Mr. Speaker, I thank the solicitor general for being here and participating in the debate. I will be the first to say there have been improvements, some of which the solicitor general has pointed out: the flagging system that passed through the House recently; long term supervision; and the ability of the RCMP, prosecutors and municipal police to identify high risk offenders. We are quick to embrace all these things as good ideas.
Yet in his remarks the solicitor general made reference to jurisdictional concerns and the need for national consensus. First, sex offenders do not respect jurisdictional concerns. They do not respect the law, period. They are predatory. References have been made to the high rate of recidivism among sex offenders.
My question pertains to the minister's reference to national consensus. My first thought was that national consensus did not enter the government's mind at all when it imposed a gun registry, particularly on rural parts of the country which the solicitor general himself represents.
Where is this national consensus? We are hearing completely contradictory evidence from provincial governments and attorneys general with respect to the federal government's approach to implementing a national sex offender registry. They are calling for a separate and distinct stand-alone sex offender registry, not something rolled into the CPIC system.
Yes, what we have is better than nothing at all, but it does not provide the quick access to information required by police working in the field. There is no national consensus as the solicitor general would have us believe. How does he respond to that? What consensus is he speaking of?