Madam Speaker, I remind members that this is private members' hour. I regret to say that from time to time we seem to get into the sort of debate which assumes that a bill put forward by a private member of the Reform Party is somehow a Reform Party bill and it is the Reform Party that is being supported or criticized. I would hope that private members' hour would not become politicized in that negative sense.
It may well be that many members of the Reform Party support the bill that has been put forward by the hon. member and it may well be that members from other parties will want to oppose that bill. But I caution against falling by default into a way of debating this bill that replicates the way we debate government legislation.
Having said that, I am here not to speak on behalf of the NDP but to share some of my own thoughts about this. I begin by saying that actually I am quite open minded about this. I do not claim to understand the law in this regard. I have heard conflicting claims.
There are people who say that the law as it stands provides adequate tools for meeting the problem that the hon. member has identified and he is bringing forward a bill in order to address it. I have heard the hon. member say otherwise. I have heard him accused of not paying attention to reality in the things that he has had to say. I do not know.
I do not understand enough about how parole is administered and dealt with in order to say with authority whether I think the hon. member is right or is wrong, or whether he is operating simply out of a political agenda, but I do not think so. I sense from the hon. member and from others that there is a lot of concern, not just on the part of the hon. member but on the part of many Canadians. They are mystified on occasion by how it is that people who are on parole get to be in some of the places that they are and get to do some of the things that they do while they are on parole.
If the police, the courts and the system as it currently stands are able to deal with this or have the powers to deal with this, it still remains an open question as to why it appears to so many Canadians that they do not, and that occasions arise in what seems to be a persistent way. I say seems because I do not have the research at hand, but it certainly seems this way to many Canadians and they feel the justice system is somehow letting them down in terms of public safety.
My attitude toward this bill at this point is that I have not made up my mind yet. That is why we give votable items three hours of debate. It is so that we do not all come in here in the first hour of debate with our minds made up. Some people's minds are made up. That is fair enough. For my part, I intend to review what has been said today, to look at what is said in the second hour and indeed in the third hour.
Having said that, I just want to indicate that if what the hon. member who has put this bill forward is saying is true, I am concerned. I would be concerned when the police identify someone who is on parole in a situation which is in breach of those parole conditions.
If the police are saying that they cannot really do anything about it, that by the time they do whatever it is the law requires of them the person has noticed that the police have noticed them and has already been able to move on, then this is something that should be of concern. It should be of concern to people who are concerned about public safety, particularly if the circumstances of the breach of parole are such that it would cause us to worry about the safety of others.
I share the hon. member's concern about that situation but I am open to be persuaded as to whether or not the law as it currently stands has the ability to deal with this. But even that is not good enough in the sense that I would like to know that if it does have the ability to deal with it, why is there such a widespread perception that it does not use those tools.
It is not enough to say that there is the capacity to do a certain thing. We need to know that the system is designed in such a way as to create the will to use that capacity and to use the tools that are available to the police and to the courts now.
It may be that there is some flaw in the design of the system as it now exists which discourages police from using the powers that are now at their disposal. The member's bill might be an answer to that or it might not be.
There might be some other way of addressing this, which would argue it seems to me for why it might be a good idea to send such a bill to committee. The committee could report either that it is a good idea or that the problem the member has identified and which he is trying to address with this bill is a real problem but the bill itself for a variety of reasons does not do the trick or does not stand the test of scrutiny. There may be other alternatives.
All these things are open to us, and I look forward to listening to the debate in this hour and as it progresses. I hope other hon. members will do the same because we are all going to be called to vote on this at the end of the day, not at the end of this day but metaphorically speaking whenever the three hours is up.
We hope hon. members who speak next will have some light to shed on this. I am certainly hoping that I will be able to learn something on both sides of this debate from members who will speak after me.