Although I know this is not determinative, the summary says: “This enactment amends the International Transfer of Offenders Act to provide that one of the purposes of that Act is to enhance public safety and to modify the list of factors that the Minister may consider in deciding whether to consent...”.
The two major purposes of the bill, I would argue, are to enhance public safety and to modify the list of factors.
When we take the first purpose of the act—and I'm speaking to Mr. MacKenzie's proposition that my amendment is not in keeping with the purpose of the bill—if one of the purposes of the act, as stated in the summary, is to “enhance public safety”, how do we enhance public safety by agreeing to an amendment that allows the Minister of Public Safety to ignore whether or not an offender's return to Canada will constitute a threat to the security of Canada? How does it enhance our public safety by giving the legislative power to the minister to say, “I'm not even going to think about that”? How does it enhance public safety to give the minister the legislative power to ignore whether an offender's return to Canada will endanger the safety of any person who is a victim?
That's what the Conservatives want to do. They want to say: “No, we want to make it so the minister doesn't have to consider those things”.
It's the NDP, and if I can boldly state what I'm hearing from the Liberal Party and my colleagues in the Bloc...we're the three parties that are saying no, the minister must consider those things. He must consider whether or not there is threat to Canada and whether victims may be harmed by the transfer. I would argue that our amendment is consistent with the very purpose of the bill, which is to enhance public safety, and the Conservatives' position is actually violative of the purpose of the bill, which is to enhance public safety.
I also would argue, again, that the second purpose of the bill is to modify the list of factors. So if we're modifying the list of factors—if that's the purpose of the bill—then going that step further and saying that we don't think it's too much to ask that the minister should consider, must consider, those factors we're modifying is consistent with that purpose as well.
Last, I would say what is going to come out I think throughout all of the amendments that the New Democrats are going to propose. We heard evidence before this committee--and I don't think it was contradicted--that public safety is enhanced by the transfer of offenders to our countries. We heard evidence that if you keep an offender serving their sentence in another country for their full sentence, they are coming back to Canada, and they will come back to Canada in some cases without our even knowing if they've been convicted of a crime, and without us having any ability to supervise them in the community.
We heard a lot of evidence that by facilitating the transfer of a Canadian abroad and getting them into our—