SQLFusion - Guzzo

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L'ONTARIO

Thursday 29 May 2003 Jeudi 29 mai 2003

INQUIRY INTO
POLICE INVESTIGATIONS
OF SEXUAL ABUSE AGAINST MINORS
IN THE CORNWALL AREA ACT, 2003 /
LOI DE 2003 PRÉVOYANT UNE ENQUÊTE
SUR LES ENQUÊTES POLICIÈRES
RELATIVES AUX PLAINTES DE MAUVAIS
TRAITEMENTS D'ORDRE SEXUEL
INFLIGÉS À DES MINEURS
DANS LA RÉGION DE CORNWALL

The House met at 1000.

Prayers.

1100

Mr Guzzo moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill 45, An Act to establish a commission to inquire into the investigations by police forces of complaints of sexual abuse against minors in the Cornwall area / Projet de loi 45, Loi visant à créer une commission chargée d'enquêter sur les enquêtes menées par des corps de police sur les plaintes de mauvais traitements d'ordre sexuel infligés à des mineurs dans la région de Cornwall.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Michael A. Brown): The member has up to 10 minutes for his presentation.

Mr Garry J. Guzzo (Ottawa West-Nepean): On April 30 this year, in this chamber, the Lieutenant Governor of this province, the Queen's representative, read our speech from the throne. I wish at this time to quote from pages 16 and 17 of that speech. He said:

"Your government believes that children, victims and other vulnerable people deserve special protection under the law. Those who would seek to harm the innocent deserve the strongest possible punishment" -- not protection; punishment.

"That's why your government will fight child abuse, including increasing the front-line resources dedicated to fighting child pornography. It will also provide additional resources to rescue children from sexual exploitation, strengthen its high-risk offender strategy and try child exploitation cases in special courts as developed with the judiciary."

Twenty-three days later, the platform of this party was released, on the Friday morning of a long weekend, pray tell. You may not have heard of it, or a lot of people may not have heard of it, but I'd like to quote from it, because it picks up on the throne speech. It says on page 45:

"Protecting Our Children

"We will provide a special level of protection for children, the most vulnerable members of our society, from predators and other criminals, including:

"More than doubling the front-line resources for fighting child pornography

"Creating special courts for child exploitation cases, and expanding our system of child friendly court facilities across Ontario

"Targeting crown resources to cases involving sex crimes against children in order to help get them to trial faster

"Fighting the threat of the sex trade to children and minors by strengthening" -- our present legislation

"Vigorously prosecuting employers who hire persons under 18 in the adult entertainment and sex trades

"Creating safe houses for children whom we rescue from the sex trade (funded in part by the proceeds of crime ...

"Insisting that anyone convicted of any crime involving sexual exploitation of children serve their full sentence without chance for early release."

Accepting the throne speech and the policy as drafted, I suggest to you that anyone running for this party, if there is an election called in the very near future or within the next 12 months, could not in good conscience vote against this bill.

We're dealing here with a very serious matter. It's the third time that I've brought this bill before this House. It's the root of the existence of this government.

No one here is suing or looking for money. It kind of compares to Ipperwash on that basis. It is simply an opportunity to have the truth come out.

There have been cases in the past in the Cornwall area and elsewhere here in Ontario with regard to claims for payment. There were 11 settlements that I know about in the Cornwall area, all with a confidentiality clause protecting the information from coming out.

It's very important for people to understand that this is not an attack on the Catholic Church. My friend Mr Cleary, the member for Cornwall, is a practising Roman Catholic, and he supports this bill. I myself am a practising Roman Catholic. But we are embarrassed, like a number of other people, by the $290 million that has been paid out in recent years in the United States. It's not just the money that has been paid out by the church; it's the evidence of Cardinal Law in Boston and his former assistant, Bishop Daly, now in New York. I read the depositions on certain cases in that jurisdiction of both of these men, and I have to say to you that somebody is committing perjury. It's a very embarrassing situation.

