Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to bring out an aspect of this bill that I think we have missed, even though we have heard a lot of speakers and we have had a lot of things brought forward.
The key part of this bill we need to focus on is the fact that the resistance we are running into on this bill relates exactly to the privacy issue, personal privacy. Whose privacy are we actually talking about? We are talking about the privacy of people who have been indicted. The police do not indict someone without good cause. What we are really looking to protect is the privacy of an individual who may have committed a heinous crime as opposed to the security and safety of Canadian citizens. We heard some of the heinous crimes that have been committed against women and children and if we can do anything to stop those heinous crimes. We are trading off the privacy issue and the safety of Canadians.
I have a bill on the same issue and which is going to be voted on next week, Bill C-284. It has to do with allowing parents and those who hire people to look after children to know whether or not the person has a history of being a paedophile. In that situation they would know if he has ever received a pardon. They would not put those children at risk again.
When we debated that bill in the House it was the same kind of thing. Everybody on this side was supportive of the bill, but what came from that side was “We have to protect the privacy of the convicted paedophile more than we need to protect the children who could be exposed to this kind of risk”.
This is the key difference. Are we going to protect citizens as we have been elected to do? Many of us are here because of our frustration with the justice system being too much concerned and overly focused on protecting the rights of criminals or those who are indicted, putting that at a higher level than the victims in our society.
The Liberal approach is just not working. This loose approach to the justice issue not only puts law-abiding citizens at risk, but it makes those who are contemplating criminal activity more likely to step into that kind of activity because the barriers are just not there. They are not seeing it as a deterrent. It has become a laughing stock.
We can talk about Bill C-3 which is the DNA bill, my Bill C-284 and we can talk about the Young Offenders Act. This theme is pervasive across all the justice issues: the protection of privacy, protection of the criminal and protection of those who have been charged.
When do we ever hear from the other side of the House about the protection of the victim, victims rights, the protection of those who may be harmed or who have been attacked and the protection of law-abiding citizens? That is what is at the heart of justice, law and order and peace in our society. That is what was at the heart of many of the election campaigns we fought only a little over a year ago and why many of us are here.
This particular bill points out a fundamental difference between the members on this side of the House and those on that side of the House. It is a fundamental difference that says they are going to protect criminals over the rights of law-abiding citizens and we are focusing on making sure that Canadians are not put at risk.
The police are the people who are closest to the action, closest to the issue. In so many cases businesses realize that if they want to know where the waste is they go to the front lines. They have implemented empowering people at the front lines because they have had to live with the waste and the issues. But the government is still stuck in a top down way of thinking that says that judges and those who live behind brick walls will decide for those who do not. The police know. They are on the front lines. They hear the stories. They see the broken lives. They have to live with the tragedies. They have to pick up the pieces.
It is interesting that the police tell us “Come on, let us get some things in place so our job has meaning again, so we can actually do the job we are paid to do, protect our communities and do something to serve as a deterrent”.
Mr. Speaker, may I just ask at this point how much time I have left?