Mr. Speaker, Bill C-251, introduced by our colleague from Mississauga East, is the result of a lot of hard work on her part to prove the need to amend the Criminal Code.
She proved, through statistics and studies, that people feel let down by parliament's unwillingness to rectify this rather serious flaw. Our colleague had three goals in moving this bill, the first one being to introduce a human element.
Through he work, she had the opportunity to meet the families of victims of the most abominable crimes you can imagine. They talked about the moral anguish suffered by family members and friends alike. This shows the law is flawed. Some of these crimes are so horrible that they have had a tremendous impact on the victims' families. Of course, the victims are dead now, but their families are still suffering.
I believe this human point of view is extremely important and not negligible. Often these people feel that the members of their families who were victims of such horrendous crimes have been forgotten. When a sentence is handed down, it is a concurrent sentence. This means that if a criminal is sentenced to life in prison, it does not go any further; of course we know that legally they can ask for parole. After 15 years, they have the opportunity to recover their freedom.
Of course, this is horrible for the victims' families.
Statistics, and our colleague's study, show that in seven out of ten cases the victims fell prey to criminals who had already served prison terms for such horrible crimes as murder, and had reoffended upon being released after 15 years. Very often the victims were children or women.
When we hear such figures, seven out of ten victims due to the fact that these criminals reoffended, we have every right to be concerned and say that the law should be amended. We cannot afford to let people loose when we know that they are very likely to commit the same kind of crimes.
I believe the least we can do is amend the law so that in the case of such horrible crimes and when there are several victims, we do not take any chances and do not release them. These crimes are often beyond our imagination.
The member for Mississauga East is right to believe that the time has come for parliament and members of this House to take a stand on this issue. We have nothing to lose, but everything to gain, in making sure that in the future the kind of crimes we have seen in recent years do not happen again. There are people who were released who should never have been set free.
There is not much more to be said on this issue. Our colleague did her homework. Many people have voiced their opinion on this matter. It is obvious that an amendment was needed and at long last we will have the opportunity to rectify this serious flaw.