I read the depositions of Bishop Flores in Texas, where he denied his own signature 17 times in 400 pages. Over 200 times, in 400 pages, he answered, "I don't recall," notwithstanding the evidence of his own signature. As one prosecuting attorney in Dallas said to me, "It was more like an insider trader caught with his hand in the cookie jar than a prince of the Church." Not much of that has been reported or has come forward in the press here in Canada.

I want to read to you a quote from a priest who pleaded guilty in Massachusetts in April of last year. He said, "What they," the church, "were protecting is the notion that the church is a perfect society. If the archdiocese really wanted to protect its other priests from scandal, they would have gotten those of us who abused children out of there much earlier."

That's a very, very ringing truism, and I suggest to you that it applies to this government: if we really wanted to protect children, we'd have gotten around to this a lot earlier.

I've provided, in the last two bills, volumes of evidence with regard to what has gone on. Today I have included and handed out a copy of the brochure that the Coalition for Action on Child Sexual Abuse in Cornwall has circulated. They have 20 questions. I'm not going to deal with those now because I want to touch on some of the new evidence I have circulated with my bill this time around. But I say to you that if you really didn't want an inquiry that was going to dig out the truth, you might at least sit down and answer these questions; you might sit down and give these people a truthful answer to these 20 questions.

With regard to the new evidence -- some of it is historic. But I wanted to read, if I could, from a document that has come to my attention. It has not been reported in the Ottawa Citizen or the Toronto Star, and it certainly has not been reported in the Standard Freeholder in Cornwall. It's about another lawsuit in the United States. It's not a question of a person who, after 30 years, has a recall of abuse; somebody looking for a large sum of money as a result of something that happened years ago. It's a lawsuit that was commenced in California by the diocese of San Bernardino, and the defendant is the diocese of Boston; one prince of the church suing another prince of the church. It claims that it's unprecedented. The suit against the Boston diocese was filed in April this year, and it alleges that the church officials in Boston allowed this Father Shanley to transfer to California through a series of "misrepresentations and suppression of information," and that "not disclosing Father Shanley's well-known sexual predations, dating back at least three decades and known for three decades in the Boston diocese, constituted active misconduct and negligence."

What the bishop in San Bernardino is saying is, "You sent him here, and we took him in good faith. We're getting sued, and now our insurance company wants us to sue you to get your insurance company to pay, not ours." A pleasant situation.

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But it wasn't the first place that the Boston dioceses had sent Father Shanley. Father Shanley was an advocate of man-boy sex. He preached it, and they knew about it. He had a group that he associated with. He was sent to other places. He had associates at other places. They traded like hockey players in the National Hockey League, where the bishop is acting like a general manager: "You send me your two worst offenders and I'll send you mine. Get them out of here" -- interesting theory, interesting practice. And where did some of these people go? Well, Father Shanley had been in New York as well as California. He also came to Canada. He didn't come to Toronto. We were safe in Ottawa. His associates went to New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. It's interesting that they would show up in eastern Ontario.

I draw the attention of the House to the documentation. I have included therein a copy of some of the old evidence. I will deal with it at a subsequent time this morning. I asked them in particular to refer to the court documentation, the draft minutes of settlement that were filed in Ottawa in the Superior Court of Justice action, and I'll try and deal with it at a later time as well.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mr John C. Cleary (Stormont-Dundas-Charlottenburgh): I rise in the House today with mixed emotions. I'm please to support Mr Guzzo's bill, but I am also disappointed that this bill and its variations have not yet received the full support of the Legislature. I am sad and disappointed that this has not happened, for the victims and their families, who have suffered for years and who continue to suffer because of our collective inability to bring the truth forward.

Over the past 30 years, as an elected representative of Ontario, I have never seen an issue that has divided a community as much as this has. People are hurting. The issue is not going to die. I know that until it's dealt with, it will not die. Many in our community feel very strongly that the passage of the bill would bring the truth to light and finally allow the community to heal. It is for this reason that I feel compelled to support Mr Guzzo's attempts to see the development of a public inquiry.

