Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to follow a speech from a person who obviously does not know a lot about young people. I wish he had worked at a schoolhouse for a number of years. He would have seen the number of changes I have seen over the 30 years I have spent in the schools. It used to be that chewing gum was the major problem in the schools but today violence is a major problem.
It is a shame because this system and this government have put certain things in our Criminal Code that have made it very difficult for people in the school houses to maintain any kind of discipline any longer. If they lift a finger or shake too hard or even touch them they can be arrested for assault because of the bleeding hearts over there who will not allow these kinds of things to happen.
Unfortunately for them there have been parents who have lost their kids today. Why? Because they were caught spanking their children. Is that not a shame? I would like to know where a person like the individual over there grew up. What era was he in? Did he come from another planet where discipline was never used?
At any rate I reiterate the things that have happened in the government under the rule of the Liberals more than anyone else. They have been in charge for a greater percentage of the time, unfortunately for this great country. The Liberals have brought us to the time that we get headlines like “Violence grows in schools”. This is today's headline about a major school in Montreal.
I got a large kick out of the speech I heard from a separatist a while ago that everything was wonderful in Quebec and all the right things were being done. Yet these kinds of headlines come out from Quebec indicating a huge increase in violence in schools.
Something must be wrong. Some changes have to be made. When we talk about changes and the suggestions we want, we receive in glossy print from the Minister of Justice all the things she has been yapping about for a year or longer. She puts it all down in print, but nothing comes before the House in the form of legislation that would say to victims across the land that it is time we did something because the number of victims is rising too fast and people are being harmed.
They are sitting on their butts here doing nothing except putting out a press release with something in glossy print which those guys opposite will say are wonderful proposals. They should stop the proposals, get something on the table and let us debate it to fix the issue.
Let us talk about conditional release. Here is the positive attitude of the Liberals in a headline “Conditional release working 92% of the time”. Most people would say 92% is pretty good. However, my headline would give a little more of the facts. I would say that our conditional release program is not successful because of an 8% failure.
That group over there would not understand what we are talking about. Let us take a look at what happened during a 10 year study that they provided to me. The 8% that were not successful under the conditional release program went on to reoffend. As a result we have another 2,237 new victims in Canada, of which 217 were murdered and 900 and some were violently raped. There have been many other violent crimes because of the policies the government has put in place.
They sit back and say they have a 92% success rate. However the 8% out there hurting people, killing people and raping people is too big a sacrifice to ask Canadian people as a whole to make. It is not a successful program when those figures come across my desk from their own offices and their own people. Something has to be done about that.
I listened to the NDP member who talked about how we exploited all things that happen in the land. For his information and for the information of the NDP, I have talked about many individual cases. I talked about the case regarding the Manning family from Quebec when we tried to get DNA testing in place. In fact when I talked about it the Manning family was sitting in the gallery encouraging me to do just that.
The Ambose family from Scarborough, when the Young brothers campaign was on, encouraged me to rise in the House to talk about their political situation because nothing was happening. I talked about the Boyd family when we tried our darndest to kill a Liberal law, section 745 of the Criminal Code. We tried desperately to get rid of it. It was suggested by one of their previous members who is now an independent.
The Boyd family and other families encouraged the Reform Party to do its best to get rid of those kinds of laws. They sat in the galleries begging us and asking us to do these things. We had their support and what we got from the other side was political nonsense.
They said that we are exploiting these crimes for political gain. Hog manure. There are many ways to get political gain. All we have to do is talk about all the stupid things they have done financially and we will get political gain. We do not need to talk about crime. It is bad enough as it is.
To suggest for a moment that we are exploiting these cases for political gain is really getting sick. It is the victims who have come to our offices to encourage us to do these things. They do that because they know the group opposite does not have the intestinal fortitude or the guts to even consider doing such a thing.
The bleeding hearts in the left end of this room, from the separatists on clear to the wall, would not even dare talk about those things. They would rather talk about the mushy stuff that goes on around here: the warm fuzzy feeling that we should be giving to the criminals of our land and how we need to do more to help in rehabilitating them instead of looking at the victims. Is giving them more golf courses a great way to do it?
Drugs are rampant in the prisons. They are absolutely out of control. There is not a guard in the whole country who will not say that is the truth. What are the wimps over there doing? Nothing. They do not have the guts to do anything. The only thing they can do is sit over there and heckle like my bald-headed friend. I can say that because I have more hair than he has.
This kind of sickness exists in the government. Its members sit back while the statistics go up and up because not one of them has the courage to say it is time to do something. It is a shame. They had one member on that side of the House who had the courage to demand certain changes such as section 745. He sits over here now because he was way out of line with this group of people.
We have another one over there who constantly insists that things are wonderful, that we must not let things get out of control by daring to discipline children in our schools or in our homes with a strap or a paddle, et cetera.
By the way, I will be sharing my time with the member for Cariboo—Chilcotin.
I do not have to say that after five years in the House I get worked up when it comes to justice issues. I really get worked up when government members do nothing but dabble here and there. Then they profess they have made wonderful changes to the criminal code that will make my family and my grand kids safe. People will not have to put bars on their windows any longer.
They have not done a thing. If they think I am exaggerating, I invite them to come to small towns in my rural riding where there are no police stations. They have bars or deadbolts on their doors, on the windows in their business and in their homes. They do everything they can to protect their property and in some cases to protect their lives.
It is a shame that people in rural Alberta have to live behind bars while the criminals are running around. It is a shame that people are thrown in jail when they try to illustrate a principle like being able to market their produce by selling their grain without a wheat board permit and at the same time violent offenders are put on community service. This whole outfit is absolutely ill.
