Exactly. Let us change each piece of legislation every year, depending on whether or not certain groups can present their case on television and in the media and gain the most public opinion.
Those people who were put to death between let us say 1997 and the year 2000 when the legislation might come up for review, well, they were on the wrong side of public opinion for three years. We will change it again in 2000 and we will not have the death penalty.
Maybe in 2010 we will change it again and those people between 2000 and 2010, good for them, they won the lottery. They did all right. Those after will suffer.
We are allowing the Gallup poll to determine legislation in Parliament where I believe we have been elected to represent our constituents' interests but also to lead this country into the next millennium.
That is our purpose and I think that is what we have to do. We now know there is no rationale for the piece of legislation. We now know it is being led by public opinion and that is the purpose of it, I suppose, to gain some points in another Gallup poll.
It would be Reform justice, I suppose. We know that jurors can err but I raise another point and I think it is an important point. In many states in America, our neighbours to the south, there is capital punishment.
The reality of what happens in study after study is that juries are reluctant to convict if they know the death penalty is what awaits the accused.
The mover of this legislation has talked about the Latimer case and it is interesting to note that jurors who convicted Mr. Latimer interviewed later on, and this is no secret, it was used by his defence council, indicated that had they known that the minimum sentence was 10 years, they would have entered a verdict of not guilty.
If we accept the statistics of my hon. friend, and I am not sure I do, let us suppose that 40% of Canadians on moral grounds opposed the death penalty, if they sit on the jury and cannot morally accede to the death penalty if it is law, they are left with no choice but to acquit.
I ask the mover of this legislation to think about that very carefully because it is a very real consequence in states where there is a death penalty.
The other side of this in reality is the frustration in the legal system. The bill makes provision for a mandatory appeal. It is a very American piece of legislation. I think we have to say that what we are doing here is free trade on certain kinds of justice issues.
We are importing American legislation into this country, into a judicial system and a court structured system that is British in nature. Let us be clear. We are trying to put a round peg into a square hole here and it is not going to fit.
If we do look to the American states where this type of legislation is in place, we see case after case where the appeals are dragged out for years. It is a fight for someone's life. Make no mistake, there are organizations in this country that would find funding to continue appeal after appeal, to look for clemency to move on.
I think we have to look at the reality of this. It is nice and easy to say this solves the problem, we are going to have an execution after we seek leave to appeal.
Since I have one minute left, I will try to wrap up. Like my colleague, there is so much to say on this issue that I could speak for a fairly long period of time. However, let me say that I find it absolutely contradictory and somewhat upsetting that the mover of this legislation would say that we are in favour of this and that we are going to do it nice and clean, in a way that nobody is really bothered, it will not be a public spectacle.
To those in favour of capital punishment, I say bring the accused into this Chamber, execute him here, watch him foul himself in this House, eye to eye, and then let them tell me that they are in favour.
I have not touched on the young offender areas of the bill, nor have I touched on an interesting little section that requires the body of the person who has been executed to be buried within the prison. And my friend says that this is not couched in vengeance. So much for Christian mercy.