I think our police officers experience that almost every day. We see more and more violent crimes. What we used to see on American TV shows about street gangs was happening only in the States. It's happening in Canada now. But why? Those are realities. Go to Winnipeg and Montreal and Vancouver and Toronto. And it's not only in those large cities. You see it more and more even in small cities.
When you go to a crime scene, you see the victim and understand what's going through her mind, what she's going through. You know that she's going to have to go to court, and you know by experience, with the way the courts handle those cases, that it's going to be a slap on the hand. He's going to be back on the street and he's going to be in the same neighbourhood, threatening and laughing at them. That's the other thing the victims are telling us, that they're being told, hey, I'm back here and I didn't get anything. They laugh at the victims.
Those are serious things. We need deterrents. When you commit a crime and you have a consequence, it's different. Look at what happened in Quebec. Everybody in Canada thought that Quebec had thrown in the towel with the bikers. What happened? They changed the legislation--stiffer sentencing, stiffer legislation--and created a special unit, Carcajou/Wolverine. What happened to them? They're all in jail. That was significant. It destabilized the organized crime, the bikers.
That's the way to do it, because there was a deterrent. Before that, how many young kids dreamed that one day they would become bikers because they thought that nothing could happen to them? Well, this is the message we have to send to the communities, to Canadian citizens--we're there to protect them. And you, as legislators, have to send that message. But if it's a message of a revolving door, that they'll never get anything.... Even though your intention was very good in 1996, it's not happening that way. Why? There's always the economic factor. How much is it going to cost us to put this person in jail? Well, do you know what's going to happen? The same person who thinks nothing can happen to them is going to commit and recommit again and again, so it's going to cost how much more to get police officers to arrest them so many times and get so many victims.
Our job is to protect and serve Canadian citizens. That's what we want to do. But we need help, and the only ones who can help us are you.