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Results: 1 - 15 of 51
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I abstained on the first bill and I am voting the opposite on this one. I am opposed to the bill.
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. The Minister of Justice keeps referring to the fact that the Conservative Party agreed with all the recommendations in the report from the special committee established in the House to study the non-medical use of drugs, in particular, marijuana.
I and my colleague from Crowfoot wrote a minority report on that report and we dealt with the issue of marijuana in that report. I did not and have not agreed that the criminalization of marijuana would be satisfactory to our country. However, I said in the report that for it to be successful there would have to be a number of conditions in place before I could even consider it.
Hon. Dominic LeBlanc: That is debate.
Mr. Randy White: It is not debate, Mr. Speaker. I am laying the grounds for the erroneous statements made by the Minister of Justice. I do not agree with the decriminalization of marijuana and would not have agreed in the minority report.
I would ask the minister to refrain from making those statements as they reflect poorly on my judgment more so than his.
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-427, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (failure to stop at scene of accident).
He said: Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to have this bill seconded by my friend and colleague from Okanagan—Shuswap. The bill is the second opportunity for the House of Commons to make productive changes to hit and run driving laws.
Today I am laying Carley's law on the table of the House of Commons. Carley's law has become representative of the desperate need to repair the injustices of the courtrooms throughout this nation that have failed victims of hit and run driving.
I first wrote Carley's law in 2003. Hundreds of hit and run driving situations have occurred in Canada, and since it was first defeated at second reading in the House in June, over 15 more incidents have occurred.
It is well known that both lawyers and judges are settling for minimum sentences for those guilty of hit and run crimes. Carley's law seeks to rectify the failure of the courtroom to deal with the seriousness of the problem, by giving a minimum sentence of seven years for hit and run driving causing death and a minimum sentence of four years for a hit and run crime causing injury.
Carley Regan was just 13 years old when the crime of hit and run—
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, this particular bill, which I addressed last night, gives me great concern about maximum penalties. Maximum penalties in this bill are 10 years for one instance, 5 years for another and life for another.
However, as we have seen in this country, in courtrooms right across this land, maximums are seldom if ever given. In fact, there is a disproportionate penalty-crime ratio, and in many cases where families and victims think that some individuals are getting a serious penalty for a crime, they do not get it. Drugs in particular are some of the worst, where we see $400,000 and $500,000 grow ops and individuals getting a $500 fine for them. If I ever saw motivation for such a criminal activity, that would be it.
I would like to ask my colleague what he thinks the rationale is behind the government issuing these maximum penalties? Recently the government stood and said it was getting serious with the crystal meth business and would issue some maximum penalties when it knows full well, as in the courts in particular in British Columbia, that the penalties even for crystal meth production are very low.
I would like him to explain the rationale to the people watching this, not necessarily to the other side because I do not think those members will ever understand it. Could he perhaps give us an idea of how we can get around this inability to get the judges and the lawyers in the land to commit to discretionary decision-making that is conservative as opposed to lucrative for the criminal?
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, we in the Conservative Party support Bill C-53. I want to make a couple of comments about things that take place in the real world outside Parliament because I spend a fair bit of time on street issues.
The hon. member on the other side talked about organized crime groups having substantial assets. I along with many other people really wonder what it is going to take in Canada to get organized crime groups off the streets.
We watch every day as the Hells Angels parade around the country with their nice jackets and their bikes and that sort of thing. Now they are disguising themselves by wearing suits. We are still allowing these people to rove around the country like they are some kind of bicycle heroes, but that is not the case. Those people are selling drugs to our kids. They are involved in prostitution. They are involved in all kinds of crime, and yet we tolerate their existence. I have a hard time with that quite frankly, and it is difficult to believe that it even happens.
Bill C-53 is important, but it is also important to follow up on my colleague's comments. This should not just be about the seizure of assets, because it is after the assets are seized that one of the biggest problems begins. I am going to cover several instances that I have been involved with just to give the House some examples. I also want to mention the contradiction in our laws today with respect to things like seizing assets.
I am very much involved in the debate about harm reduction in drugs, which of course is not harm reduction but rather harm extension. Harm reduction extends the use of drugs. It does not reduce the harm at all, as we will find out too late one day. Harm reduction involves injection sites, needle exchanges, crack inhalation sites, issuance of heroin to individuals, and the legalization of marijuana. Lately it also involves roving injection teams in Vancouver, if anybody has ever heard of anything so absurd.
