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Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege to be able to rise on behalf of the great people of southwest and west central Saskatchewan, and to be able to do so here in the month of June. We know June is the graduation season for all of the kids in elementary school who are moving up to high school. The kids who are in high school and have the whole world in front of them are graduating and looking to either start their first job or go on to university, or whatever the next step of their life is. June is an exciting time for them. There are a lot of exciting things happening in their lives. We also know that generation of people is, for many of us here in the House of Commons, why we are here and why we do what we do. I think this is also very relevant when we talk about Bill C-16, the victims bill. I want to start with a couple of things. There is a bit of a scourge happening in society. There are many people who are victims of sexual assault and violence. It is getting out of hand. I am sure that my colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable—Lotbinière, whom I am going to split my time with, is going to be able to elaborate on that a bit more. I look forward to hearing what he has to say. Saskatchewan, in particular, has some of the highest rates of domestic violence in the country per capita, for example. We know this is a scourge on society, so I applaud the government's attempts to try to take a few steps and measures that would rein some of this in and get things under control. However, at the same time, we see with this bill that the government has put forward a measure around the inclusion of clause 63, which would essentially allow mandatory minimums to be ignored. I find that to be very egregious. Here is why. I am going to read these out. I have to google them really quickly. I typed in “man caught with child sexual exploitation and assault material” and a plethora of headlines come up. Here is one from today. This one is from 47 minutes ago. It reads, “Man Arrested in Sexual Assault Investigation”. This one is from six hours ago. It reads, “Niagara Falls man accused of breaching order to stay away from children”. This one reads, “Markham Man Arrested for Using Social Media to Sexually Lure and Extort Youth”. That is from five hours ago. This one is from one day ago. It reads, “Male Arrested Following Child Luring and Sexual Exploitation Investigation in Whitby”. It goes on and on and on. An Alberta man, for example, was recently caught with over 500,000 images of child sexual abuse and exploitation material. In Quebec, 23 men had over four million files of sexual exploitation and abuse material of children. This is disgusting. It is ridiculous. The fact is that there is now a provision that would allow somebody to escape a mandatory minimum. Let me be clear. Part of the reason why the bill came forward is that the Supreme Court struck down a mandatory minimum for child sexual abuse and exploitation material. It is absolutely disgusting that this happened as well. When we see in the news the number of files that are out there and just how many people continue to access them, and when we see that there is the ability for a soft-on-crime approach to be taken because of this clause, it is just absolutely disgusting. If we want to try to signal to people that we actually care about victims and that we are going to prioritize the needs of victims, taking some of these very heinous crimes seriously, establishing a floor and making sure that nobody, under any circumstance, will serve below that minimum would be acceptable. In the court case that was referenced with the bill, a hypothetical case was presented. That is why the mandatory minimum I am referring to was struck down. It was completely made up. It was not a story based on any evidence. It was not even the case that should have been referenced, which was very different from what was used to determine why they should strike down the mandatory minimum. If we are going to take things seriously in this country, we need to value our citizens. We need to value people who have been victimized. Allowing people to get off easy is not how we are going to deal with this. There are many other examples of this. I pulled up examples of people who were let off. Here is another one. It reads, “Calgary man who sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl gets reduced sentence”. I am sick and tired of seeing headlines like that. Canadians are sick and tired of seeing headlines like that. We do not want to see them anymore. Establishing mandatory minimums and having them in place shows that we take these kinds of crimes very seriously. The prosecution and the judges have discretion and can use leniency. They can increase a sentence if they want to, or they can go with the minimum, but establishing those minimum sentences shows that we take these things very seriously. There are many other charges that people can get away with very easily, and I am going to highlight a few more. For example, another one says a scam victim says Canadian sentences are a joke after a fraudster got house arrest. That is another one of these issues. Seniors are being victimized over and over again. In fact, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre says between 17,000 or even 20,000 direct fraud and financial abuse reports come in regularly in Canada. Also, 7.8% of the Canadian population aged 15 and over has experienced fraud in some shape or form. We know seniors are targeted. I think it comes to about $137 million annually. Seniors are being victimized when it comes to fraud. This is the kind of thing for which a person is able to get only house arrest. In the case that I referenced, this person was sentenced to only 18 months of house arrest, but there were exceptions. They were allowed to leave the house multiple times a week to go to the gym and, after six months, the conditions required them to be home only between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. If someone who is actively defrauding people is given house arrest, that means they can continue to carry out the very crimes they were committing in the comfort of their own home. Those kinds of people should be in jail. They are preying on the people who are the most vulnerable. Going back to seniors, my wife's grandpa was a victim of fraud. He sincerely thought somebody in tech support was helping him out, but they were not. He was defrauded out of thousands of dollars. He was targeted because he is a senior, and seniors generally tend to be far more trusting and tend to believe something like that, as in that particular case. Fortunately, he was able to eventually get his money back, but this happens over and over again. When these people are caught, they are given house arrest. These are the kinds of things we are seeing, and we do not want to see them happening any longer. Let me take another look at some of the other areas where mandatory minimums would be allowed to be circumvented. There is aggravated sexual assault with a gun. It is bad enough that people accessing, selling, recording and making child sexual abuse and exploitation material would be able to avoid a mandatory minimum. Aggravated sexual assault with a gun, human trafficking, multiple violent firearms offences, extortion with a firearm, weapons trafficking and drive-by shootings are the kinds of things for which mandatory minimums would be looked over and discarded because of clause 63. If we are going to have a serious discussion about dealing with the issue of crime and the fact that so many people end up with bail instead of jail, establishing and re-establishing some basic mandatory minimums in this bill would have been great. Not including a clause that would allow mandatory minimums to be completely disregarded would have been great as well. That shows we are not taking victims' concerns seriously. I get lots of emails to my constituency office and my Hill office from people wanting a tough-on-crime approach. People want to see mandatory minimums become a thing because they set the tone. They let the criminals know we take these crimes seriously and there will be a punishment if they are caught. When they find out they can get just house arrest or a reduced sentence, they are going to keep doing what they are doing. There was a case in my home community at the local courthouse, where a person's charges were stayed for fentanyl trafficking. They had enough fentanyl in their possession to kill hundreds and thousands of people. Their charges were stayed and they were released. This is ridiculous. This is the kind of stuff people are sick and tired of seeing. They do not want clause 63, which would allow mandatory minimums to be skirted, to be included. There are some good pieces in this bill that I wish the Liberals were serious about. I wish they would deal with the good parts of the bill. If they had accepted our amendments to put even some safeguards around clause 63, it would have been helpful, but they voted against every single measure proposed by the Conservatives at committee to protect victims, which is shameful.
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