Good Afternoon Everyone,



I would like to thank you, the Barrie Chamber of Commerce for the opportunity to speak here to you today as your federal Member of Parliament.  I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Sybil Goruk, Executive Director of the Barrie Chamber of Commerce for her work on the Physician Recruitment Task Force and the volunteers from the Chamber that assist us with our Passport Clinics.  We have held 4 very successful clinics over the last year due to this partnership.



I wanted to use today’s Networking at Noon opportunity to update you on some of the law and order reforms that have taken place in Ottawa.  It is particularly appropriate that we meet here in the north end of Barrie today because I still remember the shock and horror of the beating of a young teenager in a Tall Trees Park in northern Barrie 9 years ago when I was the City Councillor for this area of town. We hosted a community meeting and we were all left with a feeling of emptiness.   The penal consequences that should have followed this criminal act were never achieved because of the inadequacies of our youth criminal justice act.    Those residents in the north end of Barrie, who had their comfort and sense of safety shattered, deserve better. 
Canadians deserve to feel safe within the confines of their own community.  This is not too much to ask.

Canada is a great country. Traditionally we have had low rates of crime.  In fact, our peaceful, law-abiding communities are part of Canada’s traditional identity and values.



The safe streets and safe neighbourhoods that we as Canadians have come to expect as part of our way of life are threatened by rising levels of crime. Clearly this cannot go on.  If we are to protect our Canadian way of life, we need to crack down on gun, gang and drug crime.

It is for this reason that I am so proud to serve as a member of the Conservative government and under the leadership of the Rt. Hon Stephen Harper.

Our government is committed to criminal justice reform; we have made it a cornerstone of our governing agenda.

Our Government is proud to have pushed for strong criminal justice system changes for the past two years. Today, families and communities across Canada can feel safer.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged to tackle street racing by creating a new criminal code offence.  Just one month later our government passed legislation which increased the punishment for all Dangerous Driving offences with penalties of up to 14 years and lifetime imprisonment if the offence caused a death.

Last winter, the House of Commons passed the “Tackling Violent Crime” Act.


I am proud to say that last May; three of the 5 important provisions contained in this piece legislation came into force. They are:

• 
Better protection for youth from adult sexual predators by increasing the age of protection for sexual activity from 14 years to 16 years; 
  
• This will help protect children from sexual predators, including Internet cyber-criminals, who represent a whole new challenge for the RCMP.

• Tougher mandatory jail time for serious gun crimes; and

• New bail provisions which require those accused of serious gun crimes to show why they shouldn’t be kept in jail while awaiting trial.

The two remaining provisions came into effect on July 2, 2008.  They are:

• 
More effective sentencing and monitoring to prevent dangerous, high-risk offenders from offending again; and
• 
New ways to detect and investigate drug-impaired driving as well as stronger penalties for impaired driving.

The local MADD branch in Barrie has pushed this initiative for several years and I can tell you that when they had their charity walk two weeks ago it was certainly a proud moment to be able to express progress on having tougher laws for impaired drivers.

This Act contains long-awaited measures that will help safeguard Canadians against those who commit serious and violent crimes.



The days of soft, lenient penalties are over. These changes have been long overdue.



In 1996, house arrest was introduced by the liberal government as a sentencing option, and as a result many criminals who were charged with serious, violent crimes have been serving their sentence in their homes.  On May 31, 2007, the government’s conditional sentencing reform bill received Royal Assent and under the new reforms, conditional sentences will be prohibited for offences prosecuted by indictment that carry a maximum sentence of 10 years or more.  Those convicted of serious crimes will no longer spend their sentences playing video games in the comfort of their homes.

Today, dangerous criminals who use guns to commit their crimes, and sexual predators, preying on our youth, will now get the jail time and the penalties they deserve.
We are holding these criminals accountable.



This means making sure sentences match the severity of crimes – and getting violent criminals off the streets so they cannot re-offend.

This Government is sending a strong message to criminals: If you do a serious crime, you’re going to do serious time.

To back up these commitments, we provided $161 million in new funding in the 2006 Budget to begin recruiting a 1000 more RCMP personnel and federal prosecutors, to expand the RCMP Training Academy.

We are sparing no expense to make sure the RCMP has the people – and the facilities – to do the job we ask them to do.

That’s also why we are working with the provinces to put another 2,500 front-line police officers on our streets and allocated the funding to do so in the 2008 federal budget.

More police.

Tougher laws.

Longer sentences.

It’s all part of our action plan to tackle crime.



We wouldn’t have been able to get to where we are today without people like Joe Wamback, the father of Jonathan Wamback; a high school student brutally beaten by his fellow classmates in 1999.  Joe is an activist for criminal youth offences giving power to the court system to create harsher sentences for convicted youth.  The teens were originally charged with attempted manslaughter, but given that they were only 16 and 17 years old, the charges were subsequently downgraded to aggravated assault.  Under the Young Offenders Act, the maximum penalty the teens faced was only a sentence of two years in a juvenile detention centre. This evoked Mr. Wamback to begin creating petitions and create a support website for his son where documents of petitions and activity would be updated frequently; this sparked the beginning of a political reform on the Young Offenders Act.



The legislation proposes amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act making it easier to detain young offenders who pose a risk to public safety such as the teens accused in the beating of Jonathan Wamback or the teens that escaped punishment in the Tall Trees beating.

On a local note, I think it is important to educate youth on safety and crime prevention in the community, I have created an essay contest on Public Safety for students in our community. I’ve encouraged all high school students to submit a 500-word essay on a workable solution for making Barrie a safer community from acts of vandalism and crime. The student who submits the winning essay will receive the Barrie Public Safety Scholarship award, worth $500.00.  The scholarship is judged by Police Chief Frechette and local school trustees and councillors.

I want this project to encourage our youth to take an active role in safety and security solutions for our community.  It is important that public servants find new ways to engage our young citizens on how to promote justice within our community.

Conclusion

Canadians can trust this government to get things done. We are working closely with law enforcement leaders to achieve the required reforms to the criminal code.



I held a town hall meeting with Chief Frechette on crime leading up to the last federal election and I remember him telling me that the criminal code was so weak that he compared it to a ‘revolving door.’  Hard working Barrie police officers would bring criminals into court and see them walk out the next day or released shortly afterwards.  It has been your government’s mission to clean up the system and put an end to the days of revolving door justice.   I truly believe that we are making progress towards that goal.



Our philosophy in Ottawa is that we need to foster a greater level of tangible deterrence in sentencing and an enhanced sense of personal accountability for those that break our collective trust.  This government believes that enough is enough. We deserve to feel safe within the confines of our own neighbourhoods.  This government will act.  We will not cuddle criminals.  We will not waiver in convictions.



We are creating a criminal code that will fully, hold accountable those amongst us that don’t respect the rule of law and dignity of human life.



This Government will continue to deliver on what is important to Canadians – the safety and security of their communities. As Prime Minister Harper recently stated in a speech to victims of crime, “We believe that no Canadian should ever be afraid to walk down any street in our country, ever be afraid to walk down the hall of their school, no innocent Canadian bystander should ever be collateral damage in a gang shootout, no Canadian woman should ever fall victim to a paroled serial rapist, and no Canadian family member should ever die in a car accident caused by repeat drunk-drivers or street racers. The idea of peace, order and good government was once our birthright in this country. It can be again. That is our goal…”

Thank you.