Bill C-342 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (maximum security offenders)

This enactment amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to require that inmates who have been found to be dangerous offenders or convicted of more than one first degree murder be assigned a security classification of maximum and confined in a maximum security penitentiary or area in a penitentiary.

Corrections and Conditional Release Act

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

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.

Foreign Affairs

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent for the following motion.

I move that notwithstanding any standing order, special order or usual practice of this House, Bill C-342, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act regarding maximum security offenders, be deemed read a second time and referred to a committee of the whole, deemed considered in committee of the whole, deemed reported without amendment, deemed concurred in at report stage and deemed read a third time and passed.

Justice and Human Rights

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with great disappointment that, yet again, in the last number of days, the Liberal Prime Minister and his cabinet have let Canadians down in quite a tremendous fashion. They have withheld the truth and they have misled the public. They have made egregious errors and taken no responsibility for them. They are making excuses and blaming everyone but themselves. There has been very little, if any, accountability taken, and meanwhile it is the Canadian people and, certainly, our most vulnerable, who suffer as a result.

As such, the amendment the Conservatives moved today in the House is calling for the immediate resignation of the public safety minister, given his long track record of misleading the House and the Canadian people, and in particular his latest quite serious failure of leadership and responsibility in a cabinet position that really, beyond many others, needs the public trust, needs a responsible minister and needs to be beyond reproach in this regard, given the magnitude of the files they are responsible for.

For those who have been paying attention, we are talking about the move of, I believe, certainly the most notorious child rapist and killer in Canadian history, Paul Bernardo. He was recently moved, under the public safety minister's watch, under the Liberal government's watch, from maximum security to medium security. A man who, I would assume almost all Canadians believe, and rightfully so in my opinion, should rot in prison for the rest of his life has now been moved to a medium-security prison with more privileges. The tale that has come out in the last few hours and days about what the minister knew and what the Prime Minister knew, or what they are saying their offices knew, and we will get into that, is just deeply concerning and shows that very little responsibility is being taken.

It is now very unclear whether there is anyone in charge at Public Safety, because it does not seem like there is. Because this issue, what this vile killer did, is so sensitive and has really been burnt into the minds of Canadians, for me, it certainly evoked a very emotional response and a lot of anger at the failure of responsibility and leadership from the Prime Minister and certainly from the Minister of Public Safety, which is why we are calling for his resignation today.

It was on June 1, just a few days ago, that Canadians learned that Correctional Service Canada was transferring this vile killer from a segregated section of a maximum-security prison, where he rightfully belongs until his dying days, to a medium-security prison, a more open, campus-style prison, and he certainly does not deserve that, from my perspective and from the perspective of most Canadians.

Particularly women, but I think most of us, are hesitant to have his name glorified in Hansard or talked about. He does not deserve any of that, so from now on I will just be referring to him as the country's most vile serial rapist and killer of children. So that we really know what we are talking about, this is a man who, in the late eighties and early nineties, repeatedly kidnapped; raped; sodomized; tortured, often recording it on video camera; and murdered young women, as young as 14.

I have a colleague who was of a similar age at the time and who lived in Ontario then. She was telling me that, in school, girls of her age were being told to watch out for a white van and to be careful when they were walking home from school. This is something that is burnt into the memory of women of that age, of women generally, and certainly of parents who had children, particularly young girls, at that time.

He is a really horrific man, and obviously there has been tremendous public outrage at the idea, let alone the fact, that this man was moved to a medium-security prison.

Of course, the minister denied knowing. He came out saying how shocked he was, and it is really frustrating on a number of levels, because we have found, in the last couple of days, that perhaps that is not true at all. It is very well a strong possibility that he did know and failed to act and that the Prime Minister knew and failed to act on this, that they both failed to stop it in any way that they could. The Globe and Mail really outlined this well. I will just quote an article:

The Public Safety Minister invoked the wrath of Parliament and the anger of the families of the victims of Mr. Bernardo on Wednesday after CBC News reported that his office had been told that [this man] would be transferred to a lower-security prison in March. He told the House of Commons [just yesterday] that his office didn’t brief him before the prison transfer happened.

