Mr. Speaker, I understand what you are saying. With the greatest respect, I would suggest, however, that we have within the justice department and with the justice minister a pattern relating to Bill C-42 that I would like to explore.
For example, section 745. We have today the clear, irrefutable evidence that what the justice minister should have done was completely abolish section 745 as the people of Canada asked for. This justice minister simply does not listen.
I draw to the Speaker's attention the fact that when the justice minister would turn around and in an answer to a specific question directed to Bill C-42 and say "don't sweat the small stuff, it is only niggling little detail", I suggest that the niggling detail is exactly the issue that we have to be discussing in relation to Bill C-42.
Again I cite as an example section 745. During the process of section 745 there was an obvious lack of consultation, a lack of taking into account the perspective of the people of this House and indeed the people of Canada. With regard to section 745 and the problem with it, and what they did with Bill C-45, by turning around and going forward with half measures they created a situation where they could attempt to make it appear as though they had actually done something.
Mr. Speaker, I draw to your attention a rather interesting article from the Calgary Sun dated September 16. This particular columnist is talking about the Liberal failure to scrap section 745 of the Criminal Code that lets first degree murderers out on parole after 15 years in jail. Because of section 745 butchers like Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olson are entitled to apply for parole.
The Reform Party has been calling for the abolition of this heinous loophole for years but it is still in effect and should be an embarrassment to any Liberal, but not to the Liberal member he is speaking about who comes from Edmonton. Her little newsletter has a headline blaring: "Murderers Denied Parole Rights Under Section 745". But it is simply not true. The only changes that the Liberals have proposed is that murderers will not automatically get reviewed for release and that any new mass murderers are ineligible. Bernardo and Olson are still eligible for parole after 15 years. This columnist suggests in Liberal speak that is probably success.
It is the loopholes, it is the niggling details, it is the fact that this justice minister in coming to this House with Bill C-42 actually came to this House with, as it were, a Trojan horse. It was unclear at the time when he came to this House with the bill that in fact this bill had any real implications. Certainly it was unclear that it related to the issue that the Reform Party has been driving home for the last two days with respect to Bill C-42.
It is not only the process that the justice minister comes to this House with a Trojan horse and gets Bill C-42 through in that way, but then the government has the audacity to go to the other place to make the amendments that it wants to make when it realizes that even this Trojan horse was not put together properly.
There is a fundamental flaw with this House when the government treats this House like a rubber stamp and treats the elected representatives who are elected, after all, by the people of Canada in this way.
Let us take a look at all the bills that have come before this House. I must say that in my own committee, in taking a look at the Copyright Act, what does that have to do with Bill C-42? I will tell this House what it has to do with Bill C-42. Having had this Trojan horse brought in, having had the details not at all clear, having had the Liberals treat this House with the disrespect that they have under Bill C-42, now when Bill C-32, the Copyright Act, is before committee I, as a responsible parliamentarian, must assume that there may be a Trojan horse even in that bill.
Therefore under Bill C-42 we have the difficulty that when we have a government coming forward, treating the House with disrespect, bringing in things in a surreptitious way, we have to take a look at all the details of every bill.
With respect to the amendments that have been brought forward by our party, we have proposed in our section (b) amendment that we:
(b) strike out all the lines in section 56.1(2) and substitute the following:
"If Madam Justice Arbour elects to take leave pursuant to section 56.1(1) she may receive moving or transportation expenses and reasonable travel and other expenses, in connection with her services as Prosecutor, from the United Nations";
(c) add the following words to section 56.1(3):
"notwithstanding any prohibition against accepting any salary fee, remuneration or other emolument described in section 57";
(d) add the following words to section 56.1(5):
"and that benefits payable under these sections will be paid or will commence to be paid at the expiration of the leave of absence without pay".
It is the niggling detail and it is the Reform Party that is drawing to the attention of this House and through this process drawing attention to the people of Canada that currently we have a justice minister, a justice department and the Liberal government that continuously come to this House and rather than looking at the kind of detail that I have just read to this House that the Reform Party has brought, rather than dotting the i s and crossing the t s and doing the job correctly, rather than treating this House with the respect that it and the people in this House deserve, the Liberals continue to come to this House and treat it like a rubber stamp: ``Oh, by the way, if we have a problem we will correct it after the fact''.
There was an example of that even in the passage of Bill C-63 the other day. With Bill C-63 there had been a number of things that had been brought up at the last minute in this House as a result of debate. The government should be commended in a small way for the fact that it did end up taking a look at some of the provisions in the bill that needed some fine tuning. I commend it for that, but I ask why we had to get into that process. Why did we not have an opportunity on Bill C-63 to actually get those issues onto the table? I suggest the reason was that government once again was treating Bill C-63 in the same way as it has Bill C-42 and all these other bills. It has treated this Parliament as a rubber stamp.
The government very simply went through a committee process on probably the cornerstone legislation of our government or the governing of this country, democracy in this country. It simply went ahead and had a situation where it had two weeks of hearings. The interesting thing was that one of those weeks nobody was in Ottawa. We were out in our constituencies working. So it had only one week to actually consider the terms and the details of that bill.
I suggest there is an absolute irrefutable pattern here that the Liberals continuously treat this House as a rubber stamp, treat the members of Parliament with disrespect. I say that they treat us with disrespect in that they expect us to just roll over and do what is asked. They may be good enough for the Liberal backbenchers but it is not good enough for this opposition.