Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-23 at report stage today. I want to start by congratulating the member for Calgary Centre who has done such an excellent job of working on the bill for us. I know I can extend those congratulations on behalf of myself, my colleagues and certainly all people in my constituency who have contacted me about the bill. They show a lot of respect for him and for the great job he has done.
It appears through the legislation that the government has decided it wants to talk about the private sexual activities of Canadians. We have to go back some time in history and think about what Mr. Trudeau said, that basically government should stay out of the bedrooms of society. Those were pretty wise words that this government should take to heart.
The idea that we will create sex police, someone who will be sitting on the hillside watching the bedrooms of Canadians, is just an obnoxious thought. The member who previously spoke said that he had received a lot of calls. In my office I have received some 314 calls about child pornography and 143 calls about Bill C-23.
If we take what the statisticians would use, for every call we get it represents about 10 people who are actually interested. Some would even go as high as saying that it could represent 100 people who actually pick up the phone or write a letter to their members of parliament. That tells me there is a lot of concern about this piece of legislation in my constituency. I know the people in my constituency would expect and would demand that I stand today to speak to the bill.
In looking at the bill it is obvious that the government is very much anti-family. It appears that it thinks it is modern, that it is 21st century, to oppose the very roots of the family, the very foundation of what a family stands for. If we examine historical society in different countries it is not a very good omen for the future of a country when it abandons something as valuable to society as the family.
Let us examine a few of the areas where the government is anti-family. Let us start with tax unfairness. Obviously in taxation there is a real unfairness to the stay at home parent, either male or female, who wants to stay at home, wants the choice of staying at home and wants to get the tax benefit for that. That has not been fixed. Obviously the finance minister has recognized it. He knows it is there and yet has made no effort to fix it.
A second item is child pornography. I mentioned that I have received many calls and many letters. Many people have stopped me on the street to talk about it. Yet we have a justice minister who is prepared to let the courts take care of it, to wait for the courts to act on it. Obviously the supreme court in B.C. acted on it and said that it was all right to possess child pornography. Now it is before the supreme court, and again we are waiting. Cases are being affected. Judgments are being postponed and charges are not being laid because of the particular legislation. This is anti-family. This is opposed to the very thing I hope everyone in the House believes, that we must protect those who cannot protect themselves, and that is children.
Let us look at the divorce and family court acts and the custody situation. How many members of parliament have had parents and grandparents come in and talk to them about the difficulty of getting access to their children or grandchildren? That has to be a crime in itself with which the government has failed to deal.
I can brag that last week I had a grandson, and I am pretty proud of that. He is nine pounds and doing great. If I were refused access to that little guy it would hurt very deeply. Yet there are constituents who are suffering from such punishment through no fault of their own. A government that cared about families would care about the little guys out there whose parents and grandparents want to see.
Dealing with the Young Offenders Act, how many times have we been told that it is not working, that it is not rehabilitating young people and that it is not preventing crime? If we look at the most recent trial in Victoria the problems with the Young Offenders Act would only be further reinforced. The government has not done anything to fix that. We have had six announcements from the minister that it will be fixed and yet six times nothing much has happened and nothing much has changed with the Young Offenders Act.
There is the whole area of sex offenders on parole. In my own constituency a sex offender who had committed 10 previous offences was getting out on parole. I met with 300 parents in a school gymnasium in the community the person was coming back to. At that same meeting the RCMP said the person would likely reoffend. The psychiatrist said the person would likely reoffend. The warden of the prison said the person would probably reoffend.
I came back to Ottawa with a message from those parents. What do I tell the parents of the 11th, 12th or however many more victims? Much to my terrible unhappiness, a year later there were in fact 11th and 12th victims.
A government that cared about families would do something about habitual sex offenders of children to put them away and keep them away. It would change the law in that regard. We cannot have these people being released. It took everything in our power to get the picture out so the parents would know for whom they were looking. In this case the person ended up staying very close to a schoolyard and unfortunately he picked his victims from another town. That is what is happening out there. The government is not friendly to families.
The Liberals say that they are to have a national day care plan. Another plan. The Liberals are great for having plans and programs. They love to spend on programs and deliver programs for which they will get credit. In my riding most people do not want a national day care program. They want less taxes, more money in their pockets, government out of their hair and to take care of their children. They do not need the government to take care of their children for them.
I could go on. How about the marriage courts? How about the problems there? How about the case of the guy where a judge decided the support payment would be over 100% of his salary? Unfortunately that gentleman could not face it any longer and committed suicide to get away from that judgment. That is not a court system or a government friendly to families.
We could talk about the medicare program. We hear the minister saying that the provinces have no plans. They do have plans. They are doing things. The lack of leadership is coming from this government. At least 75% of Canadians would tell us that health care is their number one concern.
Now we have Bill C-23 on conjugal relationships. That is definitely anti-family as we know it. I have many quotes. We do not know what the minister really means by what she is saying. We have heard members previous to me read from the independent legal opinion of David Brown, a lawyer who commented on the amendment put forward by the minister. He said that it would not work, that it would not stop the sorts of things that are happening.
We could listen to the secretary of state. We could listen to the Minister of Justice. We do not really know what Bill C-23 is all about, except that Canadians know it is poor legislation, that it is anti-family, and that it is putting the government in the bedrooms of the country. They are opposed to it. I am proud today to stand on their behalf to give that message.