Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleagues from Saanich—Gulf Islands, Crowfoot and Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough for expressing a degree of support for the intent of my bill.
I want to express my profound disappointment that Liberal members refused to allow the bill to proceed through a legislative process. I would like to state for the permanent record that the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine spoke against the intent of the bill, and I will be making some comments on that in a moment.
I would also like to state for the record that the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration and the member for Brossard—La Prairie are the ones who declined unanimous consent of the House to allow this legislation to proceed. I urge the constituents they are supposed to represent to bear that in mind at the time of the next federal election. The priority of their Liberal members of parliament was to mollycoddle child sex offenders as opposed to protecting our children.
I am astonished at the remarks made by the Liberal member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine who in her remarks said that putting criminals behind bars would not protect the public and that it was important for offenders to be released into society. It is clear that she is detached from reality. She does not appreciate the obscenity in releasing a guy like Karl Toft who was convicted of 34 sex offences against children and as I stated in my previous speech the number is probably in the hundreds. He would only serve nine years behind bars and then be released into our community. That is obscene and offensive.
The Liberal members are shirking their responsibility as representatives of their constituents by not allowing the bill to go forth. Once again I would like to express my profound disappointment at their lack of willingness to represent their constituents who would virtually unanimously agree that releasing such a deviant into society after only nine years, considering the number of victims that he has left in his wake, is completely unacceptable. Their unwillingness to allow this child predator act to go to committee is inexplicable and highly disappointing.