How convenient it is that it did not brief him. We also found out in that same Globe and Mail story, which, I believe, was by Robert Fife and Steven Chase, that the Prime Minister's Office was also alerted months prior to the transfer, and that was confirmed by a Prime Minister's Office spokesperson. They are not even denying it, so I will give them that tiny bit of credit for at least not denying it, though certainly they were not forthcoming in the last number of days that this had broken into public knowledge. As the Globe pointed out, this significantly widens the group of staff, and likely their bosses, the politicians, who knew about this and yet did nothing about it until, oops, the public found out. Now there is shock and disappointment from our elected officials who have been entrusted with public safety and with ensuring that justice is served with respect to the most vile killers in our history. It has not been.

When all this was coming out, I really looked at it with disbelief. How many times are the Liberal ministers and the Prime Minister going to get away with saying, “Oh, I didn't know”, “I wasn't briefed”, “My staff didn't tell me” or saying that the agencies, CSIS and the RCMP, did not let them know and that the information did not quite get to the elected officials? How many times do we have to hear that, as Canadians or as opposition critics? How many times do we have to believe that and just move on like nothing happened?

We have seen this time and time again. With election interference from Beijing, we heard that they just were not quite briefed or that no one picked up the phone and called the former minister of public safety to tell him that my colleague, the member for Haldimand—Norfolk, was being threatened by Beijing and that his family was at risk. They said that CSIS wanted to tell him but had not quite done so, or that his staff had not. It is just a bunch of baloney.

Once, maybe, we would believe them, but two times, five times or 10 times, time and time again on issues of national security and public safety, are we expected to believe them? I do not think so. Enough is enough. We need to have the resignation of somebody in this place. There needs to be some accountability. There needs to be some responsibility taken for the absolute failure to govern.

It is really embarrassing, honestly, to be represented by ministers who take no accountability and responsibility for some of the most critical issues in this country. I want to be clear about why people are so outraged. We have maximum security and medium security. I just want to make it clear why Liberals should have been outraged and moved mountains to stop it, and should certainly have brought forward legislation by now to stop this, but they have not, and I will get into that later.

This individual, when he was in maximum-security prison, had very limited movement. He was heavily segregated. He had very little association with anyone. He had very, very few privileges, and rightfully so. He deserves to be punished for the rest of his life. Maximum-security prison is where he has been for almost 29 years, I believe. Now that he has been moved, under the watch of the public safety minister and the Prime Minister, who knew for three months, into a medium-security prison, he gets to talk to more people; he gets to walk around more and he has many fewer restrictions on him. He does not deserve that. I think everyone agrees, yet here we are; it happened and they could have stopped it. They knew it was coming for three months before it happened.

If someone makes a mistake, that is fine, and if it is the first time, then maybe I would believe them. It is not the first time, but they did not know and were not informed; let us pretend we believe them for one moment. Why is it, then, that they have not brought forward concrete solutions so this never happens again? They have a working majority in the House with the NPD's support. They could have brought forward legislation to signal to Canadians that they will never allow this to happen under their watch, but they have not done so.

Every effort by the Conservatives to move motions to stop this from happening again is shouted down by the Liberals. We have also introduced a bill, a private member's bill from the member for Niagara Falls, and I seconded that bill, that would make sure this never happens again. The Liberals say that it is out of their hands, that they cannot really do anything about it and that the minister is sort of tinkering around the edges now. However, is that really true? I looked at the legislation, and I am seeing a bit of pattern of a soft-on-crime, soft-on-criminals and forget-about-the-victims approach from the public safety minister, the Minister of Justice and the Prime Minister.

