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| English » Party History » Prorogation 2009 » Bill C-15 - An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act ended by prorogation. | |
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Bill C-15 LEGISinfo 40th Parliament - 2nd Session Also, see a long thread in English Forum discussion: " More Jail, No surprise from Conservatives " click through to see the developments since 2005. Liberals were also supporting Bill C-15 in the House. We may hope that passage is delayed?Perhaps the 41st general elections may happen first?
The NDP and Bloc voted against Bill C-15. The following is a good speech given by Mr. Bill Siksay (Burnaby—Douglas, NDP): Madam Speaker, I am glad to have this opportunity to participate in the third reading debate of Bill C-15, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. I come to this debate surprised, once again. I am surprised by this place and the kinds of things that happen here, and I am surprised by the basis on which sometimes the government acts and sometimes this place acts. What surprises me most is the inability and the refusal of the government and the Minister of Justice to provide any shred of evidence that this piece of legislation will have any of the effects they claim it will. There was an absolute inability by the Minister of Justice to provide one study that backs up that mandatory minimum sentences have any positive effect whatsoever on the illegal drug trade, that they have any effect whatsoever on the security of our communities, that they make any difference to the illegal drug trade in Canada. We have gone over this time and time again. Members from this side of the House, this corner of the House, the member for Vancouver East, have asked time and time again for any study, any evidence that would show the efficacy of mandatory minimum sentences, especially with regard to drug crimes, and nothing has been forthcoming. This has not gone unnoticed. The media have reported on it. There have been editorials in newspapers across Canada that the government has not been able to provide this evidence and has not done its due diligence. It has not done the work, and it has done this piece of legislation solely for crass political reasons. I find it very difficult to support legislation that has no basis in fact. There may be people out there who believe this is a good idea, but my job as a member of Parliament is to examine the facts and to make sure we spend the time in this institution to debate issues, that when we put forward legislation and make changes to our criminal law, that they will to the best of our knowledge accomplish the goals that are acclaimed for them. We have none of that with this bill. We do not have that ability, because there is absolutely no evidence. When the justice committee was studying Bill C-15, the member for Vancouver East was our New Democrat representative. The first witness to appear before the committee in its study of Bill C-15 was the Minister of Justice. The member’s very first question for the minister was on this issue of whether there was evidence to support the claim that mandatory minimum sentences were an effective tool. I will quote from the record of that committee where she asked the minister the following: One question I have for you is this. What evidence do you or the department or your government have that mandatory minimums will work for drug crimes, and will you table that evidence? I think we need to see what studies you rely on. They discussed a couple of other issues, and the minister did not address that first request. She asked again: I respect your opinion on that, but my question is what evidence do you have that mandatory minimums for these drug crimes will actually work, that they’re actually deterrents? What evidence is there? There was no answer from the minister in his response to that question, so the member for Vancouver East asked again: Do you have evidence? The minister said: We have the evidence that Canadians have told us that. That was his response. The member for Vancouver East asked again, “Any studies?” And the minister did not respond to that again. She went on. She did not give up. She was determined to find out if there was at least one study that the government was relying on. A minute later, she said: I take it you have no evidence, though, about mandatory minimums. The minister responded again in the same way he had before. The member for Vancouver East said again: But you have no evidence to offer. And the minister still did not provide anything. This was a regular theme through that committee and through that meeting. It was also an issue for witnesses who appeared. We know that the majority of witnesses who appeared before the committee did not support this legislation. The three witnesses who did support the legislation also could not provide any evidence or any studies that mandatory minimum sentences were effective in dealing with drug crime. We went through that whole process, and no one from the government, the minister, or the witnesses who supported the legislation could provide any evidence that it would be able to accomplish any of its purported goals. This is very, very serious. This is a blatant dereliction of duty. I cannot imagine. I said at the beginning of my remarks that this place sometimes shocks me. I am absolutely shocked that we would proceed with serious legislation like this without one piece of evidence, one study, to back up the need for this change in our criminal law. We already have serious penalties for trafficking, exporting, importing and production for the purposes of trafficking. The maximum penalty for that is life imprisonment. There can be no penalty in Canadian law more serious than life imprisonment. That already exists for these crimes. Many of the witnesses who appeared pointed to other studies and to other experiences that showed that mandatory minimum sentences were completely ineffectual. The justice department’s own study, in 2002, indicated that: Mandatory minimum sentences do not appear to influence drug consumption or drug-related crime in any measurable way. It was not the NDP who said that, it was not some drug-crazed hippy, the Department of Justice said that. The minister claimed he could not produce any evidence. He