Roving injection teams involve addicts who rove the streets and back alleys with needles to inject incapacitated addicts because they are too incapacitated to inject themselves. Not too long ago that was called attempted murder. When individuals walk into an injection site with illegal drugs in their hands, one has to wonder why there is some kind of free bubble zone to allow that when we are supposedly saying those kind of drugs are illegal to possess. The government has to get out of its schizophrenic mode where basically it is saying that drugs are against the law, but it is okay to break the law.
That is my preamble to my examples of this bill, which is really talking about seizure of assets, and it is a good thing.
Not too long ago there was a drug bust. It not only included drugs, but about eight or ten feet away in the rafters there was about $400,000 all wrapped up in plastic which the police took out of the building. This case went to court and the judge, in his infinite wisdom, gave all the money back to the dealers because they said they did not know it was there, that it was just something that must have been up in the rafters. Poor dears. He virtually gave the drug dealers $400,000 because in that courtroom with that defence lawyer, they did the wrong thing. They went after the defence of that drug money.
Although we have laws in this country, the problem is that lawyers on the defence side and the judges making the decisions are making the wrong decisions applicable to laws like this. It is not just the law that has seizure of assets that is important, it is the application of the law within the courtroom. I do not know what it is going to take for us in our society to go to the defence lawyers and say that we all have a problem, that for goodness' sake they know where the $400,000 has come from. It cannot be given back to the dealers. They would just use it to buy and sell again.
I cannot say how many times I have been involved in situations where money has been seized, put in trust because it cannot be given back to the dealers, when in fact the lawyers can get their hands on it. They go in on behalf of the dealers, charge a fee of the amount that is in the trust account, get all the money out of the trust account, give part of it back to the dealers and keep a good chunk of change for themselves. Those lawyers out there know who I am talking about. That is trafficking. It is wrong. It is stupid. It is not just a matter of setting a law to seize assets, it is the application of the law after it is made. These laws are not made to be broken or challenged. They are not made to have application under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They are made to prevent illegal use of money.
How do these guys get around it? I have mentioned before that recently a young man was kidnapped in my community. He was thrown into a van and pistol whipped. This sounds like something out of Terminator II in the United States. He was in the van which was involved in a high-speed chase with the police. The bad guys drove through a stoplight and killed a woman who was entering the intersection on a green light. They rolled the van and took off from the scene of the accident. It was a hit and run. Four of them were caught. All four were charged. They had guns, money and drugs in the car.
I was in the courtroom. They dropped all charges against three of them who said they did not know the other guy, that they did not know there was money in the van or to whom the drugs and gun belonged. It is the application of the laws. I do not know what it is in the House. We develop good laws and they are broken all the time.
There was hardly enough room around the front of the bench for lawyers because there were so many of them. Quite frankly it was a laughing stock of a zoo. Ultimately the driver of the vehicle was charged with dangerous driving. There were no gun charges. Everything was dropped.
The guy who was kidnapped, who was a witness, was asked what he did. He said, “I deliver”. “What do you deliver?” “Drugs”. He was asked if he liked that and he said no because his supervisor put him on the midnight shift from dial-a-dope.
These stories sound bizarre, but they are in fact true. What I am saying in the House of Commons is that while we have a bill we support, we have to approach those in the legal industry and tell them to apply this the right way and not to abuse where our intentions are going.
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I think this is my 12th year in this place and I have been on this justice issue for all 12 years. I came here and wrote the victims' bill of rights and the sex offender registry initially. I still see things getting worse. As much as the government writes bills, a lot of the issues are not being addressed. My friend Chuck Cadman spent a lot of time on the young offenders act, and it was changed, but there are still many problems unaddressed in the youth justice act. We are miles behind the drug issue in this House, from all sides. The government is supposed to take the initiative. We are miles behind these things.
I do not understand, and I suppose I will leave this House not understanding, why it is that a government can sit in office and be so far behind the real world out there. I know there is a philosophical difference between the Conservatives' approach to justice and the Liberals' approach to justice, but it cannot possibly be that wide a gap. The issues we are talking about here are common to everybody, such as the support of our police and the justice issue.
Everybody in this House knows that the the time put in for the crimes today is not what it should be. Yet on the other side we hear comments like, “We have to use judicial discretion”. We have tried judicial discretion. It is not working. Just go to British Columbia please, and look at the record. I can refer to thousands of cases to show the record. There is a problem.
It is getting pretty close to the time when we will insist on minimum sentences in this country. If the Liberals are not prepared to do that, then there should be sentencing grids. If they are not prepared to do that, then they should be prepared to look for election of judges or appointments of judges for a shorter period. This is being forced on our society because of inaction across the way with the Liberal government. It is coming.