If we look at, for example, the Liberals' Bill C-83, it was adopted in 2019 and created a standard in section 28 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, and this is important, that required prisoner selection to be made by the commissioner of corrections based on “the least restrictive environment for that person”. That was legislation they passed in 2019. Their bail reform, their soft-on-crime bail reform bill, was also passed that year.

There was a lot of damage done to Canadians in that short time, in favour of criminals at the expense of victims. This is just another one of those bills. In Bill C-83, the “least restrictive environment” for criminals in prison was the standard put forward.

Now what do we have? We have the “least restrictive environment” for the country's most vile serial killer and rapist of children. This is happening, in part, through the legislation that the Liberals put forward. They have created an environment where this is the case. I will say “the least restrictive environment” over and over, because that was the exact intention of their legislation.

In fact, the Liberals repealed a previous Conservative standard that was put in under former prime minister Stephen Harper's government, where it said “necessary restrictions” for criminals and vile killers. In 2019, these guys brought in bail reform and the “least restrictive environment” for those criminals in jail. Now we have that. The mission is fulfilled for the most vile killer in the country.

When the Liberals say that they cannot really do anything about it and that it is an independent decision, they can do something about it. They could repeal this section or probably the entire bill, Bill C-83. If it is anything like this, the whole thing should go in the garbage, but certainly this section. They could have brought forward a bill already, so that it does not happen again. It has been weeks already.

However, again, this was the objective, that the worst people who go to prison in this country get the “least restrictive environment”. When they say that they cannot do anything about it, people should not buy it. That is not true.

Yesterday, my colleague, the member for Niagara Falls, brought forward a private member's bill, Bill C-342, that would keep dangerous offenders, like this individual, in maximum-security prisons. It would replace that legal standard that I just talked about, going from the “least restrictive environment” to “necessary and appropriate restrictions”. It is very measured, very responsible and certainly in line, I think, with Canadian values on things like this.

Second, it also requires that inmates like this individual, who are designated by the courts as “dangerous offenders,” which this individual is, have their sentences made indeterminate, with no fixed length. Certainly, this would include people who have committed multiple personal injury offences and are considered so dangerous to the public, individuals like the one we have been talking about today or those who have been convicted of more than one first-degree murder resulting in a life sentence.

It is very clear. Guys like this should always be in maximum security. That is what a Conservative government would do. I honestly think that the private member's bill is fair, measured and should be adopted unanimously by all parties, especially in light of what has recently happened.

Let us now just really drill into the failure of the minister to take responsibility on this and to try to stop it before it ever happened. Again, this guy is in a medium-security prison, getting to walk around and getting rewarded. He should not be there. He should have been stopped, and yet the minister failed to do this.

I am just going to read this, from the Correctional Service of Canada. The statement it put out said, “The March 2 e-mail contained information notifying them [the public safety minister's office] of the transfer, along with communications messaging to support this.”

That was from Correctional Service of Canada spokesperson Kevin Antonucci in a statement made on Wednesday. He added that in March, three months ago, the final date for the transfer had not been determined. Therefore, the minister's office also received an email on May 25 with updated communications messaging, as well as the fact that the transfer would occur on Monday, May 29.

If we read between the lines of what Kevin Antonucci said, the Correctional Service of Canada is really doing the lion's share of the work here, saying that it sent the message and notified the minister's office that the transfer could be stopped. They are not doing the minister any favours. They are saying that they told him and that they told him twice, and nothing.

We also found out, just last night, as I mentioned, that the Prime Minister's Office was also informed. I will read from the Globe: “A separate statement from the minister's office late on Wednesday suggested that when [the Minister of Public Safety's] team found out about the transfer on March 2, the Prime Minister's Office was already aware of the matter.”

It went on to say, “When a staff member in the Prime Minister's Office was alerted in March by the Privy Council Office about the possibility of the transfer, inquiries and requests for information were immediately made to the Public Safety Minister's Office”.

