Madam Speaker, in the brief 10 minutes I was given I did touch, in broad generalities, about confidence in government, integrity and so forth.
To take one specific example from my riding, when I was a child going to school on the streets of New Westminster I did not see prostitutes standing at bus stops. There was a social context in my riding, and in most cities of this country, where street prostitution was not pervasive because there was a legal context which prohibited it.
We may not ever remove the problem of prostitution from our society, but the law changed and capacity creates its own demand. When this Parliament made the mistakes and changed the law, we now have street prostitution from one end of the country to the other.
In the last Parliament there was a fairly significant effort of the federal government to consult with the provinces and many reports were produced and many suggestions for particular amendments to the criminal law were made. One specific one that appears to have agreement from all attorneys general across the country is simply communicating for the purposes of obtaining sexual services in a public place. That specific offence should not merely be a summarial offence but it should be a hybrid offence. It should be an electable offence.
This would provide the needed tools to the local police forces and the flexibility they need to arrest if necessary and allow an offender to appear before a justice and be released on some kind of recognisance order. It also helps with the identification of those on the street.
This is a very minor first step and I introduced a private member's bill specific to this. I understand the previous justice minister acknowledged the need for this but gave the excuse of why he did not introduce that he was still consulting with the provinces.
It is time we begin to take some steps that all provinces across the country are asking for.