No Pardons For Pedophiles, All Parties Agree As Government Tries To Force Vote

A government move to flush out critics of reforms to the criminal pardons system has highlighted one key point of agreement: Convicted pedophiles should never be eligible.

Liberal, New Democrat and Bloc Quebecois MPs all made the same argument during two hours of debate at a special House of Commons committee hearing Tuesday.

“What do we want to target? Pedophiles,” Bloc Quebecois MP Maria Mourani said during an hour-long diatribe at the Public Safety committee. “So let’s target pedophiles.”

The all-party consensus may not have been what the Conservatives hoped to see as the headline outcome.

The government has been hammering the Liberals, in particular, all fall over their refusal to wave the pardons legislation through unaltered. The Tories’ trump card — repeated almost daily — has been to accuse the Opposition of siding with criminals, especially sex offenders, rather than victims.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews was at it again Tuesday afternoon in the House of Commons.

“Our Conservative government passed critical aspects of our pardons reforms last spring,” Toews said in response to a friendly backbench question.

“The Ignatieff-led coalition could have passed our reforms to eliminate pardons for serious crimes then — including making individuals convicted of sexual offences towards children ineligible for a pardon — but did not. Today we called a special meeting to move this legislation forward. Unlike the Liberal-lead coalition, we think victims have waited long enough.”

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley went further outside the House.

“The opposition has been blocking this bill every step of the way, particularly today,” she told reporters.

It’s a charge that is entirely stripped of context and belied by the record.

Last June, Parliament got all-party agreement to rush through reforms that doubled to 10 years the waiting period for pardon applications on some serious crimes, including sex offences.

Perhaps more critically, the changes gave the federal pardons board the discretion to deny any application that it felt brought the justice system into disrepute.

“For the first time in Canadian history, we gave the tools to the board to deny a pardon in any circumstance — any circumstance — in which that test is met,” NDP MP Don Davies noted Tuesday at committee.

The reforms were a reaction to revelations by The Canadian Press that convicted sex offender Graham James had been quietly pardoned, under the old rules, in 2007.

More far-reaching changes in the legislation were put off until this fall, when they could be studied in depth. So far, the public safety committee has held just three, two-hour meetings to hear testimony.

Opposition MPs are balking at some provisions in the legislation, and the government tabled more than a dozen changes to the bill late Monday evening.

None of the government amendments deal with the most controversial aspect — a new rule that would make anyone convicted of more than three criminal offences ineligible for life from applying for a record suspension.

“When I’ve expressed concerns with this bill, it’s not with respect to serious sex offenders,” Liberal MP Mark Holland told the committee.

Rather, he raised the prospect of a young, single mother who writes some bad cheques, cleans up her act, but can’t get a pardon for 10 years or possibly life.

“There are people whose lives are actually going to be impacted by the politics being played here,” said Holland.

“When the government goes after and maligns and smears anybody who simply wants to ensure we pass good legislation, shame on you …. You do an enormous disservice to good legislation and good debate.”

The irony is that, away from the television cameras, the government has been sending quiet signals it actually agrees with some of the Opposition concerns.

In an interview after the committee, Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber said that even Toews has acknowledged there may be a problem with the general three-strike rule, but it was not part of the government amendments tabled this week.

Rathgeber said it is up to the other parties to propose fixes.

“We see the opposition bringing amendments to government bills all the time and sometimes they’re constructive,” Rathgeber told The Canadian Press.

“I suspect some kind of tweaking with respect to the three- or three-plus strike rule would be accepted. The debate would be accepted, we’d look at it and if it was reasonable the minister testified in front of this committee and he said as long as it protects the rights of victims and doesn’t bring the system into disrepute, he would be open to it.

“That’s certainly my position.”