Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on Bill C-42.
The member for Windsor-St. Clair tried desperately in her speech to twist Reform's position with respect to this bill by implying that we were criticizing Madam Justice Louise Arbour. We are not. We are criticizing the process that is being used by the government to deal with this matter.
She also tried to take credit for a number of bills for which she read out the numbers, bills that achieved certain things in the justice area. Most of these bills would never have been presented if there had not been a Reform presence in this place. Most of those bills did not go even a fraction as far as the people of Canada would have liked them to go.
The one that was really outstanding and which she tried to take complete credit for from the Liberal perspective was Bill C-102, the DNA bill. The fact is it was the member for Wild Rose who initiated that bill. Everyone will remember that right here in the House during question period he manoeuvred the Minister of Justice into giving a commitment to deal with the bill within a 48-hour period. It is the member for Wild Rose who deserves congratulations for that. It was a fantastic bill.
The very first case which was solved using that bill was in my riding of North Vancouver. I am certainly one person, and my constituents are a whole group of people who are very grateful to the member for Wild Rose for having initiated that bill.
Another thing the member for Windsor-St. Clair said that really needs correction is that Reform would introduce capital punishment. How many times do we have to say this to get it through to these Liberal members who obviously have some hearing impairment? It is Reform's position that we would put the question of capital punishment to the people of Canada directly in the form of a binding referendum.
I suspect that the member for Windsor-St. Clair knows what the outcome would be. The fact is there is no Reform policy on capital punishment per se, but there is a Reform policy on giving the people of Canada the right to decide. If the outcome was that the people of Canada wanted the return of capital punishment, I am sure it would be terribly distressing to the member for Windsor-St. Clair who seems to think that she knows better than the people of Canada how to handle justice issues. I can understand why she would be upset at Reform policy, but I would not want anybody out there to get the wrong impression about what Reform policy is on capital punishment.
As the member for Wild Rose mentioned, the membership in victims groups is growing by leaps and bounds. It is just exploding because of the lack of action on things like the Young Offenders Act. The member could not possibly tell me with a straight face that she does not still receive lots of letters and phone calls complaining about the Young Offenders Act.
The fact is that the twiddling with the edges of it that occurred in this House, compliments of the justice minister, were ineffective. They just made it worse. They have not done anything to deal with the real problems in that act.
Finally, in dealing with items that were raised by the member in her speech, when she talked about prevention of crime, I gave a speech in this House a couple of months ago where I gave detailed statistics from the Institute of Justice, statistics which indicated quite clearly from the United States that states which had higher incarceration rates had lower rates of crime. The estimate was that over a 20-year period there were tens of thousands of rapes prevented by having repeat rapists locked in jail. Hundreds of thousands of burglaries and robberies were prevented by having known robbers and burglars kept in jail.
A component of crime prevention is recognizing the people you are not going to rehabilitate and protecting society from those people. If we could get it through the heads on the other side of this House to start looking at that, we would not have these ridiculous, idiotic decisions coming out of immigration and refugee boards, coming from judges across this country that are just letting all sorts of criminals run free in our environment. Most Canadians are fed up to the hilt with it and they just wish we could get on with protecting society.
The motion which is being debated is an amendment to Bill C-42 introduced by the government through the other place. It removed the section dealing with a new public policy allowing judges to accept international assignments. The government replaced it with a specific exemption to the Judges Act to allow Madam Justice Louise Arbour to accept a position at the UN as a prosecutor for international war crimes at the Hague.
It is interesting that the Senate made this amendment and sent it back. I have been quite surprised at the amount of involvement of the other place in the activities of this House over the last couple of
years. They have modified and sent back items to this place a number of times.
It has been Reform policy for a long time that the other place needs an overhaul. It needs to be made elected, equal and effective. It is actually quite impressive that there has been some sober second thought. Some material has been sent back here. I am actually quite impressed in some ways.
There is an interesting little twist which has to do with that place which comes out of something that took place in this House on December 7 last year when the justice minister announced that B.C. would henceforth be considered as a fifth region in the country on a par with the prairies, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. A journalist in the Vancouver area, Barbara Yaffe, wrote a piece about this and it was quite interesting.
A problem has been created as a result of that and it really has not had much exposure in the House. The B.C. Liberal members have been fretting about it. I guess they were hoping that it would never come to public notice but it has. If B.C. is a fifth region, why does it not have an appropriate share of the Senators?
Historically each of Canada's four regions were accorded 24 Senators. As a result of being lumped in with the prairies in the previous four regions model, B.C. has only six Senators. As a fifth and separate region, surely its Senate numbers should be adjusted up to 24 or at the very least have the rest of the other place adjusted downward in numbers so that proportionately it is back in balance.
That is a very interesting idea. It could really have an effect on the type of actions that are taken by that other place in returning bills like this Bill C-42 with amendments and degrees of sober second thought for us to reconsider in this place. That would be a major improvement for the other place. I hope it has not been too embarrassing to have brought that up in the House today for consideration.
Returning to Bill C-42 specifically, we have been very distressed, as a number of members have mentioned, that time allocation has been moved on the bill. The number of times that time allocation has been moved over the past few months is very distressing. If memory serves me right, time allocation has been used by this government more often than by the Mulroney Tories. After all the hoopla in the red book about how democratic this place was going to be, it has actually turned out to be a complete disgrace.