Mr. Speaker, I welcome that question. I will address the first part of his question concerning capital punishment. We do not have to decide that question here. We can have a discussion.
That question can be decided by the people of Canada in a binding referendum. That is who should decide it. I call on this government to hold that binding referendum.
In reply to the other issue that was raised, if the hon. member has had any experience with the criminal justice system, if he has been wronged, if his constituents come to him and describe their experience with our criminal justice system, he will realize very quickly that it needs fixing.
I could cite example after example of where people have been the victims of crime. Those people then go to the trials; they appeal to the judge for some justice; they go to the police and cannot get justice because people hide behind loopholes in the law.
That is the kind of experience I am talking about now. People have had experiences like this. They see that horrific crimes have been committed. There was a murder in my constituency of an elderly man just a very brief time ago. One of the perpetrators got four years. Now he is eligible for parole. That man's wife cannot understand how this can be. You can use all the elitist arguments about how the biggest brains in this country know so much more than the ordinary person, but I do not buy it. That is a typical Liberal attitude: they know better.
It is about time we listened to some of the people who have experience with the way the criminal justice system works and how they, the victims, have virtually no say in that system.