I cannot stress how important this particular amendment is for us. As my colleague across the way just said, we actually took what the minister put forward. I was tempted to amend it greatly before putting it in an amendment, but we took the minister at his word when he said that the committee may want to do that. We thought we had a better chance of getting it into the legislation if we left it fairly close to what the minister had put before us.
We are very concerned about this sort of limitless power in the hands of the minister. Yet all our amendment does is to put into legislation the very guidelines, the lamppost, as my colleague said, that the minister talked about, so that they would be right here, clear and explicit. Everybody would know they are here and that they cannot be changed on a whim.
Also, for us, public policy consideration is such a huge umbrella that it covers the globe and not just Canada. I want to say we were appreciative that the minister had given this some thought and heard our concerns. I was quite impressed when he said in front of us that we may decide to stick it in the legislation. I'm hoping that his colleague across the way will remember what the minister said. Based on that, I didn't think the minister had any problems with putting it in legislation. He was inviting us to do that, or at least to consider it.
I want to stress to my colleagues across the way that we're very interested in working on a piece of legislation that will lead to the quick removal of serious criminals. However, we are not prepared to give the minister an umbrella of this size and this kind of discretion without it being codified in legislation. I want to stress the importance of our addressing this issue here at this stage.