Hon. Céline Hervieux-Payette:

Honourable senators, I attended practically all the hearings on Bill C-59, which lasted 11 hours. I heard extremely credible witnesses. The proof was beyond a reasonable doubt. Almost 80 per cent of the witnesses who came before the committee told us that Bill C-59 was an abominable bill and an insult to our judicial system, that it violates all our principles of natural justice, and that it especially attacks our most disadvantaged citizens, that is, our youth and women.

What especially bothers me is that the people most affected by the bill will be Aboriginal women who, in today's society, are victims of destitution, suffering, and poverty, and their children who are in trouble with the law.

I believe it is important to relay to you the ideas of people I consider to be experts, who addressed the committee, such as Mr. Ivan Zinger, the Executive Director and General Counsel for the Office of the Correctional Investigator. These are not people who simply gave us their impressions or biases. The first thing they told us is that this law will obviously affect Aboriginal people the most as they are currently overrepresented in our prisons. I am talking about both men and women.

We know that Aboriginal people represent 4 per cent of the Canadian population, but 20 per cent of the prison population. Furthermore, because of their concentration in certain provinces, we can say the Aboriginal inmate population is much more than 20 per cent in certain provinces.

We also learned that the number of female Aboriginal inmates is higher in federal institutions and that their success rate is much lower when applying for parole after serving one-sixth of their sentences.

One specific reason is the difficulty of reintegrating back into the community, which is a problem intrinsic to the nature of individuals who did not grow up with all the measures that should have been in place to assist with their development.

Let us speak about the future. The number of Aboriginal women admitted to federal penitentiaries over the past 10 years has increased by about 35 per cent. Therefore, this problem is not in the process of being resolved; rather, it is getting worse.

I would like to share some statistics with you. Another extremely competent individual, Shelley Trevethan, the Executive Director General of the Parole Board of Canada, came before us to tell us that this bill is primarily focused on one-third of offenders — those who commit such crimes as a first offense under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. This constitutes over 30 per cent of offenders; 14 per cent were part of another group of people who had drug addictions.

That is already 47 per cent, or almost 50 per cent. She then told us that 7 per cent were convicted for conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, 7 per cent were convicted for breaking and entering, 4 per cent were convicted for fraud of over $5,000 and 3 per cent were serving time for theft of $5,000 or less. Most, or nearly two-thirds, of the offenses were non-violent.

If, tomorrow morning, we had to put all the people who broke into our cottages or cars in prison, I believe that we would have to allocate not just $5 billion but rather $10 billion to building prisons in Canada.

It is important to remember who is in our prisons: people who were convicted of non-violent crimes. I would also like to share with the honourable senators the opinions of another extremely competent individual, Mr. Graham Stuart, an expert who has been wondering what would happen next.

I believe that the honourable senators opposite should listen very carefully to this quote.

. . . increased inconsistency for the purpose of corrections as set out in the CCRA as well as the principle of restrictive measures without evidence to justify the need for this change.

There is no reason for a change.

Mr. Stewart continued:

It is unfairness. To systematically deprive the least serious offenders of the opportunity to apply for day parole on their eligibility date . . . We should not overestimate the implications on a prison population of a flagrantly unfair practice.

He added:

It leads to ineffective corrections. Depriving most non-violent inmates the benefit of the most effective correctional programs is not effective corrections . . .

Namely, gradual supervised release,

. . . leads to potentially greater victimization.

I refer here mostly to women and women inmates.

Honourable senators, it is not possible to reduce violent recidivism rates from already extremely low rates because most of the time the actual system is about equal for those one sixth or one third of the sentence. In terms of recidivism, it was about the same, which means it has not produced anything except if you leave youth in regular prison for a longer time, they will not be rehabilitated; they will be more criminalized. You do not need to be a scientist to understand that.

One of the main arguments of those witnesses was the fact that the $350 million that the potential 1,500 people will cost the state would be better invested in rehabilitation.

We have received letters from citizens. You might think that people who are concerned for their safety would tell us to leave the offenders in prison. Even the representative of the victims of Earl Jones who met with us was horrified to know that there would be more than a thousand people who would remain in prison because of the Earl Jones case.

In the Earl Jones case, if we are to believe the Canadian Bar Association, the Barreau du Québec and Quebec criminal law experts, retroactivity will not apply. The only reason this bill was introduced, in a totally shameful marriage between the Bloc Québécois and the Conservatives, with a cheap partisan agenda, was to make it seem as though Bill C-59 will be a warning to Mr. Jones or punish him longer when we know that this bill will not apply to Mr. Jones.

That raises the following question: what is the purpose of this bill? Why keep people in prison who, tomorrow morning, could begin serving a sentence the day after completing one-sixth of their sentence?

I would like to explain to my colleagues that the minister told us that they will be out in the street. We might have thought that the minister, with his expertise, would know better.

They will not be out in the street. They will be in a halfway house. They will have several conditions, depending on their crime.

We heard testimony from an expert, the president of the Elizabeth Fry Society, who explained the process to us. Probation officers, correctional officers, and psychologists or sociologists study each case. They then report on the individual's eligibility for early parole after having served one-sixth of the sentence.

That is not all. No one returns to the community that way. The first step towards rehabilitation is finding professional training within the community, be it through completing high school, returning to the workforce, or ceasing to spend time with certain people, et cetera. The conditions are tailored to each individual. Misleading the public by talking about being "out in the street" is proof positive that the minister is not very serious.

What is strange is that not a single expert from any organization that works with offenders told us that this bill had any merit.

{...}

Honourable senators, I would like to return to the issue of women who will be unnecessarily punished. These women already suffer so much. Unbelievable cases of self-mutilation and suicide attempts are much more common among women than men in incarcerated populations. When passing legislation, we need to consider all of the consequences.

Under the law, more services should be provided to people experiencing difficulties in prisons. These people should be able to re-adapt to society and gradually return to a productive life. That certainly does not happen in prison. Prison is not the right place to rehabilitate people.

Only 2.9 per cent of them reoffend, which is minimal. That is proof beyond all reasonable doubt that parole after having served one-sixth of the sentence is a civilized, modern method. In fact, both the United States, in particular the State of New York, and England used to use this method. But now they are following Canada's example and are abolishing a technique that works well.

I would ask the honourable senators on the other side of the chamber to consider the impact this law will have on more than 1,000 people in Canada. And this law will never serve to punish Mr. Jones, especially given that the Supreme Court must rule on it, and I would be very surprised if his lawyer did not challenge the law on constitutional grounds.

This law will be ineffective and would actually punish people who should be reintegrated into society. Instead of following the belief of an eye for an eye, perhaps we should follow the path of forgiveness and reconciliation. Numerous witnesses spoke to us about wonderful programs that work to reconcile offenders and their victims.

And so, I urge all honourable senators to oppose Bill C-59 and, instead, deal with the issue of serious white collar crime by simply amending this law so that it only applies to white collar crimes of more than $100,000, for example, and not to the victims we are talking about now.

As the saying goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I believe that if you truly understand the experts' argument, an argument that I have tried to summarize to the best of my ability, you will recognize that this bill will never fulfill the government's purpose for it and that it is purely a partisan measure and part of an election campaign.

Please click here to read the full text of this debate

Recent Statements from Liberal Senators