Mr. Speaker, for the folks back home, what is happening today? Basically we have a Liberal government that has just come off an election. It did not really have much of a mandate to go to the people with, so it is putting forward a Judges Act which was put forward in the last parliament, and it wants to give a significant raise to judges.
The important thing for people back home to keep in mind, and I will discuss many of the details of the bill, is that rather than bringing forward legislation on the Young Offenders Act in order to strike at serious repeat offenders who are causing all sorts of problems with the legal system, the Liberals want to deal with judges' compensation. The Liberals did not want to talk about the Young Offenders Act. They did not want to deal with serious repeat offenders.
It goes on. The Liberals did not want to deal with consecutive sentencing, where somebody who commits a crime only serves one murder sentence and gets a multiple discount for multiple murders. They did not want to deal with consecutive sentencing so that the individual could serve one sentence after another sentence, which is, by the way, something that the Liberal member for Mississauga East brought up in the House and tried desperately to get her government to adopt. Despite that fact, they tried to kill her bill in committee. Despite that, no, they do not want to talk about consecutive sentencing. The Liberals do not want to deal with issues that have been brought forward by their own members like the member for Mississauga East, a good loyal Liberal who has probably been there for a decade.
The government does not want to listen to that. It does not want to listen to what her constituents have to say on this. Instead it is raising judges' salaries.
I will go on. These Liberals do not want to deal with pedophiles. They say it is okay for people to possess kiddie porn, that the judge's decision on it is all right. They do not want to deal with pedophiles, pedophile legislation and possession of child pornography. No, the top priority for the Liberals when they come back after going out on the stump and getting elected is raising judges' salaries.
Those are Liberal priorities for you. This goes on. They do not want to bring up the idea of a violent sex offender registry. We have people in Canada who have committed multiple rapes, yet does the government come up with an effective strategy to deal with multiple rapists? No. The government paroles them and put them back on the streets.
Instead of dealing with these real and serious issues, what does the government come to us with after an election? It wants to raise judges' salaries.
Let us talk about raising judges' salaries since we are not going to talk about all those other important things that a Liberal justice minister should be bringing forward. We are not going to talk about the things people really want. We are going to talk about what the bureaucrats want. We are going to let them drive the agenda. That is the Liberal way.
Let us talk about this whole idea of how judges are chosen. I take issue with the Prime Minister. I recognize that the Prime Minister was elected yet again by the people in his riding. I would not have voted for him, but at least a plurality of the people in the Prime Minister's riding decided to vote for him. At least he has some sort of mandate. Not only was he elected by some number of people in his own riding, but as well he actually had to get enough delegates at the convention for the Liberal Party. Back in 1990 he was in my home town of Calgary, much to my chagrin. Nonetheless that was where he was elected. He had probably a few thousand people who said they wanted to give this guy the nod.
At least the Prime Minister has been chosen by the delegates within his own party and by the people within his own constituency. It is not as democratic as I might like. I think it would have been better if all Liberal Party members across the country would have voted rather than just the palace guard.