The hon. Liberal suggests that is the Reform Party, but I tell this member to just wait. All he has to do is wait for another 40-some days and we will see about that.
Let us consider someone committing an offence related to child prostitution. I find it difficult to believe that a bill like C-27 would deal with pimps of people under 18. I would have thought that the government would be concerned with pimps, period. The fact is that I do not understand why it plays these kinds of games. Is not a pimp a pimp? Is it not abusing and taking advantage of women? If one is a child who becomes 18, is it all of a sudden okay to be the pimp of that person? What is wrong with these people?
One of the things that has to be done is set a minimum 10-year sentence for those living off the avails of child prostitution. What is wrong with that? It is time to start getting serious about the customers of child prostitutes. Those are the kinds of things that matter out on the streets, not the rhetoric we get in this place, not bills that are thrown before us seven or eight days before an election writ is dropped, when the whole country knows that the government is not serious about implementation. In fact, it is an insult to the intelligence of Canadians to be dropping this stuff in the House, knowing full well that it will do nothing about it.
Just how does the government think we felt last week sitting in the justice committee trying to convince a group why victims rights are so important, knowing full well the government was not going to do a darn thing about it? Talk about insulting.
Last April 29, 1996 the justice minister stood up in the House and said: "Yes, we have to deliver on this. We have to develop legislation. Let us get it right to the justice committee". He told me that he was going to do something about it in the fall agenda. What happened? Nothing. I talked to him in the fall session and he said that he was going to do something in the winter session. Did he? No.
When did he do something about victims rights? Eight or nine days before an election he decides we should look at it. The insult.
However, that does not bode well for these folks across the way. Some of those in the Vancouver area have already been criticized for doing nothing in the 35th Parliament. I do not expect to see them back.
Ontario is not void of its criminal justice problems nor is Halifax, Atlantic Canada or Saint John, New Brunswick. This is not isolated. I talked to a lady from New Brunswick just yesterday about some of the problems she has had and the fact that her rights seem to be much inferior to the rights of the criminal. She has all but given up. I told her to hold in there and we will see if we can get it changed.
I debated and debated across the country issues like victims having the right to be informed of their rights. The justice minister stands up and says he will look after it. However, if he cannot look after it he says it is a provincial issue.
I talk about individuals having the right to be able to provide unrestricted victim impact statements, for instance, at parole board hearings and judicial reviews. The justice minister stands up and says the government did something on that, he thinks.
Two weeks ago I was in a Vancouver courtroom listening to the parents of the victims of Clifford Olson begging for the right to submit victim impact statements and this clown is on a speaker from his prison cell saying: "If you give them the right to do that I'm going to cross-examine them".
How can the justice minister stand up and say "We did something for victims" and yet victims do not have the right, no matter what is the issue, to submit victim impact statements? I could go on with a litany of the problems with issues like plea bargaining. I have seen it. I have been there. I have gone through it.
People think that when someone is charged and the court case will be for first degree murder, they end up bargaining for assault or manslaughter which carries a much lower sentence. All victims are asking for is the right to know whether or not a plea bargain is being considered before it is given to the defence. That is not too much to ask. It is not too much to ask of people, of this government, to make sure that victims are not harassed and intimidated.
I have been involved in several. One notable case was where the parents were told in a letter from the perpetrator, which he wrote from his prison cell, the last words of their son. Not only did he tell them their son's last words but he described in detail how he killed him. Do they not have the right to have this prevented? Do not victims have the right to know the status of an offender? They are not asking to keep him in any longer necessarily. They just want to know where he is, when is he getting out, what are the terms and conditions of his getting out and how long will it be before he gets out? Is that too much to ask the government?
I cannot wait for this election. Folks in Ontario and Atlantic Canada who are listening to this should understand what is at stake here. We have lost a justice system and are into a legal industry and it must change. It will not change with this government. Some day this government will fall. That time is very near. It can come out with its polls and tell all us little folks how badly we are doing and it can tell us how we must vote. It can tell us that some parties are going to come back. This country will not go backward to the future. We are going ahead with an agenda that we will implement. In this country victims rights will become a reality.