Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm pleased to speak to this amendment.
I think what we're trying to do is identify those crimes so heinous that they should be excluded from the safety valve. I think the Liberal government has put themselves in a pickle here, because they have created an arbitrary line to say that certain crimes should be excluded but others shouldn't be. They have as yet been unable to provide a cogent reason for some of those exclusions. I think we're offering to them some of the crimes that we would suggest are so heinous that they should be excluded.
The response about fears of a constitutional challenge, which I continue to hear, suggests to me a lack of courage on the other side to take up their responsibility as legislators to make laws. We believe in the supremacy of Parliament and we respect the independence of the judiciary, but that is the separation of powers. Abdicating your responsibility to make laws because of the fear you hold of the judiciary is an abdication of your role and an abdication of our constitutional arrangement.
I was perplexed by the comments made by my colleague from Mississauga. I'm glad she's speaking to this as an issue that affects her area more than others and on this particular amendment with respect to aggravated sexual assault, but she suggested in her comments that excluding aggravated sexual assault would somehow harm victims. I don't follow that logic, so maybe she can explain that in a further intervention.
In my view, putting the bad person in jail will not hurt the victim. Victims, as I understand it, demand justice, and that means removing the offender from society as a means of showing our condemnation of that heinous crime and keeping them out of society so that they cannot commit that crime again. I'm confused by her logic in saying that doing so will somehow hurt the process or hurt victims. Maybe she could explain that to the committee and to her community.