OTTAWA — A federal crime bill which raises the age of sexual consent and makes it harder for people accused of violent gun crimes to get bail received Royal assent Thursday in a ceremony on Parliament Hill.
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The bill also streamlines the process for getting a dangerous offender designation, improves drug-impaired driving laws and introduces new firearms offences.
The provisions in the bill have been before Parliament in various forms for nearly two years but Prime Minister Stephen Harper finally got them through by threatening to call an election if it wasn’t passed.
He made the threat in the Commons last fall by making the bill a matter of confidence. The bill then was passed with support of all parties and sent on to the Senate.
A few weeks ago Harper brought in a motion telling the Liberal dominated Senate if it didn’t pass the bill before March 1, he would take the country to the polls.
Liberal senators balked and said Harper’s motion was unconstitutional because the House of Commons can’t dictate what the senate does. Manitoba Liberal Sen. Sharon Carstairs said the timeline was almost impossible to meet.
But the threat of the election pushed the senate to fast-track its hearings and it passed the bill Wednesday 19 to 16. Thirty-one senators — all Liberals but one — abstained from the vote and another 27 senators didn’t show up for the vote. Of Manitoba’s six senators, the two Conservatives (Janis Johnson and Terry Stratton — voted in favour of the bill. Independent Mira Spivak voted against it. Liberal Maria Chaput abstained. Liberal senators Carstairs and Rod Zimmer were both absent.
Manitoba senior cabinet minister Vic Toews — who was the justice minister when most of the provisions in C-2 were first introduced — said it is satisfying to see them become law.
Toews said his government’s decision to pressure the Liberals to pass the bill or go to the electorate was the right one.
He said most of the measures in the legislation had Liberal support during the last election campaign, and it should never have taken this long to get them into law.
Chaput said she abstained because she didn’t want the bill to go through without being amended and amendments weren’t made in order to get the bill passed by Harper’s deadline.
Chaput said the vote itself was “intense” and said she feels Harper and the Conservative government disrespected the work of the senate with the deadline.
Roz Prober, founder of Winnipeg based Beyond Borders, said she is delighted the law finally got through.
“Common sense has prevailed,” said Prober.
Raising the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16 is a huge protection for children, said Prober.
“People were stunned to see Canada was so far behind the eight ball on the age of consent,” said Prober.
She said she also welcomes the dangerous offender designations for those convicted three times of a sexual offence. She said before, the onus to convince a judge someone should be labeled a dangerous offender “was all on the shoulders of children.”
Dangerous offenders are kept behind bars indefinitely.
