Mr. Speaker, I will keep my remarks quite brief. I have always admired the Reform Party in its aspects on various legislation, including gun control, victims rights, et cetera. It should be also commended for its efforts to keep our streets safe.
However, I have a couple of concerns for which I do not yet have answers. I was hoping that I could get the answers in the debate today for our party and for our constituents.
The fear I have the most is that in some countries which are not as democratic as ours there is the assumption of guilt before innocence. Thank goodness we live in a society where a person is innocent until proven guilty either by a judge or jury of their peers.
There is one aspect I have not heard from the Reform Party. In the event that a DNA sample is collected and the individual is found to be not guilty, will the DNA sample be removed and destroyed or will it be held in the databank for ever and a day? If the presumption is that we are going to maintain these samples forever, the the next step I see is that each person born will have a DNA sample taken and locked up somewhere. If a person is proven innocent after going to trial, will the DNA sample be removed?
As well, we heard members of the Reform Party talk about criminals and the length of time they should stay in jail and the treatment they should receive while incarcerated.
I would have a question for them. What rehabilitation processes would they have in place while the person is incarcerated? What kind of halfway programs would they include in their summations of a prisoner once the person has served their time to rehabilitate them back into society?