When the PMO was told, it immediately reached out to the public safety minister's office and asked what was going on. The Minister of Public Safety still had no idea this was going on, and he had no idea the Prime Minister's office was reaching out to his office for information. It is a bit hard to believe. There are only a few options there. The minister is so hands-off that he has no idea what is going on in his file in any regard, he knowingly ignored this or he knew and he has been misleading the public and the House. That is very difficult to believe.

Given the minister's track record, which I am going to go into, I think it is the latter. What is really interesting in what we are seeing from the statements from the Prime Minister's Office and the public safety minister's office is that the blame game is starting. Fingers are being pointed at each other in public statements to The Globe and Mail. That is how desperate they are to deflect blame. No one wants to take responsibility here. It is very embarrassing.

Therefore, I am just going to go through the pattern of behaviour that, unfortunately, the Minister of Public Safety has shown in recent months. This is just within the last year.

In January 2022, and we all remember this, the minister said he relied on the advice of law enforcement to trigger the Emergencies Act. You remember that, Mr. Speaker. However, we later found out from both the RCMP commissioner and the chief of the Ottawa police, when they testified publicly, that they did not ask the government to invoke the act. That was a big one. The minister misled the public in a big way. We will say that it was a large falsehood in that regard of a never-before-invoked, in essence, war measures act that he misled the public about. It was very significant, and he should have resigned then.

Then, on October 12, 2022, he was accused of misleading a federal judge after his office backdated government documents on trademark infringements. The minister said that the legislation concerning this came into effect two weeks earlier than it actually did, so he literally backdated legal documents. The minister said this was just human error. There is a pattern emerging here.

On August 8, the minister admitted at a committee that the RCMP was using spyware to gain information on Canadians, but he promised that the technology was being used sparingly. I am making light of it, but it is just so utterly ridiculous at this point. I am only three points in; we have five to go.

On January 15, the minister said that the safe third country agreement was working, despite enormous increases in irregular border crossers in comparison to the previous five years, and that really nothing could be done about it. Then, two months later, Biden and the Prime Minister of Canada came together in agreement to close Roxham Road. They were not telling the truth there.

Again, on April 25 of this year, he claimed that his legislation would not impact hunting rifles. We know how that went. Of course it did, and so much so that he had to back down. He has permanently lost the trust of firearms owners and hunters in this country, and he will never get it back because of how much he misled the public.

On May 5, the minister said he did not read the report into the People's Republic of China targeting an MP in our caucus. He later said that he was investigating why the report was not passed up to him. How many times are we going to have to believe that?

On May 14, after saying that the PRC police stations operating in Canada were closed, we found out that this is not the case either.

Finally, there is what we have been talking about today. The minister said he had no idea. Despite two contacts from Correctional Service Canada to his office and despite the Prime Minister's Office reaching out to him, the minister is saying he was never told about it. However, he has fired no one for that, which tells me that it is not true. If someone's staff members have failed them so badly, obviously, they cannot be trusted with the public safety file, and they have to go. The minister has fired no one. He is the one who should be fired. The buck stops with him.

What we have been calling on is the following:

...that the Minister of Public Safety immediately resign given his total lack of consideration for victims of crime in his mishandling of the transfer to more cozy arrangements of one of the worst serial killers in Canadian history, that this unacceptable move has shocked the public and created new trauma for the families of the victims and that the Minister of Public Safety's office knew about this for three months prior to [this vile killer's] transfer and instead of halting it, the information was hidden from the families.

That is what we moved today.

I will just conclude that this is about ministerial accountability. We have not seen that in the current Liberal government, despite so many failures. So many times, the government has misled the public and failed to take responsibility. Ministerial accountability seems to be dead in this country under the Liberal government.

Ultimately, I will say in conclusion that the Minister of Public Safety, more than most ministers, requires the public to trust him or her. The minister needs public trust; however, as I outlined today, in very real time, he has misled the public, let them down and broken that trust time and time again. This is the final straw. Unfortunately, it is time for him to resign.