The Liberals might smile at that little comment, but if they do not take action, this side will be government one day and all of the things that the Liberals failed to do are going to be implemented. I do not know how we are going to treat, ultimately, this discretion of judges, but somewhere along the line society here in this country will insist on those three actions. One precipitates the other. If they do not do one thing, then they should get used to the other one.
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, in effect the onus is still on the Crown to prove that it has a repeat offender, more or less. In most cases that money is not found with a repeat offender. This is somebody who is sent out with little or no record. There will be a big problem resulting from that.
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I have petitions here asking Parliament to define marriage in federal law as the lifelong union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
I have many more petitions, Mr. Speaker, asking that Parliament assemble to vote in favour of Bill C-275, an act to amend the Criminal Code (failure to stop at scene of accident), to make sentencing for hit and run offenders more severe. Bill C-275 is long gone and was voted down but will re-enter the House.
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, a matter of significant national interest has arisen that requires immediate debate in the House and, according to Standing Order 52, I so ask. The issue is that of extreme fluctuations and increases in and the unpredictability of gas prices.
The recent gas increases have seen significant profit at the pumps and in federal government coffers through taxation. Canadians are rightly alarmed that this affects the cost of goods purchased and transportation costs of all types and there is substantial worry about rising costs of home heating this winter.
The debate is necessary not just to discuss rising costs but to provide the House and Canadians with basic information on the following issues: who is profiting from such increases and by how much; forecasts and consumer protection related to increases; the proper role and action from the House of Commons; the ramifications of cutting federal tax on fuels; and the impact on various businesses and industries.
This matter is on the agenda of all Canadians, who are for the most part bewildered about the fluctuating gas prices.
I sincerely ask you, Mr. Speaker, to put this on the agenda of the House of Commons so that Canadians will believe that we too have an interest in dealing with this matter, and now.
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I will be speaking to this in 40 minutes or so, but before I do that, I need to have a couple of questions answered. The penalties we see here in this bill are life, 10 years and 5 years, maximum. Members opposite know that in the courtrooms today these maximum penalties are being minimized, mainly because of the antics of the judges and lawyers in the courtroom.
I am very concerned. Just because government puts on maximum penalties does not mean that we are going to get tougher on these issues. It very likely means that life will go on in the courtroom the way we see it now. I am really reluctant to go with maximum penalties these days. I think we should be dealing with minimums. That goes for a lot of laws, such as drug laws and hit and run offences and so forth. I would like the hon. member to address that.
I also need some clarification about how most of the bill addresses the trafficking of people outside of Canada. I work with a lot of people who are being forced into working for drug gangs. They are being used as muscle, for driving cars, or for whatever the drug gang wants. The threats are that the gang will kill the person's brother, sister, mother, father or grandfather and so on. I just want to make sure for my own edification that this bill will surely cover those kinds of incidents as well as trafficking and prostitution outside the borders. We are into a new day and age when these drug gangs, which I will speak about in a few minutes, are coercing young people right out of school to work for them.
I would like those two questions answered before I get into this subject, because I really do not want to make any mistakes on where I am going with it.
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
Madam Speaker, I want to talk about the things that we support in Bill C-49. I am going to relay to members of the House and people listening across this country some situations that I have been involved with that involve exploitation. They are not situations involving the exploitation of somebody outside the country; it is the exploitation of somebody here in our country.
What I am about to describe happens all the time to young girls and boys in Canada. I am going to tell the House about a young man who was in grade 11 who was approached by a gang of bottom dwelling thugs who sell drugs. These thugs approached him with bats and golf clubs and said that they would not only beat him but they would thoroughly and resoundingly pound his younger brother and sister and grandmother if he did not join them. I am telling this story for the first time and everything is absolutely factual. This young man decided to go with this gang because he did not want his family harmed. He was taken away to a home in the city and tortured. He was deprived of sleep and food and was beaten quite resoundingly.
They said that he was now a member of their gang and that he would be the muscle, meaning he would collect drug bills. It is also the most dangerous job one could get in a gang that sells drugs. Normally the people who owe the gang are delinquent. When someone as the muscle goes to collect from them, that person may be harmed, shot or any other such thing.
This young fellow managed to get away from that group. He went into hiding. He thought he was safe. He went out a little while later and the gang got him again. They beat him resoundingly. I am talking about a 16 year old.
It is said that once people are in a gang in Canada they are in it forever.
