Mr. Speaker, the boys are restless today. In any event, let us get down to the nub of this. The nub of this is that we have responded to Canadian concerns. The 12 per cent solution is unable to respond to those concerns. What do they do? They stir it up and they let it go.
They do that in debate on a bill which is of very great importance. They say it is not important to ordinary Canadians. However, in my riding there are many ordinary Canadians who talk to me on the weekend when I am home and who call my office. They were concerned about what was going on in the former Yugoslavia. They were concerned about what is happening in Africa. They want Canada to participate. They want Canada to do something to make things better. One of the things we can do is contribute the time and the resources of a wonderful Canadian jurist to prosecute for the international war crimes tribunal.
There is a tradition and I am often able to find it linked directly to my home community of Windsor, Ontario. In the fifties, following the second world war, a gentleman by the name of Bruce J.F. Macdonald, who was then a crown attorney and who subsequently became a judge of the court of the County of Essex, as it was then, became one of Canada's prosecutors at Nuremberg. As a result, many Canadians who live in Windsor have a great interest in this. We hear about it from time to time.
One of my constituents has just completed scholarly work, a book, on the history of Canadian involvement in war crimes prosecutions.
The Hon. Madam Justice Louise Arbour of the Ontario Court of Appeal is not someone we have foisted upon the international court. She was chosen by the secretary general of the United Nations, Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, as a result of a recommendation from the outgoing prosecutor, Mr. Justice Richard Goldstone of South Africa. She was the first choice of the UN for the position of chief prosecutor.
This does not in any way take away from her ability to continue as a judge in our court of appeal in Ontario when she returns. In fact, I would dare say that the legal community of Ontario and the citizens of Ontario would be well served by having a woman on the bench who will be a heroic figure as a result of her work with the United Nations. She will be a heroic figure who will return to sit on the bench of the Ontario Court of Appeal.
The position that the Reform Party is taking on this bill diminishes her. It is a terrible shame. This woman is honourable. She is distinguished. She is learned in the law. We in Ontario should be and are very proud of her. The fact that she has been asked to assist the world community in a very difficult, high profile task with the international war crimes tribunal is a great honour to us.
For the Reform Party to take the position which is has is shortsighted and obstructionist.
This bill is a small part of the justice agenda of the government. However, it reaches beyond our borders. It is important for the Canadian people to understand and recognize our stature in the international community. It is particularly important that we be allowed to serve, as a country, our friends around the world.
World peace is a very important and precious commodity. This is one small way in which Canada can yet again contribute to a desirable end.
I would like to suggest that the comments of the hon. member for Medicine Hat, in view of the so-called fresh start that the Reform Party is proposing, were unfair to the Minister of Justice, in particular, but in general they were unfair to the government. Making and keeping our streets safe is a very important goal. It takes more than rhetoric to do that.
At a recent address in Toronto, the Minister of Justice said that it takes more than just statutes written in a book on a shelf somewhere in Ottawa. That is insightful. It takes a lot more than that. So while the Reform Party is busy criticizing the government for what it considers to be our inaction in matters of justice, perhaps its members should take a look at their own proposals.
Community safety has to do with the health of those communities and the health of those communities has to do with their levels of economic development and with the type of social safety net those communities have.
We are struggling hard in this government to deal with the deficit which we almost have licked. We are struggling hard to put the country's finances back in order. We are struggling hard to do all these things so that Canada will remain strong, so we will have economic development and jobs, so we will have a good social safety net and so we will have a safe place for our children to grow up in.
I do not believe that giving people a tax rebate that they do not want and that they are not asking for is the way to do that. Our government's approach is a much healthier, much better organized and much more insightful approach to the problems of Canadian society.
But we do not do anybody any good when we get up in the House of Commons and rant and rave about bars on windows, locks on doors and people cowering in their houses. That is not the normal state of being in our country. The Reform Party knows that and Canadians know that. We do not serve them well by suggesting that crime is out of control or beyond the control of our law enforcement agencies. We do not do our citizens any good by simply pandering to the basest fears of citizens who are being misinformed
by politicians who are simply exploiting their fears. We do not do any good when we do that.
As a government we have to do what the justice committee is doing with respect to youth justice, for example. We have to go out there and we have to find out what is going on. When we define the problem and we see what is going on and we see the state of things, then we have to look to those who are involved in the area, to parents, to children who are at risk and who are in trouble with the law, to teachers, to educators, to social workers, to crown attorneys, to police officers and others. We have to go to them and ask them what we have done that is not working. We have to ask them what we can do that will work and what we need to do more of.
I look at the six point plan of the Reform Party. Point number four has to do with making our streets safe again. How do Reformers want to do that? They want to eliminate the Young Offenders Act. There are certain linkages in society. It is very shortsighted to think there is a quick fix. In the Reform lexicon, first they tell people there is more crime and then they tell people that they will have capital punishment to deal with it.
There is a lot that goes between the commission of the crime and the final result. There is an awful lot that goes before the commission of the crime. That is what we have to deal with, crime prevention.
Instead of going on and on about Bill C-42, instead of trying to take up the House's time and the government's time with a bill that simply allows Canada to be honoured on the international stage by having one of our leading jurists go to Europe to prosecute war criminals, instead of worrying about that, why do we not talk a little about what we can do for our children who are at risk to offend, about what misery they are living in, what problems they are having that are putting them in harm's way? Why do we not work on trying to fix that? Why do we not work on trying to find more jobs for Canadians?
Why do we not stop worrying about tax cuts and worry about how we are going to get jobs for those parents so that their children can grow up in safe, economically healthy and emotionally healthy surroundings? These are the important issues that are troubling Canadians.
On the issue of ordinary Canadians, I would like to point out that the House of Commons, quite frankly, is full of wonderful and devoted people on all sides of the House who are ordinary Canadians who have been called to an extraordinary calling and most of whom do a very good job at it. We do represent the views of ordinary Canadians and we represent them very well. Ordinary Canadians put us and our policies here and asked us to follow our agenda.
When it comes to the justice agenda, we have done what we promised. We have delivered on our promises and in a reasonable and productive way which finds a balance between the rights of Canadians who are before the courts and the rights of Canadians who have suffered. We try to take care of our people because that is what we were elected to do. As good Liberals, I would suggest we are meeting those obligations and our promises to the people of Canada.
If along the way a wonderful circumstance arises for our country, a circumstance which allows us to take one of the most prominent jurists in our country and place her in a position of international importance and responsibility, who are we to stand in the way of that? Who are we to fuss over that wonderful prospect for our country?
Madam Justice Arbour is serving Canadians and the citizens of the world. We should be proud of her and help her do that.