Mr. Speaker, I think Canadians are seeing, as they see the government stay in power longer and longer, that it does not believe in judicial discretion. The Conservatives do not trust judges. They do not trust prosecutors. They do not trust our justice system. They are trying to dispense justice from the politicians box. That is not only despicable but actually extremely ineffective and dangerous for our justice system where we depend on having an independent judiciary, where politicians are supposed to set the rules, carefully deliberate and pass laws to keep everybody safe, to govern our relations between each other and then trust others who are independent of politics to dispense justice.
Outside of the Supreme Court of Canada building, which is just down the street, is a statue of the traditional symbol of justice. It is the goddess of justice with a blindfold on her eyes and a balance in her hand. That is to symbolize two very important things: that justice must be independent, it must be measured and it must be judicious. The government is not interested in that.
The New Democrats trust in our judicial system. We know there are hard-working prosecutors. We know there are learned, astute judges who are sensitive and sympathetic to the community standards and who are subjected to rigorous appeal and scrutiny in everything they do. They dispense justice every day in this country. However, the Conservatives do not trust those people at all and that is why they want to take away discretion from our judges.
The essence of any justice system is built on discretion, because if people in this country were before a judge, they would want that judge to be addressing his or her mind to their specific situation with their specific conditions and what happened in their case. That is the essence of justice. We would not want ourselves and our life determined by some arbitrary standard set by a bunch of politicians in Ottawa.