Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my hon. colleague opposite. Members would know that my hon. colleague opposite has a long history in this Parliament and has been involved in the criminal justice system as far as Parliament is concerned for many, many years.
As a matter of fact as my hon. colleague mentioned he is at this time the chair of the Commons justice committee, a very important and powerful role within the Commons. I would point out that the chair of the justice committee has a particular perspective on crime as evidenced by the fact that recently the member is on record of having suggested that perhaps 15 years is the maximum that anybody should be in jail for any crime no matter what that crime might be, no matter what their age.
The member opposite will also recall that in this Parliament on October 7, 1971 as a continuation of changing the incarceration system, the jail system, a very needed change, the government of the day directed the emphasis away from the protection of society to the rehabilitation of criminals, which is just fine. The Solicitor General of the day is on record of having said: "From this day forward we will put rehabilitation ahead of the protection of society". That was October 7, 1971. This was a quantum shift in direction of the correctional service. It was a quantum shift in direction of attitude of this Parliament.
Perhaps after 23 or 24 years we might revisit this and say "Wait a minute. Let us back up. Maybe we should ensure that we have a concentration on rehabilitation because we know how important that is and we do not want people to reoffend. We also have to protect society".
At any rate, the hon. member asked: "Since we have this opportunity to present a votable motion, why would we make it so mild?". The reason we made it so mild is that it was only by having the mildest of possible motions that there was any hope at all of getting any support from the Liberals who got us into this mess in the first place. We want to move this debate incrementally down the road. We wanted to make this motion so mild that it would be virtually impossible for anyone in this House to disagree with it.
How wrong we were. If the hon. member opposite does not like this motion, would the hon. member opposite, the chair of the justice committee, tell this House and Canadians what is his number one priority? If he were going to introduce a motion today what would that motion be?