Madam Speaker, I want to add my own congratulations to you on your appointment as one of our deputy speakers and look forward to your very fair and impartial judgments on our deliberations.
As a fellow colleague from the coast and Vancouver Island I have, of course, much sympathy for what the hon. member for Surrey North has been sharing with us this afternoon. We were all treated to that terrible travesty of justice recently where Clifford Olson was brought into our living rooms by television and other means to plead his case for early parole. It is the insensitivity of the government that has allowed this kind of thing to happen in Canadian society.
I have a question for my hon. colleague. I wonder if, in view of the tragic circumstances that his family has endured in the past few years, he has any light to shed on whether or not the penal system in this country does rehabilitate criminals.