Mr. Speaker, I can assure the member that this will not be powder-puff.
The hon. member talked about not blaming the Reform Party and not blaming him. I do not think that is the case at all. After all he is only a one-one hundred and seventy-seventh part of the problem.
There is no misleading the public at all. There is a genuine concern for law-abiding Canadian citizens. My hon. colleague read demographics and statistics from various documents. He quoted the John Howard Society. I would like to quote a few items from Victims of Violence that has a big stake in the bill.
According to Victims of Violence youth crime is up 117 per cent since the Young Offenders Act took effect in 1984: 25 youth committed first degree murder in 1990, 23 youth committed second degree murder in 1990 and 6 youth committed manslaughter in 1990.
I suspect the member would say that is not very many. However the fact is that there are strings of victims in the wake of what is going on here. When one crosses the line, as the hon. member for Wild Rose has said, there must be an act in place to effectively look after that.
I would like to ask my hon. colleague this question. If he looked at the statistics from Victims of Violence, would he not agree that the tougher the measures for those who cross the line the better and more effective the fixing of the problem would be rather than looking at it from his perspective which is in my opinion is powder-puff?