Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House on behalf of the people of North Island—Powell River.

Before I start my speech on this particular bill, I want to take an opportunity to send my love and condolences to the “real” North Island, as they like to call it. It is an area of a lot of small communities and small indigenous communities that, unfortunately, have seen several deaths of young people in the last few months. I know they are reeling from this, and a lot of constituents have reached out to express their fear, their concern and their need for support for youth. I want to thank them for doing that, and I thank all the organizations in the region that are opening up their hearts and workplaces to accommodate and work with youth and their loved ones.

It is a very hard time. I just want to acknowledge that, for all of us in this place, we know that youth are the most important gift that we receive as humanity. When we lose them, in whatever way, it cuts us deeply. I just want to send my love and prayers to them and continue to work with them towards solutions so we can protect our youth much more effectively.

However, we are here today to talk about Bill C-320, which is a private member's bill from the member for Oshawa. The bill talks about having a requirement to provide victims with an explanation as to why a specific parole date had been chosen, so victims can better understand the parole system. I think it would be a minor change, but it could have a significant impact on people. We know that too many people who are victimized often feel revictimized when they hear information that they are surprised to receive. Therefore, as we move forward collectively in this place, making our systems as clear as possible just helps to build that connection and provide some orientation when people are going through very hard and difficult times.

When we look at the justice system, we see high rates of incarceration of indigenous and racialized people, those living in poverty and, of course, those with mental health and addictions issues, which is really concerning. I do not know if “justice” really belongs in the title. This reminds me of several indigenous communities and elders I have spent time with. Every story is a little bit different, but the main theme is this: When we have a person in our society who is behaving in a way that is hard, stressful or unpleasant for the society, we do not blame that person. Instead, we step back and look at the whole society to see what is happening within the collective that is creating this response in the person.

I think that is a really hard thing to do; it shows how strong so many indigenous communities are, because they have that capacity. When the system is broken, it breaks people; it breaks communities, and we see this way too often. It is extremely stressful for those who are experiencing it, but when we objectify it, push it away and say “those people are this way”, we dehumanize them. I hope that the idea here is to actually look at ways to collect people together to better inform them of the process, to make it collectively safer for everyone and to recognize that our system is broken. As we move through these small changes, we have to start looking at what big changes need to happen to really fix some of these huge, gaping holes.

We have heard a lot of talk, especially from the Conservatives, about Bill C-5. I understand that their methodology is about being tough on crime, but I am more interested in what actually works. I really believe that we should be listening to the people who spend their lives in these fields and explore these realities, because we need to make sure that our communities are safer. One thing that concerns me is that we often forget to invest in the preventative measures. Instead of dragging people out of the river, prevention means that we go upstream to find out why they are falling in the river. However, we do not see enough of that.

There were some recommendations in the report from the justice committee on improving support for victims of crime. We really need to start looking at this. This is one step toward it, but we need to do some work and make sure we are working with all the provinces and territories to provide support for victims across Canada. We need to look at it from a national perspective as well. I do not want to impose on provinces, but maybe we need to have some standards we need to meet. What is really unfortunate is when one rule applies here but does not apply somewhere else in our country, which can often create divisions. Also, it can be very confusing if we ever have anything that is cross-jurisdiction.

We also have to think of clarity of message so that when people are victimized, the more we are collectively doing similar processes, the more effective things will be. With more repetition, people will start to know what to expect.

In the report, there was a very important recommendation, “That sections 6, 7 and 8 of the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights be amended to clarify that the information to which victims of crime are entitled should be provided automatically rather than on request”. The recommendation does go on from there, but this is an important action we need to start taking. Again, when a person is victimized, it can be very overwhelming. We know that when working with people who have trauma, one needs to repeat things and make sure they understand. Asking them to request is often asking too much from people who have already been victimized.

Another recommendation I want to touch on is recommendation 8: “That the Department of Justice promote and expand restorative justice opportunities, and that adequate funding be provided to restorative justice programs.” In my riding, for example, the Comox Valley Community Justice Centre does some very innovative work. It has multiple people trained. It works very closely with indigenous communities to make sure the process is inclusive. It does some very hard work. Restorative justice is not supported enough, so I would love to see more federal funding.

When people who victimize have to accept accountability, have to be accountable to their community and have to really sit and hear the impact on the person they victimized, it changes the dynamics. It gives the victim a lot more power to speak out, to share and to have impact. It really starts to create community. This is an important recommendation.

I will be supporting the bill the member put forward. It is a small step that is somewhat helpful, but we have a lot of work to do. The system is breaking people, and there are too many broken people in this country. We should all do better by them.

Rachel Blaney

$647,129.00