I understand that some people were shocked by this conditional discharge given to this engineer from Trois-Rivières to allow him to travel for his work. Me, I was not shocked, because it was not at all a novelty.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
In 1999, Gilbert Lauzon was granted an absolute discharge after pleading guilty to a charge of sexual assault. The need to travel for the latter had also been put forward, already supported by case law. At the time, however, it shocked me, but today I understand that this “double standard” has a deeper cause: the Canadian criminal record.
Archaic and unfair, this criminal record actually represents a double penalty. Indeed, it is not enough to serve one’s sentence to be free again.
Society demands a supplement to the debt paid, that is to be stigmatized for life by a criminal record, because it never completely disappears, otherwise, for the lucky ones, it can be suspended.
For “honest people”, as Brassens would say, a freed criminal remains a criminal. Like the cattle destined for the slaughterhouse, the convict must be marked for life by a criminal record. Their access to the labor market will have to be limited, as will their insurance coverage. And his freedom to travel will be restricted, especially for the only country bordering Canada, that is to say the United States.
I take the liberty of asking a question that I believe to be reasonable: in what way would a criminal, or should I rather say a former criminal, be more dangerous in the United States than in Canada? In other words, if this junk is too dangerous to circulate in the United States, then how would it be safer to let it circulate in our country? For these former Canadian or American criminals, what is the logic behind this? Revengeful resentment? A need for superiority? A feeling of insecurity?
Four million dishonest people?
Fortunately, I have no criminal record, but 10% of the Canadian population do. We’re talking about more than 4 million people here, that’s a lot of “dishonest people”, don’t you think? Defending these “indefensible” requires a certain courage possessed by the Association of Social Rehabilitation Services of Quebec. In 2010, she published the memoir Impact of criminal record, whose preface was written by one of our heroes, and former criminal, loved by all, Commander Robert Piché. His words are touching and the document is more than convincing as to the relevance of largely eliminating the use of criminal records. Honest people, will you read this memoir?
Moreover, France is an inspiring example where the criminal record is not Manichean. The country of human rights has three bulletins to manage with more parsimony the legal files which distinguish the small crimes from the most serious ones such as homicides. These bulletins are disclosed only according to the type of applicant: magistrate, administration or ordinary citizen.
In fact, what scandalizes me today is that the Canadian criminal record is still slow to be reformed and that it is outrageously harmful to the reintegration into society of a large part of the population. I would therefore like more French-style parsimony to allow some of the repentant former criminals to be free to travel. We would then no longer have to be scandalized by absurd judgments giving absolution to criminals on the grounds that they could travel for professional purposes, knowing above all that these judgments in reality only seek to hide another absurdity, that of Canadian criminal record.