Mr. Speaker, I do not recall the exact instance to which the member is referring. I do not remember whether I was in the House, whether I voted or how my party voted on that particular item. I would suspect that he was seeking unanimous consent. Many times we deal with procedure in the House. As a matter of fact, just an hour ago one of my colleagues asked for unanimous consent on a motion and the Liberals defeated it. I suspect that if I were to check the records there would be some procedural reason why people voted against giving him unanimous consent.
That having been said, what clearly needs to be considered today, and it has been talked about by a number of my colleagues and colleagues from other parties, is what is taking place in the House today.
As the hon. member from the Liberal Party said, it really does not matter who brought forward the motion. In this case we have used one of our allotted days to bring forward a supply motion directing the government, if the motion were to pass, to establish a national sex offenders registry by January 1 next year. It is a pretty simple request, a request that should be acted upon in good faith.
Members will note that I used the term in good faith because what we are seeing here today is the exact opposite. We are seeing a government that will direct its members to vote for the motion. It will try to delude the Canadian people into believing that it has already acted and will continue to act with the CPIC registry that tracks released criminals.
However, the police association and other groups across Canada know that CPIC does not do it. They have repeatedly said that over the last number of years. There is no requirement for a convicted sexual offender, who is either released or who has served his time and gets out of jail, to register with local communities. We have no idea who is living down the street. We have no idea who we might hire to watch our children or our grandchildren because there is no requirement.
One of my colleagues asked a question earlier of a Liberal member. He referred to an instance of which he was aware in the state of Oklahoma where there is a potential penalty of a further five years in jail for a convicted sexual predator if he fails to register. That is a deterrent that we should consider if we were to even have the first step taken, which is to have a national sex offender registry.
I am appalled and I hope all Canadians who are watching the debate today and who watch the vote tonight are appalled at the government's hypocrisy in trying to claim that CPIC does the job when it so clearly does not.