Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to debate the amendments that were introduced by the government this morning. As you can see, Mr. Speaker, I do not have a prepared speech because these amendments were brought to me this morning when I thought we would be debating Bill C-17. Now we find that Bill C-17 has been expanded, a very unusual situation. Why? Because the government cannot get its act together.
The government brought in a bill, I believe it was Bill C-41, to give victims certain rights. Then in Bill C-45 the drafting was right out to lunch, it compromised these rights and where are we now? The government is asking for leave to amend Bill C-17 by adding
on these extra changes. We are debating them today to try to get the government's rear end covered for the next election.
This shows the incompetence the country is getting from the government. It has only been three and a half years. We thought we would have a five-year mandate with the huge majority it has but after three and a half years the Liberals are getting a little shaky. They are going down in the polls and they are thinking, "boy we'd better get out there and grab our support before it disappears on us".
Now we find the Liberals are trying to make some last minute corrections to try to save face so they can go tell Canadians they are trying to protect victims when they have through their legislation been protecting criminals for three and a half years.
For three and a half years we have been criticizing the Minister of Justice. Every time he has brought in a bill he has been soft on criminals and ignored victims. What has he done for victims? He has done very very little and what little he did he compromised with Bill C-45. Now he is trying to make some small amends.
This Minister of Justice is a joke. This Minister of Justice has certainly not served the justice system well. He has not served Canadians well. He has not served victims well. He thinks he can sit here and introduce legislation that suits his whims and the whims of the Liberal Party. They will find out in a few short weeks what Canadians think of their ideas on criminal justice.
We may be saying goodbye to quite a few Liberals in the next election. Canadians are fed up to the teeth of this daily ritual of how the Liberals think they are standing up to protect Canadians while at the same time they allow criminals to walk all over them.
We have argued from the day we arrived here that section 745 must go. It is not a big section of the act. It would not take a great deal of effort, just a stroke of the pen by the Minister of Justice, fully supported by everybody in the House I would hope, and section 745 would be gone. Then we would never hear about people like Clifford Olson for a very long time because he would not be in the news, he would be in jail.
Today we have heard about the various things that they have in jail for people like Mr. Olson and others like him, where life does not seem to be that unpleasant.
We know that our society needs to be protected. We know that the government has little or no desire to protect Canadians. We know that it would rather play around with the law. We heard the minister say: "I cannot protect the people of Quebec. I do not know how to write a law that will address these gangs in Quebec who are killing and maiming innocent people". Just think of that young boy who was killed by a bomb in Montreal. The Minister of Justice said: "I do not think I can write a law that deals with gangsters such as these".
I heard today that he is going to bring one in. It must be a sudden conversion. Perhaps an election is in the wind. This type of posturing is not what we want. We are looking for government. We are looking for people who care about the victims.
When I heard that Clifford Olson described to the parents of one of his victims the last moments and how that child died, I cannot think of the horror and tragedy they were forced to relive. Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker? I hope the Minister of Justice will think about it. He has not said publicly what he thinks, but I know that I cannot imagine the horror of being in that situation. If my child had been murdered and I had to listen to the murderer tell me about my child's last moment on this earth, I would be devastated. I am sure that the parents of these victims are absolutely, totally devastated. That is why my colleague from Surrey said we support the amendments. It is a small measure, not because we like it, but it is a minuscule thing.
We have begged the government for three and a half years to eliminate section 745 of the Criminal Code, to protect society from these people, to prevent the parents from having to relive the horror once more.
It goes on. When Olson is denied his parole, we know he is going to be back again on another day. The victims will have to go through it maybe one, two, three or four times. Who can tell?
I sincerely hope that the Minister of Justice will take our comments and the comments of all Canadians under advisement, listen to what we say and make the appropriate amendments.