Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member support the present bill. I suppose that for him to criticize the bill in any fashion would be difficult, given that he is from the Liberal side of the House.
I am concerned about this legislation in that when a dangerous offender application is made, it points out that the application must definitely be put forward prior to the imposition of sentence. Therefore there is a window of six months to supply the necessary information to support that application. That is not a very long period, given that maybe an offender, a pedophile for example, could be sentenced to a 10 year stint and there would be no opportunity after to make application for dangerous offender.
In fact, in the legislation a pedophile or a sexual predator is not listed in the area of dangerous offender. I think people seek to have those individuals classified as dangerous offenders. In my opinion that is one very major flaw in this legislation.
The second point that troubles me about Bill C-55 is that once the application is made and there is a conviction for a dangerous offender, the whole process again can be appealed. So now they can go through a course of appeals. I find that difficult to understand when members across talk about getting tough on crime and there is a recourse for appeal and this very narrow window in which to make application for dangerous offender designation and so on.
What is wrong with including pedophiles and sexual predators, which the bill does not address, in that list of Criminal Code offences and automatically seeking the courts to place a dangerous offender finding on anyone who commits on two or more separate occasions an offence constituting a serious personal injury offence?