Thanks. There has been a lot of discussion. I've had time to look at the amendment further and consider it, and I would suggest to opposition members that we can't have it both ways. On one hand, conditional sentences--I've listened to what everyone said--are seen as being some sort of be-all and end-all: it's a much better system than prison; it solves all our problems; judges always, always apply conditional sentences appropriately. That's what I'm hearing. Yet here's an amendment that does limit conditional sentencing.
The government was listening to Canadians, and we've said that we do need to limit conditional sentences. We've said that when someone is a victim of Internet luring, arson for fraudulent purposes, or break and enter, when we have a situation like that, who are we to sit here and discount that as being somehow not serious?
I heard it from some of the witnesses. I might as well say that we had some academics here who may never have had to deal with a victim in their life. We also heard, from victims groups and police officers who are on the front line dealing with victims every day, their sense of justice, their sense that justice has been served, that their government has protected them, that the justice system has protected them; their sense of security when, if someone has committed an act against them, whether that be physical or whether that be a property crime, they think there may be justice served. They hold out some faith in our system, and down the road when they find out that the person is right back into the community, their sense is that there has been no justice served whatsoever.
Again, I do not favour the amendment, just for those reasons. I did want to respond after having time to analyze it a little further, because this was the first that I had seen it. But I think it's too narrow. I think it's narrowing it too much. There does seem to be some admission on the part of the opposition that there are cases where the conditional sentence shouldn't be used. I would argue that it's in the cases that we set out in the bill, and this narrows the bill too far, I would suggest, because it leaves out some very serious offences where Canadians are left as victims and where their offender could be right next door after going through the justice system. The victim is still there, has to live with this the rest of his or her life, but the offender gets to serve time under house arrest.
And we've all heard about the amount of supervision that goes into these conditional sentences. I know it sounds fine to say there were so many days of supervision, but what was the evidence on the supervision? I heard evidence that there wasn't effective supervision on conditional sentences. So there is a reason there is an impression out there from the Canadian public that people who commit crimes are getting away scot-free when they get a conditional sentence.
And there's an admission in this amendment that this is the case, but I just feel that the amendment doesn't go far enough. Those are my thoughts on the amendment, and I guess that's all I have to say about it.