I beg your pardon. The hon. member says I voted against it. It was our motion and I voted in favour of it. The Liberals voted against it. They turned down the extra $400 million. I wanted it to happen.
It is a miracle how we can come in here and in a flash go through committee of the whole and spend $19 billion. There are probably not two people who can tell us where the money is going and why. There was no real debate on that issue.
We know there is a chunk of money going here and a chunk going there, but we do not know for sure what the chunk will entail. There was no debate on it. It was done in a flash, but we can sure debate the Judges Act for the fourth time.
What about the million and a half children who live in poverty? What are we doing about them? We do not know. We do not have any debates in the House in that regard. We get lots of claims and lots of rhetoric and things of that nature.
When will we start doing things that are of real benefit to the country? If we paid as much attention to the problems with real crime as we have to the Judges Act, we probably would have accomplished a great deal more. Instead, we create a commission. A commission is patronage at its best, the thing the Liberals know best. They provide patronage for their good old Liberal buddies.
I am getting really sick of this institution constantly dealing with these kind of issues and ignoring major problems. It has become totally dysfunctional and it needs to be addressed.
I would point out for the last time that both the present health minister, and I wish him well in his recovery from his operation, and the present justice minister failed to accomplish any legislation of any real benefit for the difficulties in the country involving crime.
I would mention once more the idea of creating a commission. The government is good at setting up commissions. I do not know if any member over there could even begin to tell me how many people work for the government in some sort of committee, some sort of board or some sort of whatever.
How many people does the Prime Minister have to appoint each and every year to keep these positions filled? I am surprised he has time to be Prime Minister. I am sure he has to spend a great deal of it just appointing people to these plush jobs. It must be nice. I forgot to mention the Senate. The Prime Minister must take a lot of time to determine who should go in there.
I was listening to a radio program this morning. It did a takeoff on government called “The monkeys running the zoo”. I thought it was rather hilarious, especially when it was applied to the government. It talked about the Prime Minister being able to measure lies, that there are big ones and little ones. I do not know how anybody could do that unless he or she were an expert in the field.
It related to that issue a lot of times. It talked about a judge making a decision. I do not blame the judge. It is because of legislation that it happens.
Apparently there were 29 postal workers who were fired from the Canada Post for theft. Under surveillance they were caught red-handed stealing cash, cassette tapes and credit cards from the mail. They were convicted. I understand that this morning the court has ordered that the post office rehire these individuals. I am having a real tough time understanding that one. Is that law and order in Canada? These 29 individuals broke the law, were charged, convicted, and fired.
Now their time is up. Evidently they are on parole, or they got parole or whatever. The union took this situation to a court and the judge said they had to hire them back.
I do not know how many entrepreneurs we have on that side of the House, but how would members like to have somebody steal from them all the time, have him arrested, convicted and then after he was freed have to hire him back? No wonder they call that show the monkey running the zoo.
This is one example of all the things that are going on around here which do not make much sense. We are forever dealing with situations where somebody says something they should not have and then had to take it back. As usual, like in the case of the member for Waterloo—Wellington, his first step was that he did not say it. Then we had to take time the next day because somebody woke him up to the fact that he had said it. Then he had to apologize and take it back, and we took time for that. We go through these kinds of monkey running the zoo type of episodes.
I am on duty today so I rushed over because there was an important piece of legislation on the table that they wanted me to speak to. Guess what, I got here, picked it up and it was the Judges Act; again the Judges Act. Good grief, folks, I am getting tired of talking about the Judges Act.
When are we going to get serious and talk about what we need to do with the young people who are breaking the law; youth and crime? When are we going to start talking seriously about all kinds of preventive measures that we need to engage in to keep our youth out of trouble? When are we going to start addressing the fact that our aboriginal people are filling our jails at a ridiculous proportion to the rest of society?
When are we going to start talking about the mother who has two little children who were seriously sexually assaulted by their father? The courts and the judges, because of our legislation, ordered this woman to take these two children to visit their father in prison, and the children did not want to see him. The mother did not want anything to do with him for what he did to their children, yet the courts ordered mom to take these two children to the prison because they had to visit their father. The courts have upheld our laws.
If members want to amend some kind of a law, think about a law that has been created by this government that forces a mother to take two little kids to visit their dad who maliciously sexually assaulted them. Think about a law that forces them to sit with him and phone him because it is the law.
I would like to see a piece of legislation come out of the government of the day. It is the government. It knows about these situations. Do members think that we will ever see a piece of legislation hit the table that would deal with mom who has to take these two little children to visit dad in jail, even though he maliciously sexually assaulted them for days and days? No, it will not even be talked about.
The Liberals will say that the member for Wild Rose is fearmongering again or that he is taking the sensationalism into this, as if it only happens occasionally. It is not occasionally, it is far too often. The government says Canadians are happy with our system. I guess that is why we have somewhere around 10,000 people that hold a membership in some victims society. They are calling for help day in and day out. We cannot deal with all the serious problems out there, but we can talk about the Judges Act. We can talk about these poor, underpaid individuals who need a raise of 26%. Maybe we should talk about all Canadians and give them about a 26% decrease in income tax. Then we would all get a raise. Would that not be different?
Good grief if we did that, we would not have this revenue coming in. If we did not have this revenue coming in, how could be possibly pay our judges another $19 million? I do not understand the government's thinking. It makes no sense to me.
Of course we know from the things in the estimates we approved the other night, a matter of $16 billion, $18 billion or whatever it was there are going to be lots of committees struck. There is going to be lots of active work going on out there. I bet the government has another committee that is going to work for the health department to study us seniors and sexuality again as it did before. It only cost $165,000. Now that I am nearly 65 years old, boy, does that make me feel good that our government is going to spend tax dollars doing something like that.
Maybe there is a group of people in Toronto being trained how to riot properly in Quebec City when we hold a session there. Are they being trained with tax dollars maybe? I do not know. It is probably worth talking about. But let us not talk about that. Let us talk about the Judges Act.