Mr. Steve Ashton (Opposition House Leader): Madam Speaker, I rise on a matter of urgent public importance. I move, seconded by the member for Kildonan (Mr. Chomiak), under Rule 27(1) that the ordinary business of the House be set aside to discuss a matter of urgent public importance, namely the actions of the Minister of Justice (Mrs. Vodrey) regarding the lack of incarceration of convicted people in this province.
Motion presented.
Madam Speaker: Prior to recognizing the honourable member for Thompson, I would like to remind all members that under our subrule 31(2), the mover of a motion on a matter of urgent public importance and one member from the other party in the House is allowed not more than five minutes to explain the urgency of debating the matter immediately.
Mr. Ashton: Madam Speaker, the reason we are raising this motion today is because I believe that if you were to truly ask members of this House, there would be a willingness of not only members of the opposition but, I am sure, many government members, to discuss the state of the justice system in this province, particularly the kind of situation that we see day after day with this Minister of Justice in which people who have been convicted of offences, sentenced to jail terms, are not serving that time in jail. I want to indicate why I feel we should be debating this matter.
Earlier in Question Period--and I want to apologize again for the length of time I took in the preamble, because it is difficult when you have that many sentences that this individual has received to outline in the short time period available to us. But, Madam Speaker, we have a situation where an individual who has three impaired driving convictions, three driving while suspended convictions, an assault conviction, a theft conviction, a possession of stolen goods conviction, a parole violation, two break and enters, uttering forged documents, possession of a dangerous weapon conviction, an abduction of his own kids conviction, where this individual was sentenced to spend time in a correctional facility and where this individual now is laughing at the justice system. I quoted earlier his comments that he made: It is all right with me. The guys, you know, do not have to do time. It is all right staying home and doing time on the weekend.
Madam Speaker, we feel it is urgent to debate this matter because we feel that, while Mr. Williams, or whatever his current alias is, may feel it is all right, we feel that the majority of Manitobans feel that a sentence is a sentence and, in this case, that at bare minimum this individual should be serving the time and that it is no excuse from this Minister of Justice, and now the Premier (Mr. Filmon), to say that they cannot even run the justice system to ensure that this individual spends weekends in a correctional facility.
Madam Speaker, this is not the only individual in these circumstances. But what is particularly concerning is not only are there people such as Mr. Williams and others who are not serving their sentence making a mockery of our justice system, but this Minister of Justice, who repeatedly, going back to May of this year, has denied any change of policies whatsoever because of the Headingley riot, today now stands in the House and suggests that what is happening is strictly to do with Headingley. We heard the Premier use the same kind of argument.
Now, Madam Speaker, these new-found converts to the cause of workplace safety and health in our correctional facilities might want to consider the issue of public safety, and if they cannot run a justice system that ensures that Mr. Williams spends weekends in jail, they should resign, both the minister and the Premier.
Madam Speaker, this is an urgent matter because Manitobans have once again seen just how little they can trust this government and this Minister of Justice. I mention--and I have a copy of a leaflet here and I will quote from it. This is the Law and Order and Public Safety, and it says inside: We listened to you when you told us to be tough on crime.
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Madam Speaker, the Premier, Gary Filmon, stated: The safety and security of the public and the individual are vital to the quality of life you as Manitobans demand. You want to know your family is safe in your homes, in your neighbourhoods, in your schools and on your playgrounds.
Madam Speaker, how do they explain the fact that Mr. Williams is now doing time on weekends at home? Is that their "tough on crime"? I say that is absolutely unacceptable and I say to the members opposite, let us have a debate on this and then the Minister of Labour (Mr. Toews) I am sure will be interested in what the constituents of Rossmere have to say about this particular matter. This government not only are they not tough on crime, they cannot even ensure that Mr. Williams spends his weekends in jail.
