Mr. Speaker, the comment from the hon. member from the Bloc flies in the face of reality; decentralization on a number of issues from education, to health care, to job retraining and all these other areas we have talked about and have been promoting the idea or suggesting governments look at the British North America Act again and start getting things back in proper perspective and let the provinces look after certain areas and get the federal government to ensure standardization across the county and let the provinces handle things.
However, when it comes to the justice system, to say that although our intentions are honourable in terms of victims' rights, the federal government very much has to be involved in something like this.
It very much has to ensure that no matter where we live, whether it is in Quebec-a great province in this wonderful country where they belong and where this member should stop trying to pull them out of-British Columbia, Newfoundland or anywhere, we need a constitution, a set of laws which applies all across the country. Within the various provincial jurisdictions we then allow for the differences needed to be applied.
We have federal laws in the criminal system and we have provincial laws. Quebec has civil laws as well and we respect that difference based on history. For him to say that although our intentions are honourable we should butt out of the legal system is ridiculous.
This is an honest attempt by our member from Fraser Valley West to look after the interests of all Canadians whether anglophone, francophone or of ethnic origin from any country. It is to look after the victims. That is the point, victims who are, as the justice minister said, orphans of the justice system.
Somebody commits a crime. They are tried and found guilty. The victim is either beat up, dead or suffering physically. Once the trial is over they are forgotten. What we spend money and time and effort on is rehabilitation. Our system of justice is out of whack. The punishment does not match the crime over half the time. The judges have too much leeway. Instead of spending time in narrowing choices, and the House has the right to do that, we waste our time on other measures. We should be concentrating on items like this to ensure we are bringing a balance to the justice system.
This issue of decentralization and victims' rights is something the federal government should very much be involved in.