could have produced evidence against his position, but he chose not to do that too. He chose not to listen to the evidence from his own department. In 2005, the justice department also reported the following: There is some indication that minimum sentences are not an effective sentencing tool... Yet again, the Department of Justice said that mandatory minimum sentencing is not an effective tool. I wish the government had paid attention to the research and the work of its own department in this regard. On the other side of the equation, people who are concerned about this legislation can produce many studies showing that these are ineffective and inappropriate tools. The John Howard Society appeared before the standing committee that was studying the bill. It provided summaries of 17 studies from the United States and the United Kingdom on mandatory minimum sentences, lengthy sentencing terms, and recidivism, which all found that longer prison terms do not reduce recidivism. They do not stop crimes from being committed. Surely that has to be the goal of this legislation. The John Howard Society cited 18 other studies, which it did not provide summaries of, that came to the same conclusion. Detailed analysis from the United States Sentencing Commission, which was presented at committee, found that mandatory minimum sentences go after low-level criminals and they are ineffective in deterring crime. Mandatory minimum sentences are even ineffective in who they target in the criminal community. They go after what is called “the low hanging fruit”, the minor players. The big players who are causing the serious problems, the ones who cause serious disruption in our society, the ones who make the huge profits, are not touched by this kind of legislation. That evidence came from the United States Sentencing Commission, when it looked at its own failed attempts to use these laws in the United States. The reality is that the United States did fail. Back in 1973, New York pioneered these kinds of mandatory minimum sentences. They were called “the Rockefeller laws”, and they were a colossal failure. New York, California, Michigan, Delaware, Massachusetts, all the states that went into mandatory minimum sentences are now repealing them. They found that they did not make their communities safer, they did not stop involvement in crime, and they sucked up huge amounts of taxpayers’ dollars for the prison system, usually at the expense of the education system. We know mandatory minimum sentences have been a failure just by examining the evidence from the U.S., which went heavily into this process. Why the Conservative government would use a process similar to the failed process in the United States is beyond me when the evidence is so clear. The real answer to the typical ’why?’ question above is A RUNAWAY FASCIST PLUTOCRACY JUGGERNAUT. Canada is NOT a free and democratic society. Canada is actually a fascist plutocracy. THAT is why there is pot prohibition. All evidence indicates mandatory minimums, There is no evidence to prove otherwise. However, Conservatives and Liberals They are going to make things worse! That is blatant dishonesty, which they Marijuana law was always based on THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTIONS "WHY?" MUST That is what explains “why” governments, THE REAL AGENDA IS TO INCREASE "Drug wars" are achieving their real goals That generally serves fascist plutocracy. Those who profit from war & disease Their ability to back up lies with force, Thus, so many were persuaded to believe in bullshit. Lies, backed up by violence, We end up living in a kind of Bizarro Mirror World. It seems backwards, & proportionately backwards. It was because cannabis IS the single best plant Pot prohibition operates as a tool of persecution. Slavery made racism, which Drug laws made no more sense than racism. Overall, there are systems of organized lies, Civilizations are systems of organized robbery, Those social facts are inherent to reality. The social facts are that the real world is ONLY A CRAZY CULTURE, We reach points where the established civilization’s Although all civilizations must become Pot prohibition is an extreme example, Pot prohibition heads towards psychotic breakdown. Pot prohibition is a small component, Legalizing marijuana to make it become Marijuana laws have always been based Monetary and taxation laws were the same, Marijuana laws were only a relatively THAT is the real problem, and that is Pot prohibition was integrated into Any genuine solutions to the drug wars Bill C-15 was merely more proof that Canada was a small component inside Global money systems have been privatized. Thus, we have a ‘global government’ Big banks were the biggest gangsters: banksters. Governments are run by the territorial gangsters They developed the real debt and death control. They operated real money and murder systems. They originated that by slavery through racism. Criminalizing cannabis evolved via that history. Pot politics that does not address that is trivial. Pot prohibition fits inside of fascist plutocracy. That is the overall real problem we now face! The radical marijuana attitude accepts reality We should attempt to organize resistance, We should try to move beyond asking questions “why?” It should be time to base our actions on the real answers! Of course, there are no reasonable grounds to expect that. Instead, the spiral of dishonesty, backed up by violence, If there was no snap election called early enough, If Bill C-15 becomes law, then the cost of this "war on drugs" It is also probable that the current 75% The vast majority of the actual impact of Since governments are now running deficits, which means they Since 75% of wars on some drugs is against cannabis, Law court systems will become more overloaded, Meanwhile, most drug “crimes” will increase and worsen, There is nobody else who really benefits, except bigger banksters, The more enforcement of prohibition, There no evidence Bill C-15 shall work. There is no doubt it will backfire badly! Our hopes were for enough delays December 14th, 2009, it looked like Prorogation of ParliamentDecember 30, 2009, therefore, C-15 became history, not law. However, Conservatives have promised More Jail, No surprise from Conservatives |
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