Although the background and history of this case have been presented in the House before, I believe it deserves repeating, and I would ask all members to listen very carefully.

In the early 1990s, an investigation into the sexual abuse of minors began in our area after the police services board received several complaints. I remember them all well. The Cornwall police department underwent a review of their procedure and found nothing irregular about their investigations into the charges of sexual abuse perpetrated against minors during the course of the preceding 25 years. As a result, no formal charges were laid and the case was deemed closed.

Evidently, this internal review did not satisfy the public, and continued disapproval forced a subsequent review by the Ontario Province Police. The OPP investigation was completed in December 1994, and the results of that investigation mirrored the previous one. The investigation cited no conclusive evidence to lay formal charges. Nevertheless, citizens' groups continued to feel that justice was not being served, and they took it upon themselves to undergo an investigation. As a result of the evidence they found, Project Truth was established and 117 charges were subsequently laid against 15 individuals. One hundred and nine of these charges were alleged to have happened before 1994.

To state that something was amiss in the investigations of the Cornwall police department and the OPP is seemingly self-evident, given the charges laid against 15 individuals. If implemented, the bill before us will help us to understand why both police departments failed in their investigations to draw out the truth of sexual abuse perpetrated against minors.

I want to take this opportunity to stress that this is not a vendetta. As I stated before, the primary purpose of this bill is to establish a commission of inquiry into the investigations undertaken by the police forces into allegations of sexual abuse against minors in our area. The bill concerns itself with the police investigations into claims of sexual abuse. The inquiry will not determine whether individuals are innocent or guilty of perpetrating sexual abuse against minors.

It is for this reason that I believe it inappropriate to implicate individuals in this Legislature. I believe that some individuals have been wrongly named as participating in these horrendous activities, and it is not our job as elected representatives to drag the names and reputations of these individuals through the mud. Questions of guilt and innocence must be dealt with before the courts, not the Legislature.

Certainly there is evidence that suggests there was a pedophile ring operating in our area. During a Project Truth trial, the defendant admitted that while he had never abused, he knew a ring was operating in eastern Ontario. A public inquiry would serve to find out why, if this ring was operating in the community, the police were not able to find the evidence until Project Truth was launched in the late 1990s.

Previous bills pertaining to the Cornwall area situation introduced by the member from Ottawa West-Nepean have been blocked by members who maintain an inquiry will impair proper court proceedings. I quote, for example, the Attorney General at the time, the Honourable Jim Flaherty: "It would be inappropriate for us as the government to take action that would potentially interfere or prejudice or in some way jeopardize criminal prosecutions arising out of very serious events that are alleged to have taken place in the Cornwall area over the course of some years."

I want to assure the honourable members of the House that this couldn't be further from the truth. Take, for example, the precedent of Walkerton, where independent inquiries were conducted at the same time as criminal investigations and proceedings were underway. The creation of this commission of inquiry can be tailored so that it doesn't in any way unduly prejudice any criminal investigations. These are all arguments that have been made in the past by the member from Ottawa West-Nepean, and as a judge he is much better suited than I am to make these statements.

In closing, I want to thank the member across the way for spearheading this inquiry. I want to thank him for his honesty and commitment to this file. The work he has done has been unparalleled, and I want to assure him that he has not gone unnoticed in my riding for the non-partisan way he has handled this case.

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The bill is an important to recovery in our community. It is time the community is given the facts and begins to heal old wounds.

I have to talk about the 12,000 people in my community who presented 12,000 names on the petition. These constituents were from my riding and from Prescott-Russell.

All the issues that were dealt with on this particular incident -- the public inquiry, the police investigation -- were handled through my Cornwall office at the request of victims and constituents.

Some victims came from other provinces so that I could hear what they had to say. Some of the ones who have been named told me they were not guilty. They shook my hand and looked me in the eye. In my opinion, they are innocent. This is the reason why I say we should have a public inquiry, because when you see a grown man come into your office with his wife or a family member with tears in his eyes, there's a problem there.

I do want to thank the member for bringing this before the Legislature again