Nothing with respect to a national ban, but the very next day the government announced a policy that was completely at odds with what it had agreed to the day before. It announced a policy that relied entirely on the provinces bringing in provincial bans on the bulk export of water and made no mention whatever of the need for or the legitimacy of a national ban on the bulk export of water.
I say to my Alliance colleagues that they were warned at that time about the insincerity of the government with respect to this motion. As I listened to the solicitor general then he seemed to be saying that the only reason he was voting for the motion was that in his view the country already had what the Alliance was calling for in the form of CPIC. It was basically the same argument as the solicitor general made today.
Unfortunately the solicitor general, the member for Ottawa Centre and perhaps another two or three individuals in the country are the only people who believe that CPIC is the equivalent of a national sex offender registry.
Whether one is for or against a national sex offender registry, it is absolutely clear that CPIC is not a national sex offender registry in the sense that there is no requirement whatsoever for sex offenders to register when they move from one part of the country to another or, for that matter, move within a particular province.
The whole idea of a national sex offender registry is that there would be some obligation placed on sex offenders after they have been released from prison to let the communities they live in know that they are there. CPIC does not do this. All CPIC does is record the last known address of a particular sex offender.
It is quite disingenuous for the solicitor general to suggest that what they have now in any way approaches what parliament itself approved. I am referring to the motion that was approved, not what the Liberals might have had in their own minds but what parliament approved on March 13, what this motion is calling for, what the provinces are calling for, what the Canadian Police Association is calling for and what a great many other people associated with or concerned about the problem of repeat sex offenders are concerned with. It is only the government that believes CPIC somehow meets the test of what people think is required in this case.
I am reiterating our support for the idea of a national sex offender registry. However I am concerned about the motion because if we look at it, as is often the case, the Alliance is its own worst enemy. Just when its members have a good idea they like to throw a monkey wrench into it and come up with some goofy idea to wreck a good motion. What did they put in the final clause of their motion today? It reads:
That when a Private Member, in proposing a motion for the first reading of a bill, states that the bill is in response to the recommendations contained in a report pursuant to this Order, the second reading and subsequent stages of the bill shall be considered under Private Members' Business and the bill shall be placed immediately in the order of precedence for Private Members' Business as a votable item.
This reflects two things. It reflects the ongoing obsession of Alliance members with private members' business and trying to get everything votable. It also establishes a completely inadequate process in that a private member in proposing a motion for the first reading of a bill states that the bill is in response to recommendations. We do not have to prove. There is no process. Nobody else has to agree. We just state it and that is it. It automatically goes on to the order of precedence for private members' business and it automatically becomes votable.
Even the hon. member for Medicine Hat would see that there is something wrong with this proposal. If Alliance members were serious about the House reaffirming its support for a national sex offender registry, although the government has already indicated that this time around it would not be duplicitous and would actually vote against the Alliance motion, they would take this out of their motion. They have the opportunity to do that between now and the end of the day.
I certainly cannot vote for this procedural poison pill in the middle of an otherwise acceptable motion or certainly an otherwise acceptable idea that we supported in the past. If it is suggested, for instance, that somehow the bill would have to be found to be in accordance with the committee's recommendations by the Speaker, by an all party committee or by someone other than simply the member who rises, perhaps there might be a way of dealing with it.
However to have it that any particular member can simply affirm without any burden of proof and without any associated process that the bill is in response to recommendations contained in the report pursuant to this order, et cetera, I think is woefully procedurally inaccurate and makes it very difficult for us to support the motion.
Our non-support for the motion as it stands should not be construed in any way as a weakening of our support for the idea of a national sex offender registry or a weakening of our criticisms of the solicitor general for not levelling with the House on March 13, 2001, when if we read between the lines and listened to the parliamentary code we know darned well that he had no such intention.