Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me this afternoon to speak again to Bill C-45. I say it is a pleasure because obviously, with the government enacting time allocation yet again on another piece of legislation, we find the unfortunate situation that a number of my colleagues and I am certain colleagues from the other parties as well would have liked to have spoken again on this bill and are being denied, I believe, their right to do just that.
It is a pleasure for me to be allowed the opportunity to once again try to get my message through to the Liberals on the opposite side of the House and the supporters of the justice minister. He continues to bring forward these weak-kneed, half-baked pieces of legislation, instead of doing, as my colleague from Wild Rose so aptly said just moments ago, what the people of Canada are demanding and expecting the Government of Canada to do.
I suppose it could be said that after quite a number of hours of debate on C-45 what more can be said that has not already been said on this issue. Reluctantly, Reform has come to understand that the only way to get through to the Liberals is to repeat our points over and over again. That is unfortunate. I am sure all of us in the Reform Party would much rather be discussing some other legislation today and be moving forward with some other constructive legislation. However, no matter how hard we try, it seems that we
run up against a brick wall and cannot get our message through to the Liberal government.
That was clearly demonstrated at the start of the debate this afternoon. After the vote on the government's time allocation motion on this piece of legislation, the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands got up and read through transcript after transcript of things that the Reform Party had said but had nothing constructive of his own to say about the legislation. He was merely attacking us for what we were trying to say. If only, and I mean this sincerely, he had listened to what was being said. Instead he simply poked fun at what the Reform Party has been trying to say on this piece of legislation.
Obviously, as it has been said repeatedly and I will repeat it again, the thrust is that the people of Canada are demanding the repeal of section 745. It is that simple. That is the crux of the issue here.
This has been said before and I will say it again and again. The independent member for York South-Weston brought forward a private member's bill. It had the support of the majority of members of the House and moved on to committee. I expected that perhaps with a few minor amendments that piece of legislation would ultimately be passed into law. Obviously it had the support of the people of the country and it had the support of the majority of the representatives of the people of the country. That is what should have happened.
I believe the way the justice committee handled this particular private member's bill is an insult to the private members' process in this place. I am absolutely appalled at the way the private member's bill of the member for York South-Weston was treated. I want to draw the attention of the House and the people who are viewing the debate this afternoon to that point.
The second point which I want to make, which has been made before, is that what we should be moving toward, what Canadians are demanding, especially when it comes to multiple murderers, is a system of consecutive sentencing. It does not matter how many lives murderers take, they get one life sentence. We are debating whether they should get 15, 17, 18 or 25 years.
I believe the vast majority of the people of Canada would support consecutive sentencing. It has been implemented in some U.S. states. If a person takes one life they get 25 years; two lives, 50 years; three lives, 75 years; and it keeps on going. Individual lives must count for something.
What I hear when travelling across the country is that people are simply fed up with the weak justice system and the criminals who flaunt it.
We can all quote statistics until we are blue in the face; however, despite whatever the statistics are saying about violent crime being on the decline or whatever the case may be, the reality is that people feel threatened. People feel unsafe in their homes, on the streets and in their communities. They are telling us to do something about it.
Reform members have been endeavouring to do that. We have been trying to drive that message home. We have repeated time and time again what we are hearing from Canadians.
What Canadians are crying for is the bottom line. I can stand and say how I feel, but what are Canadians saying? What is the mood of the country out there?
I had a recent poll done in my riding of Prince George-Peace River. One of the questions that was asked was: "How do you feel the federal government is doing with respect to criminal justice issues?" This was a scientific poll. What we found was that 6 per cent of those polled said it was doing very well. Twenty-seven per cent said it was doing an adequate job. However, 56 per cent said that the government was doing a poor job. Another 11 per cent were uncertain.
Two-thirds of the people in my riding either feel that the government is doing a very poor job with respect to criminal justice issues or they are unsure what it is doing. That clearly indicates that there is a growing sentiment in the country that the government is weak on crime. That has been reinforced again and again by the justice minister, who continues to bring in these half baked schemes which do not get to the root of the problem.
A number of my colleagues have outlined where we should be going and where Canadians are demanding we go on criminal justice issues. We have to concentrate more on victim rights. That is paramount in the minds of Canadians. It is high time this government started to address the real concerns which are out there among average Canadians.