Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca.
I pay tribute to the hon. member for Langley--Abbotsford, the official opposition House leader, for bringing the motion forward. No one on any side of the House has done more to bring justice to the country and bring issues to the floor of the House that address the safety and security of Canadian citizens.
It is to his credit that the original motion that was passed unanimously some nine months ago was brought forward both then and today. He has been doing a tremendous job on the issue. His many contacts and people across the country with whom he is in contact on a regular basis tell him he is doing the right thing. They tell him to keep the heat on the government when it comes to the issue. The security and safety of our citizens is the primary concern of any government, or it should be. It is certainly the prime concern of the Canadian Alliance Party and our House leader.
Prison reform is another issue he has brought forward time and time again. The solicitor general has not done a good job in terms of what is going on in our prisons. The hon. member for Langley--Abbotsford is constantly bringing the issue to the forefront. Canadians need to be made aware of this and other issues in the country.
The original motion was brought to the House in March, 2001. It called on the government to establish a national sex offender registry by January 30, 2002. The time has passed and nothing has been done. We have brought the motion back to see if we can again get unanimous support for it.
The solicitor general in his comments today indicated the government would not be supporting the motion. In March it was a great idea that needed to be done. Now the government says it will not support it and it does not need to be done. How can that be?
The government has put a few dollars into the existing system to expand it and make it better, but the people who use it say it is not good enough. They say the system does not do what is needed. They say we need to respond quickly to inquiries about sexual offenders and the present CPIC system does not do that.
Last March it was a good idea to create a system. The same people are now saying the system has always existed. Why is that? It is confusing. Why would government members vote to create something and then say we do not need to because it already exists? I am not sure what message that sends to Canadians. The message it is sends to me is that the government does not know for sure what it needs to do.
When an idea comes forward from the opposition and is supported we celebrate. We celebrated the day it happened because we had put forward a motion and received unanimous consent. That does not happen often. It seems the tide has now turned and members of the government have been told to vote against us.
We need to debate the need for the registry to be comprehensive, up to date and, like any good system, accessible and speedy. The reason is that 44% of people abducted by sexual offenders are dead within the first hour, 74% are dead within three hours, and after a full day usually 91% are dead. That is a disturbing statistic. It is important that we can access the information and that it is thorough and quickly accessible. If not, it is worse than useless because we think we can rely on it but cannot.
The Canadian Police Association and the police chiefs have all said the $2 million that was put into the CPIC upgrade is not adequate. They say more needs to be done.
For the life of me I cannot understand why a government that proclaims itself to be the protector of citizens and the rights of individuals would not want to do this. Why would the government not want to have in place the best system there could possibly be, especially to protect young people in Canada?
If we as politicians and leaders cannot act strongly to protect the children of our society, the ones who are most vulnerable, the ones who cannot protect themselves, then I am not sure why we are here. That should be paramount in any of our discussions. We have to act strongly, otherwise anything else we do will be for naught.
Ontario has put together a sex offender registry. Ontario felt that what was being done federally was not good enough so it has created its own. There are 5,000 names on it already. Over 90% of the offenders comply with provincial legislation. The province has them report annually and it knows where they are.
Another strange thing is that after the sentence is finished, and all sex offenders should serve full sentences, the sex offender can ask to be taken off the registry or for the sentence to be erased. That is done in the present system which brings in another fact. We know through research that 50% of child molesters reoffend within 10 to 30 years. For example, after serving a sentence of five years an offender's name is taken off the registry. Half of the people who have that done are still a threat to society. Why on earth would we want their names removed from the registry?
Ontario has a system in place. The province felt that the government was not moving quickly enough. My home province of Alberta is looking at ways to implement a system, as are British Columbia, Saskatchewan, P.E.I. and Nova Scotia. Even if these provinces individually go ahead, the whole issue will be on how to tie information together so it is quickly accessible by whichever area of the country needs it. It may go even further than Canada. It could get into the systems used by the Americans and other police forces in the world.
Even if the provinces have their own registries and do a good job, the whole issue is how we ensure that they are connected, so that somebody in Saskatchewan who has a query can get the information on somebody who just came from another province. We do not see that happening.
I could go on at length about why the flip-flop in support, why the motion was supported last March and why it obviously will not be supported today. It will be interesting tonight when we stand to be counted in this place. I hope the members who change their vote from the last time will be accountable to somebody. I hope somebody will ask them why they have done that. I certainly would like to hear the answer.
I back up the claim by the Canadian Police Association and the police chiefs that what has been done to improve CPIC is not doing the job. The government has spent a half a billion dollars registering firearms. That the government will not consider spending a few dollars to create a system that will keep sexual predators at bay is beyond reason.
I commend the member for Langley--Abbotsford for bringing forward the motion and for the work that he does. I know he will continue to work to make the streets safer for the people of this country.