Mr. Speaker, I was very pleased to hear at the closing of the hon. member's remarks that he decided to get back to the bill at hand.
He was speaking to childhood nutrition and crime prevention which are of course very important issues. I always have time for my hon. friend in debates here in the House, though he may stray from the point of debate. He and I attended high school together in Scarborough just a few years ago.
Some of his colleagues have not provided me with so many things to listen to. His colleagues have chided the government for not having a list of priorities by placing this bill ahead of other bills they believe should be at the top. One of the members mentioned two items they felt were of priority. One was amendments to section 745 of the Criminal Code and the other was amendments to the Young Offenders Act.
I was here in the last Parliament but I am not certain the other hon. member was. I have to remind the House that the government did amend both those items in the last Parliament. The government chose to amend section 745. The government chose and Parliament adopted legislation amending Young Offenders Act. This increased the penalties for murder and provided for the transfer of violent young offenders to adult court. Those were government priorities.
To the speech at hand, I could not help but note the references to the salaries of U.S. judges. I think they were in $90,000, $110,000, $115,000, $120,000 range. The member suggested they were one third less than the salaries proposed for our Canadian judges.
In fairness, did he forget to take into account the exchange rate between the U.S. and Canadian dollars? If he did, it is unfair to use those numbers. Would the hon. member like to recalculate judges' salaries either in Canada or the U.S. to incorporate the exchange rate? A member on this side did a quick calculation and if we take the U.S. numbers, apply a 40% exchange rate, we would have the U.S. judges being 7% ahead.
However, would my colleague like to correct this for the record? Having not applied the exchange rate, the discrepancy between the judicial salaries is not as great as he suggested and it would help to put that on the record.