Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague across the way for her two comments.
First was her comment to let the justice committee to which the justice minister has referred this matter do its work. I refer her to the case of her colleague from Mississauga East who had private members' legislation referred to the justice committee only to have it completely trashed and torn apart by her colleagues and treated with total disdain. I do not have a lot of faith, nor do Canadians, in the committee operation of the government. That might deal with the issue of letting the committee handle it rather than trying to handle it in the House.
With respect to the second issue she referred to, I would like to touch on what the courts said about conditional sentencing. In August 1997 the B.C. Court of Appeal stated “If parliament had intended to exclude certain offences from consideration under section 742.1, it could have done so in clear language”. Even the courts are saying that the government should get off its duff and change the law to exclude those types of crimes from conditional sentencing.
The last issue she raised was that because of the incidents of domestic violence and the amount of women who are killed by former spouses, we should support gun control. The reality is that her government's gun control legislation, the registering of guns, will do absolutely nothing. I cannot use unparliamentary language and I get pretty worked up about gun control, but it will do nothing to prevent those types of deaths.
There are things her government can do to help prevent those types of deaths. I have outlined one and that is to give these women the protection they need under the Witness Protection Program Act.