Mr. Speaker, I welcome the hon. member who will be sitting on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.
I know he was a member of the Standing Committee on Health. Perhaps he was used to hearing some things about health, but I would invite him to be more realistic, to wake up and to see that the problem is extremely serious.
In particular, I would invite him to read the Canadian Constitution. The hon. member will realize that the criminal code is not a matter of shared jurisdiction. All the sections that are found in the criminal code were passed by the federal legislator, here in this House. This is not a matter of shared jurisdiction. However, the administration of justice is the jurisdiction of provincial legislatures.
We are asking the government to wake up, to look properly at the issue of organized crime and to amend the criminal code to provide real tools to the judiciary, the police and the prosecutors.
This is not an issue of shared jurisdiction. There is only one entity that can amend the criminal code, and it is the federal parliament, all of us here.
I would invite the hon. member to wake up and to take an upgrading course in constitution 101 to learn the difference between a matter of federal jurisdiction and a matter of provincial jurisdiction. Only then will we be able to talk and listen to the member. Right now, all he can do is smile and strut about the House, but his understanding of the issue of organized crime is nil. It is rather scary and frightening to see what kind of parliamentary secretary the solicitor general has.
Nothing much will happen at the justice committee if the member opposite keeps on talking through his hat, if he knows nothing about the foundation of the Canadian Constitution.
When the constitution was signed—he might even have forgotten his history—who was the Minister of Justice? It was the current Prime Minister, who was then the Minister of Justice.
The then Minister of Justice included section 33 in the Canadian charter, which allows us as legislators in Ottawa to use the notwithstanding clause if we want to deprive a group or an individual of certain rights under the charter. If the legislator included this section in the charter, it was to use it at some point.
That is all we want, and only if necessary. There might be other things to do before using it, but we should not be shutting our eyes and covering our ears like the member opposite is doing.