Mr. Speaker, I have lived in Winnipeg and it is a wonderful city, but if I had a choice I would rather be in British Columbia.
On the question regarding putting a bullet in his head and going to British Columbia, I do not have the newspaper clippings here but I will make sure they are delivered to the member's office very shortly. There was a woman in Ottawa whose husband who worked for the RCMP was lying in bed; she put two bullets in his head and obviously killed him. She also killed the dog. She received a conditional sentence and went to British Columbia where her children are. That was her sentence. A conditional sentence.
That is why I put the motion before the committee. I will give the minister credit. I have been asking for this to go to committee for quite a while. The committee has not handled the problem.
Violent crimes of this type should not be given conditional sentences. I think the woman would have received more time in jail had she been charged with just killing the dog. The SPCA would have created a big furore about it. But she killed her husband and she is now in British Columbia. There are many cases like that. I was going to get into this when I talked about conditional sentencing but I ran out of time.
Two gentlemen in Montreal were convicted of a brutal rape. Both men were given conditional sentences because the judge felt they did not quite understand our justice system because it is not the same as the one where they were born. They both have lived in Canada, one for nine years and the other for eleven years.
That is what is wrong with conditional sentencing in this country. The committee knows that. There has been no movement by this government to get it into committee, speed it up and start to do something about that. The parliamentary secretary gets very mad when I talk about these things, but that is our job. We are the opposition. We point out the faults. The system is not totally wrong, but there are some serious faults in the system and they have to be corrected.
My friend from the NDP talked about boot camps. I do not know if he has been to the one in Ontario but a lot of parents who have had kids go to this boot camp have written the government saying it was a great idea. It certainly beats the Liberal idea of throwing them in jail. The Liberals want to throw them all in jail. Why not have a boot camp where they can get some education instead of putting people in jail. The Liberals want to put young people in jail. We want to put them in a facility where they can get an education and learn what it is like in society, not throw them in the present jail system which is underfunded and does not work properly because of this government and the government before it.
There have been two parliamentary reports on penitentiaries in this country. One was done in 1972, chaired by Mark MacGuigan, of which I was a member and which made recommendations. The other was done in 1987. Both the Tory government and the Liberal government have done nothing about those reports.
We still have a rotten system and it is not working. Boot camps might have a place in our system. I suggest that the member visit the one in Ontario.
In my speech I did not get the chance to talk about prevention. There is no prevention. We want to look at prevention to make sure these things do not happen. That includes looking at poverty and unemployment about which the member talks. I agree with him. They are serious issues. We are not going to solve the other justice problems without solving unemployment and poverty issues. We want to look at those issues too.