Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Comox-Alberni.
When you are in your constituency you hear from people who manage to listen to the parliamentary channel every once in a while and what goes on in the Chamber. They are sick and tired of hearing this legal jargon. Over and over we hear all of these lawyers talking and illustrating all the good things they know and all the wonderful things they are to do. Let us not confuse things. Let us talk about this or that. They have people's minds totally confused.
What is it they stand for? What are they trying to do? What do they mean by doing this and that? I think everybody out there is coming to the conclusion I came to a long time ago that the more you keep the people confused, the public, the better it is for the people in the House of Commons, particularly the Liberals.
We came out with a document, a victims' bill of rights. We get all this rhetoric that they can support it, but. Certainly they can support it. They had better support it. It does not make sense that they constantly come up with this whole idea of all these wonderful things they have been doing for two and half years are the answer to victims. They are not. They are not listening at all.
There are eight points on this list. The reason they are on this list, the reason they are on our agenda is that they are on the people's agenda throughout the land. If anybody in the House thinks the majority of Canadians are really happy with our justice system, for heaven's sake let us all go home and ask them one more time how happy they are.
These eight items are on this list because they are on the people's list. That is what they want to see happen. Look at point eight, that victims have a right to now if a person convicted of a sexual offence has a sexually transmitted disease. I cannot believe all the lawyer rhetoric in the House trying to tell us what is wrong with that statement when it is pure and simple.
It is based on several cases, one in particular in Quebec, which is supposed to be doing all the right things, of a woman working in a church office, a secretary, on a Saturday, when she was raped, not sexually assaulted, raped, beaten by an individual on a day pass from prison. After all the trauma of being beaten and raped and humiliated and scarred for life, she simply wanted to know if this perpetrator had a sexually transmitted disease or HIV. She wanted to eliminate that possibility.
For goodness sake, if that does not make just plain old ordinary horse sense, I do not know what does. We heard this kind of rhetoric a dozen times from a couple of speakers.
Once again this is on our agenda because it is on the agenda of Canadians. It is on the agenda of the people from FACT, CAVEAT, CRY, Move the Rock, Remove the Rock, the Kid Brother campaign. More and more a whole pile of individuals are signing up to the victims groups across the land.
Why is it that in two and one-half years membership in the victims organizations is growing probably 10 to 100 times faster than the membership in the Liberal Party? Why is it when victims of crime are invited to a convention in Hamilton that come thousands come? It is because we are not doing our job.
We are now asking that we provide something which represents what they would like to have. We are listening to the people. These are the things the police are calling for. These are the things the public is calling for. It is not just the Reform Party. It is on our agenda because it is on the people's agenda. I am really tired of hearing about these wonderful bills the Liberals have passed in two and one-half years, C-37, C-68, C-41, all the wonderful things they are doing for the victims.
It is really amazing that in January 1994 all these things were supposed to be submitted to the justice minister in order for him to come up with some new ideas on the Young Offenders Act. He came up with Bill C-37. If C-37 was such a hot and wonderful bill, will somebody please explain why the justice minister has the justice committee going all across the country asking people what they want to do about young offenders? It is because he knows it is not even close to being solved. Yet three, four or five times today in the House I heard the Liberals saying what a wonderful thing they have done for victims.
Nobody talks about the fact that in Bill C-41 the Liberals wanted to put dangerous offenders in alternative programs which we opposed. Nobody even mentioned the legislation where if a member of this place or some other elected place commits a crime, as long as their sentence was not longer than five years-until we had it amended-they could still draw their pay and be a member of the government they were elected into. Nobody even mentions that. We had it reduced to two years. Is it not wonderful to know that if you are a parliamentarian you can go out and break the law and as long as your sentence is not longer than two years you can still get your pay and be happy?
All we are saying is to address the victims. These are some of the things we can do. These are some of the things that will give hope to the people from those organizations in our constituencies.
With Bill C-68, the same old rhetoric flies on and on. Nobody mentions the 150 pages that address the law-abiding people and the very little that addresses the criminal. Nobody mentions all the flaws that were in that legislation. Thank goodness we have our
member for Calgary North who has a little bit of law experience. He sat with me for a day or two and explained all the flaws that were in that law and what made it such a bad piece of legislation. It was not the principle of making certain that people are not hurt with guns. This was wise. However, C-68 certainly did not take care of that.
What a tragedy that case was in Vernon, but the law was followed to the letter when it came to C-68. All the right paperwork was in place, registration and everything. The only thing they failed to say was that the person had victimized people in the past. With a little bit of time and effort they would have realized that we cannot issue a gun to a person like that. That is all it would have taken. Now C-68 certainly did not do a lot of good in that case. Stop all that nonsense. It is not doing that much good and it will not do any good.
Think of the people who got out on bail. People are arrested at breakfast and bailed out at noon. There are over a dozen cases now involving serious offences where the person was arrested and bailed out. They then went on to finish the act before the day was over. They committed murder and sexual assault.
We should do something about protecting victims in those situations, but we do not do anything. We come out with thick documents which are flawed to no end and then brag about them. We get a bunch of lawyer talk to make people out there in the land think we know what we are doing. And they wonder what we are doing because they do not understand.
I am beginning to understand more and more. There is one thing I believe with all my heart. I was told this by an individual some time ago. I am beginning to see what he meant. He said that when the government fears the people we have a democracy and when the people start fearing the government we have tyranny. He said we had better watch what is happening in Canada and I believe him now more than ever.