Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough for his comments. I thought my speech was about three silos, registered domestic partnerships and so on. However I was asked a question about policing which I do not think I mentioned.
Having said that, in some respects the response of the government to many of these issues should be to refer a number of them to the justice committee in particular or to other committees as the case may be. I do not know that policing issues take any greater priority than any other issue.
For instance, I just completed an interview with the CBC on homelessness where some people are advocating a 1% solution, that 1% of all budgetary revenues on the part of the federal government be devoted to homelessness. On the face of it that has a superficial attractiveness to it. In my area of Toronto and the GTA we have a particular problem with homelessness which is frankly nation-wide.
How that ranks in priority to any resources that the police may need I do not know. I know when the police come before the justice committee they do make excellent presentations and what they say is frequently heard. For instance, on the issue of child pornography in the Shaw decision I really do not know why that should stick to the government or to any particular party because no one is in favour of that kind of activity.
That is the kind of thing that should be coming before the justice committee, with the competing values to be analysed, the competing requests for priority, whether they are police priorities or other kinds of criminal justice priorities, and then a reasoned decision is reached.