Mr. Speaker, the Reform Party has called for extreme right wing changes to Canada's criminal justice system. It favours a two strikes and your out law that would jail young Canadians for life if they commit two relatively minor offences.
Some of Reform's extreme ideas include public scorn, caning and other forms of corporal punishment. Reform members even wanted to send a parliamentary delegation to Singapore to witness the caning of young offenders in that country.
Is this what Canadians want? No. Canadians want public policy that makes sense. That is why this government launched a balanced strategy to renew our youth justice system, a strategy that emphasizes prevention and rehabilitation, not public beatings. That is why we have established a DNA bank to store samples and why we increased crime prevention funding by $32 million a year. That is why we passed tough anti-gang legislation and why, to the consternation of the Reform Party, we introduced gun control.
This government has always made crime prevention a priority and to the Reform agenda I say no.