Opposition justice critic Françoise Boivin is one tough lady who makes life a living hell for the Conservative government every day of the week in the House of Commons.
Boivin, who became the NDP MP for the Gatineau riding across the Ottawa River from Parliament in 2011, doesn’t hesitate to tell Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Justice Minister Peter MacKay over and over what they’re doing wrong on justice issues.
That’s her job. There are enough boys in short pants around Harper telling him how great he is.
Harper froze federal legal aid funding in this country a decade ago, she says, despite repeated cries from the Canadian Bar Association and demands from the Commons. It makes her angry. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what needs to be done,” she says.
There also aren’t enough judges. Take Quebec as an example. The Harper government said in the last budget there would be 11 more Superior Court judges but it only appointed seven. What happened to the other four?
There aren’t enough judges in Alberta, either. Nor are there enough federal prosecutors in most provinces.
Boivin says Parliament has had a difficult time trying to find out how much the federal government has spent on fighting legal cases. “All we get as answers are platitudes,” she says.
“If the government sat down and negotiated instead of going to court with $1,000-an-hour lawyers, we would be a lot better off.”
Public Works and Government Services Canada lets cases go to court rather than negotiating with the costs ending up on the Justice Department’s bill, she says.
It hasn’t escaped her that Harper has lost five major cases that ended up going all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
It infuriates Boivin that the Conservative government hasn’t been applying constitutional tests to legislation before it goes to Parliament. That leads to costly court challenges after the bill has become law, she notes.
And the Conservatives have a way to avoid testing legislation ahead of time. “Instead of ministers presenting legislation, they give it to one of their backbenchers to introduce in Parliament,” she says. “The backbencher will bullshit me that he’s consulted a constitutionalist.”
Boivin points to legislation related to child kidnapping. The legislation would force judges to hand down a four-year minimum mandatory jail sentence for child kidnapping.
Boivin says she did some research on child kidnapping and discovered that at present, judges are handing down eight-year sentences for the offence “and more often than not, it’s 16 or 20 years if there is violence or a killing.”
“So now we have a bill before us that says we must have a four-year minimum sentence for child kidnapping,” she says. “Are the Conservatives trying to lower the sentence for child kidnapping?”
Boivin doesn’t like the Conservatives’ bill C-26 related to the sex offender registry either. The Conservatives, she says, are “selling it as if it will mean an end to all sex offenders on our streets.”
“It’s not because we have Joe Blow’s name on a sex registry that there will be fewer sex offenders on the streets,” she says.
“That won’t solve the problem. But if you tell me we should work harder at getting sex offenders off the streets, then you’ll have me on board.”
Boivin says she speaks officially for the New Democratic Party of Canada on justice matters, but that doesn’t mean she decides every issue.
She has to talk to lawyers, police, victims’ rights associations, and her NDP caucus before she can make a public statement. The caucus has to decide whether it will propose amendments, try to send a bill to committee or vote against it outright.
In committee, she tries to convince MPs from other parties to see her side of the issue even if she knows the government will reject her views.
Sometimes, she has to take chances. For instance, the Conservatives are promising to spend $20 million to help sex trade workers as part of their new prostitution law. But then it turns out, she says, that it’s planning to spend the money over five years across the 10 provinces and three territories. That’s not a lot for each province.
In fact, the money isn’t even in the prostitution bill. Harper will decide who gets it. Boivin says it could end up that Harper passes the money out to his favourite religious groups rather than women’s organizations or sex-trade worker associations.
It all adds up to challenging work for a justice critic. “But you still have to try,” says Boivin of the need to keep pressing her case.
Richard Cleroux is a freelance reporter and columnist on Parliament Hill. His e-mail address is [email protected].
