Mr. Speaker, this should be a non-partisan debate. Clearly this is an exceptionally serious issue that crosses all gender lines. It crosses all geographic and demographic lines within the country. It is unfortunate that the member for Waterloo—Wellington has decided to kibitz from the other side of the House. We treated him with respect. I would expect that he would treat our side of the debate with respect as well.
The member for Dewdney—Alouette and my colleague from Skeena were trying to make the point, which I will underscore, that the government not only has an opportunity but indeed it has a responsibility to the people of Canada to begin to act, to be acting now.
In doing some research prior to coming to this debate, I was interested to read the comments of the parliamentary secretary to the solicitor general. His comments were particularly revealing. After he used the same kind of words that the member for Waterloo—Wellington has used tonight, he came up with exactly the same point, that the government for whatever reason seems to be petrified to take any action that would actually go toward the saving of lives of the women of Canada who are embroiled in and sucked into this kind of situation. Not only women but children are involved in this.
After the parliamentary secretary had completed his comments that yes this would be a good idea, he said “We can and must do more. Education, counselling, prevention and other social service measures are essential if we are to do away with family violence. When all else fails, we must take steps against the violent partners. The federal, provincial and territorial partners have already worked on the development of a new identity program. There is always room for improvement but we do not need to reinvent the wheel. We need to build on what is already established. There are a number of unsettled questions”. Because of the time tonight I will not complete his quote except to say that all he could talk about is the fact that there are problems, there are opportunities, and they are working on it.
The mantra from the Liberals is that because Bill C-223 was not their idea it is the wrong vehicle. If this is the wrong vehicle, why does the government not come up with the right vehicle? It has 2,000 lawyers in the justice department. What are those lawyers doing?
Why is the government not giving direction to the justice department to come up with the solution to the problem? Why is the government just saying that the proposal of the member for Prince George—Peace River is not the right vehicle? If it is not the right vehicle, then what is the right vehicle and when is the government going to come forward with it?
We also have to recognize that within the confines of what can be done legislatively, there are problems even with existing law.
I am now out of time in this segment, but I look forward to the continuation of this debate. At that time I will talk about some of the problems with the existing witness protection legislation and then try to marry the two things together, what the member for Prince George—Peace River is trying to accomplish and what improvements are needed even within the existing legislation, the Witness Protection Program Act.