It is no excuse to suggest that because Headingley is in the situation it is that that is the reason. They know they have a choice. They are in charge of the justice system. They can made arrangements with other institutions in the province and other institutions throughout the country. The bottom line is here, so long as we have the Premier defending this Minister of Justice (Mrs. Vodrey), who has shown through her actions on this matter that she cannot be believed anymore, I would submit to you that we cannot ensure the security of our citizens, and more importantly, the integrity of the justice system. When we have Mr. Williams and others laughing at the justice system we know that there is a serious problem.
So I would suggest to you that this is one of those times where it would be, I believe, in the best interests of the public of Manitoba if you, Madam Speaker, were to do the appropriate thing, decide that there is a prima facie case and let the House decide, because I believe it is not only members of the opposition but many government members who, given an honest choice about this, would decide to debate with us the very serious concerns about our justice system. So I urge you to give us the chance as MLAs to debate the system of justice in this province and in particular the incompetence of the Minister of Justice and the incompetence of the Premier who cannot even ensure the most basic sentence be served in this province. That is absolutely unacceptable.
Hon. Jim Ernst (Government House Leader): Madam Speaker, at the risk of incurring your ire, I would submit that the member for Thompson spoke almost fleetingly at best about the question of the need for urgency. He is still ticked about what happened in Question Period. I would encourage my honourable friend that he should worry about his blood pressure a little better. It was getting fairly high I think during the midpoint of his address, but it is not a question of whether the member or all of the members over there are ticked or not, it is about the question of urgency, and there is no urgency or they would have raised this back in May of 1996 when the Minister of Justice explained to the justice critic of the opposition party in some detail as to how they were going to deal with the fact that after the Headingley riot there was only limited ability to house criminals or people sentenced to certain sentences in the justice system. So if this was so urgent, it should have been urgent then. They should have been standing on their feet then to raise the question of urgency, and they did not, as we heard during Question Period, because the press did not cotton on to this until just recently, and of course, ergo, the members doing their research in the morning paper then found out about this and had to raise it as an urgent matter of public importance. It is not urgent.
Now, secondly, will in fact the public good be harmed if we do not debate this today? I submit, no, it will not. This has been going on for six months or more, and the public, in the minds of the opposition who have chosen only today to raise this matter, it obviously has not affected the public good up until this point, so I do not know what has changed between yesterday and today to cause that concern to harm the public good.
They refer to this person with 20 or so convictions and they listed them all in Question Period. The question is not whether this person should be out on weekends instead of serving his weekend sentence, but how did he get a weekend sentence in the first place? For somebody with that kind of a record, he should have been in there, I submit, a lot longer than just weekends.
But, Madam Speaker, the fact of the matter is plain. The issue with respect to the whole question of urgency and the whole question of public good has not been made; the case has not been made by my honourable friend, the member for Thompson (Mr. Ashton). In fact, as I said, he hardly touched on it at all.
They are upset. Fine, let them be upset. They have done what they should do if they are upset; they should raise it in Question Period, they should raise it in Members' Statements, but it is not a matter of urgent public importance.
Madam Speaker: Order, please. I would remind the honourable member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski) that he will be entitled to speak if the ruling is in support of the motion to have the matter debated immediately.
Is there leave to permit the honourable member for The Maples to speak to the urgency of debate? [agreed]
Mr. Kowalski: I want to thank the members of the Chamber for allowing me an opportunity to speak to the urgency of this matter.
Every day police officers arrest numerous people. Every day courts convict numerous people, and they are expecting those sentences to be carried out. Each day, each hour, there are arrests being made, and justice is immediate. It needs to be done immediately, and there is urgency to send a clear message that in Manitoba if you commit a crime, justice will be quick and expedient and will be just. That is why this matter has to be brought forward and be dealt with as soon as possible.
There may be other opportunities sometime in the future, but this matter affects the lives of so many Manitobans, whether in Winnipeg, in rural Manitoba, northern Manitoba. Police officers, courts are working now to make our communities safer places, and unless we deal with this matter immediately, today there will be people arrested who will go to court tomorrow. Unless we rectify this situation we will be sending a message to the criminals of Manitoba that business is good in Manitoba. So this has to be dealt with now. That is why I support this motion wholeheartedly on behalf of our caucus.