As you can hear, Mr. Speaker, the members across the floor are kind of laughing at this idea of having a stronger deterrents.
I would like to use an illustration I have used before in the House. They obviously have not hear it so I will present it again. I will talk about deterrence to crime and how it works. I will use the example of I believe his name was Bratton. He was hired as head of security for the subway system in New York City.
His philosophy was entirely different from the Liberal philosophy which I have talked a little about. He said that we have to focus on the so-called petty crimes. If we are really tough on petty crime like vandalism and that type of thing, then criminals will not go on to commit the more serious crimes.
He found that his philosophy was absolutely right. Through the application of that philosophy, by getting very tough on so-called petty crime like panhandling and graffiti being painted on walls, the crime rate for the more serious crimes dropped off dramatically.
Mr. Bratton was later hired by the city of New York as chief of police and as chief of police they found the same thing. If you get tough on the so-called petty crime, you are using a strong deterrent to crime. That is what he did and he is very successful as chief of police for New York City. That demonstrates how we can use deterrence to crime effectively. For that reason the subways in New York City are much safer than they were before he came in and started to do his job.
I will talk more about the changes that Reform proposed in this area to fix things up. Part of our job as an opposition party is to critique, both positive and negative criticism. That is part of our job, which we do. Sometimes it is negative criticism which has been earned in many cases. We also offer positive alternatives to what we hear from the government side which I will talk about.