Mr. Speaker, as I said before I am not a lawyer. My understanding from listening to people here this afternoon who are is that this law will be put in place and somehow or other the courts will interpret the law as it is read here today.
The difficulty I have with this law is that it does not address the problem it purports to address, the problem of people fleeing from police officers when ordered to stop. I do not think it addresses that problem. I think it simply makes it much more difficult for the policeman who has to take action. If that action involves bodily harm or involves the death of an individual, it makes it much more difficult for the police to justify their action.
It is very easy for us to sit here in this very safe environment, read the bill and say that it covers this and that problem and addresses this and that shortcoming. However, that is not where the action is played out. The action is going to be played out in some back alley in the city of Toronto or Montreal or, as I said earlier, in some dark corner of the Fraser River canyon or some place like that. This is where the whole bill falls apart.
We should be offering our police officers more encouragement than this bill currently does.