The gang assigned to this young fellow a debt owed by another fellow who worked for the gang who had been picked up by the police and lost $3,000 worth of drugs. He was told he must pay this debt. He could not pay it of course. He was not paid for being muscle because he was in fact coerced into going with them.
The young fellow got away from them a second time, but the third time he was not so lucky. They tortured him. They burned his hand thoroughly with a knife blade right through his hand. He is currently in hiding.
Why do I relay this story? This is not about somebody we are shipping out of this country. This is something that is happening to children every day in Canada. This is not an isolated story. This is about what I call bottom dwelling thugs who think they can run our communities by stealing our kids off the street and threatening them and getting them into the drug trade. Once they are into the drug trade, they eventually are wanted by the police or other drug dealers. The police do not know any different. As far as they know the individual is in the drug trade.
This young man was forced into that. He has never done drugs. He has never gotten into trouble at school. He has passed every year. But now he cannot get into school because he poses a risk to the other students should he go back in and the gang tries to get him.
If we talk about exploitation of our children, we had better wake up to the fact that they are being exploited in our communities by people who think they should run our communities their way. This happens a lot in Vancouver. It happens in every city across the country. There are people who do not deserve to be outside; they deserve to be in jail, quite frankly. They are exploiting our children. When children go missing and we cannot understand it, we should not first think that they got into drugs and left home. There could very well be other reasons, such as they have been taken by a gang and coerced into doing what they are doing. In fact, they may even be protecting their families because as far as they know great damage would come to their families and their siblings should they not do what they are told to do. This is serious. This bill on exploitation of people had better cover this.
My question earlier to colleagues on the other side asked whether or not the maximum penalties would be a decent deterrent. My concern is that we will end up like we do on a lot of the drug issues, that these kinds of issues will end up in court and the judge will issue some minor penalty.
One might ask why this young fellow did not go to the police. Well, he did, of course. The comment from the police was that he should leave town and finish grade 12. Why was that comment made? Because if the gang members ended up going to court, they would likely get little or no penalty and would come looking for him. The police suggested that he leave town. That is just unacceptable. What that is saying is that we have lost confidence in the court system to issue adequate penalties to these bottom dwelling thugs who will only go back and make life miserable for this young man and his family. This is unacceptable.
We have lost confidence and the police have lost confidence in our judicial system to administer the justice system, to add deterrents for people like that. That is why I say there is a serious problem. The maximum penalties, if the judges issue minor penalties, we might as well kiss them goodbye when these young people come to us and say they need help. They will not come forward, as this young man does not want to, because they do not believe they can get help.
I am sincere when I say this to members on the other side. This is a good bill, but my concern is that if there are no minimum penalties for such disgusting behaviour by these bottom dwelling thugs, nothing is going to happen. They are going to continue to take kids off the street and abuse them.
This young fellow has been in hiding for five or six weeks now. He cannot stay there forever, but he is afraid to come outside. What do these thugs do? They do not wait for him to come and join them, they go get other children. They get another one, and if that does not work out, they will get another one. When does it become our children that they get? At what point do we say they cannot have any of them, that it is they who have to leave the community? This has got to stop.
I hope this bill is a good bill, I sincerely do, but we must give confidence to these young men and girls who are being exploited in their own communities to be muscle or to drive those drug cars. It happens all the time. What I related to members is not an isolated incident. I can tell members about the young girl who was in a crack house being exploited by 30 and 40 year old men. When her mother went to the police and said she had to get her daughter out of there, they said, “The age of sexual consent is 14. She can stay. She is 15 years old”. The mother could not go get her. They went to welfare, who said to send her over and they would give her a cheque. What kind of answer is that?
The problem lies in the confidence, or the lack thereof, in our justice system. I am not trying to make politics out of this. I have been in and out of these courtrooms for 13 years with victims of crime. I know what I am talking about. We do not have confidence in the judicial decisions any more. I have seen it in hundreds of cases related to the growing of marijuana. I have seen it in dozens of cases related to crystal meth. I have seen it with James Armbruster, who had 63 prior convictions before he raped yet another woman in my riding. One of those convictions was for raping his grandmother. Do we have confidence in those judges who should have put that person behind bars after 10, 15, 30, 40, 50 or 60 convictions?
Maximum penalties are not doing the trick. We in this House have an obligation to put an end to the tyranny of these drug gangs and these frequent and consistent repeat offenders.
I think I got my message across. I hope those who are watching outside of this House send e-mails to acknowledge their frustrations with the court system that is not addressing the problem. This young man needs help. So do the young men and women who are being coerced into these drug gangs every day. We have been looking at this wrong.
