Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really will be brief.
The amendments the NDP proposes target what we believe is the real mischief at issue. We agree that the kind of fraud that Mr. Jones and Mr. Lacroix perpetrated against many hundreds and perhaps thousands of Canadians is unacceptable. We believe those types of offenders should not qualify for accelerated parole.
But what we also know is that...and we refer to evidence that there are 1,500 offenders per year who qualify under this program and that many, many of them benefit from the accelerated parole program. It helps them not reoffend. So what we've done with our amendment, Mr. Chairman, is to add in the section under which Mr. Lacroix and Mr. Jones were convicted, as well as a number of other sections, all of which represent sort of white-collar crime offences.... To put some sort of scope on the bill, we've said that anybody convicted of these white-collar crimes where the value of the offence exceeds $1 million would be ineligible for accelerated parole, as this bill suggests.
In this manner, it separates the wheat from the chaff. It targets those people who really shouldn't get accelerated parole while retaining the benefits for the many types of offenders who do benefit, saving the taxpayers money, making reintegration better, allowing a lot of people to get access to community services, and also lowering the repetition of their criminal behaviour.
Once again, this still preserves this accelerated parole for first-time non-violent offenders, but it makes sure that we as parliamentarians remove accelerated parole for white-collar fraudsters like Mr. Jones and Mr. Lacroix.