The Liberal Party of Canada will vote against Bill C-59 because it introduces sweeping and expensive changes to the parole system that would alter the parole rules for every non-violent, first-time federal offender, regardless of the severity of the crime.
“This is a bad bill, negotiated in secret by the Bloc-Conservative coalition, that goes too far, costs too much and targets too many minor offenders,” said Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. “It’s another example of the Conservatives’ dumb-on-crime agenda. We can not support this bill.”
Bill C-59, which amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to eliminate Accelerated Parole Review (APR), will result in at least 1,500 low risk, first-time, non-violent offenders each year spending at least six months longer in prison at the taxpayer’s expense.
“Nearly two-thirds of those affected by C-59 will be women, a third of whom are Aboriginal, often with addiction issues,” said Liberal Public Safety Critic Mark Holland. “This is very far from punishing serious white-collar criminals like Vincent Lacroix and Earl Jones.”
Liberals tried to amend C-59 so it only applied to fraud over $100,000 in order to prevent serious white-collar fraudsters from benefiting from accelerated parole, while allowing offenders who commit minor offences to continue accessing community-supervised rehabilitation.
With the annual estimated cost to house an offender in a federal facility pegged at $88,000, the added cost of Bill C-59 would be a minimum of $130 million annually, PLUS the cost of additional facilities. Just as the government has refused to reveal the true cost of their other American-style crime bills, they have not outlined how they will pay for this bill.
The Quebec Bar Association, l’Association des avocats en droit carcéral du Québec and Canada’s Correctional Investigator have all come out against the Bill .
The Liberal Party was the first party to put forward a comprehensive, gold-standard proposal to deal with white-collar crime over 18 months ago.
“The Conservatives should have acted on our proposals when they had the chance,” said Liberal Justice Critic Marlene Jennings. “If they had listened 18 months ago, Vincent Lacroix would still be in jail today. Instead, the Conservatives have rushed ahead with a bad bill solely because they faced public criticism.”
