar crime of $100,000 or more. It would also abolish accelerated parole review. We are talking about 1,500 cases. Once the criteria for automatic parole after one-sixth of the sentence have been looked at, it will be nothing but red tape and administrative delays. But I thought the Conservative Party was against all that. There again, they need to explain why they would create all this bureaucracy and why they would leave people behind bars for an indeterminate period.

The Elizabeth Fry Society does not support this legislation either. In two cases in Quebec, more than 500 women will be penalized. These women already have problems, and they most likely have children waiting for them at home. And these women have nothing to do with the white-collar crime the government is trying to deal with.

The Barreau du Québec also opposes this bill and has serious concerns about the fact that the law would be retroactive. And I have similar concerns. We have a Constitution. And usually, that means that when someone is sentenced, the rules of the game cannot be changed after the sentence has been handed down. I am quite convinced that, in terms of the people targeted by this retroactive law, this issue will not pass the legal test in the courts.

It is clear that groups of lawyers and criminal lawyers in Canada and in Quebec are strongly opposed to this legislation because it would apply retroactively, it would create red tape and it does nothing to improve justice in Canada. These people are highly qualified and deal with these issues on a daily basis.

And so, I would ask the honourable senators on the other side of the chamber to think seriously about the bill's objectives. I am talking about the Policy, with a capital "P," of a civilized government that will one day have to release these offenders. How will that happen? What method will be used?

We have halfway houses in Canada and they work wonderfully. Instead of costing $88,000 per year, per offender, we are talking about $23,000 per year. Offenders can take courses as part of their rehabilitation and have access to the services of health professionals. They are followed by social services. This is how individuals should be released into society if we want to prevent them from returning to a life of crime. What Bill C-59 proposes is that we train more criminals, since these individuals will spend more time in contact with offenders who have committed serious crimes, in a place where they do not start rehabilitation.

Recent Statements from Liberal Senators