I spent a lot of time with people involved in drugs. Often people say, “Well, another kid gone bad. He must be doing drugs, breaking the law”. I did not realize the extent to which they are being forced to be involved in these drug gangs, until now. I have run across it a number of times. I know what we are addressing here but what is bothering me and what we must keep in mind is that trafficking of people is going on in our communities as I speak.
I can talk about high schools and their sex clubs. Does everybody know what a sex club is? A sex club is young girls doing tricks in high school. They do a trick and they get a cap or they get a joint laced with meth or whatever they are looking for. They do not see this as prostitution. It is seen as a one on one trade but it is exploitation as its worse. These young kids may think it is trade but they get the worst deal of all: a life of addiction. This kind of stuff is exploitation. It is not just grabbing a child or somebody off the street and sending them to China or some other country. Exploitation is going on in our schools every day.
We have a minority government situation. It really is incumbent upon all of us to quit with the partisan politics. We need to start listening and if this is the case and it is in our communities, and it is, then we need to do something about it. I sincerely hope this bill addresses it but I fear it will not. I am leaving the House of Commons but I hope those left after me will think of this and keep on top of it because this young man today needs our help. He has no confidence, nor do I or the police, that a judge is going to give it to him.
By the way, after the lawyer, who is paid by the known drug gang, gets through defending these thugs that is when the plea bargaining starts, the deals are made and the judge says that he knows the poor little boy kidnapped somebody and forced the person to deal drugs but he had a bad upbringing. We have to forget that kind of story. These people are hauling our kids out of school. One of the conditions these people have is that they cannot go to school.
Who are these people? Who in the name of blue blazes do these people think they are? Do we not run this country? Are we not in charge? Is someone not capable of hauling these people off the streets and doing something with them?
I support the bill but I sincerely hope the government moves away from this business of maximum penalties. I have seen too much for too long to have confidence that it will be applied appropriately. There are too many people counting on us to do better.
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
Madam Speaker, I believe the member opposite said Bill C-43. I am not sure there has been any consultation on this side so at the moment I am inclined to disagree with that.
Hon. Claudette Bradshaw: It goes to second reading automatically.
Mr. Randy White: If it goes to second reading automatically maybe she does not need the point of order. However unless I hear differently from the other side I am going to oppose it.
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
Madam Speaker, my oh my, when is this going to stop?
We have a government with this mentality that legalizing drugs or legalizing prostitution will take care of the problem. Legalizing prostitution does not take care of the problem.
Prostitution is an offence against women. This is what it is. Ask any mother if she thinks the legalizing of prostitution is a good idea for her daughter. I cannot believe the mentality of somebody saying that legalizing prostitution will fix it. Has the member never been to Holland? Has he never watched that disgraceful sideshow of women standing in storefronts and people outside staring at them?
What is with this mentality that if drugs are legalized they will go away? Does the government think that if it legalizes marijuana the criminals will pack up their bags and go to some other country? These criminals are going to feed our kids meth, ecstasy and everything else.
I am disappointed in that question because I think the member already knew my answer to it. Prostitution is the abuse of women. It is not an issue to be legalized. Let us get it right.
View Randy White Profile
CPC (BC)
Madam Speaker, one of these gangs, another little gang, kidnapped a young man from his car and threw him into a van. They got into a high speed chase with the police, smacked into another van and killed an innocent lady at an intersection. The van contained guns and drugs. They all ran away from the scene of the accident and left her to die.
I was in the courtroom when these guys appeared before a judge and three of the four gang guys got off and the driver got dangerous driving. There was no charge for the gun and no charge for the drugs because they were smart enough to know that if they said it on the floor somewhere the lawyers would say that they did not know it was there.
That is why when there is a crack house the drugs and the guns are usually right across the street so that they keep an eye on them. If there is a drug bust the police do not associate one with the other and the lawyers get them off.
In court a lawyer asked the young man who was kidnapped what he did and he said that he delivered. He was then asked what he delivered and he said that he delivered drugs . He was then asked whether he liked it and he said that he did not and that his supervisor had put him on the evening shift. We could have sworn that he was talking about pizza deliveries. He was then asked how he felt about delivering drugs and he said that they needed it. He completed disassociated himself from this.
That is the attitude going on out there. Our lawyers have to stop defending bottom dwellers like this. They have to sit down with prosecutors and say that they have a common problem and try to resolve it, instead of trying to get anyone off who will pay them. There is a bad attitude in these courtrooms and it has to change.
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