Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of Bill C-23 on behalf of my federal NDP colleagues. I would like to mention the great work that my hon. colleague from Churchill, Manitoba has done on this. Also, the long serving member for Regina—Qu'Appelle has done yeoman's work on the proposed legislation. In fact his amendment will ensure that the registry will be reviewed in two years.
After the disaster of the gun registry, we want to ensure that this registry will work in the way it is intended.
I cannot see how anyone can object to this type of legislation when the essence of the bill is to protect children and protect the interests of their families.
Being a family man myself, with two young girls, I know the importance of doing everything we can to ensure that we, as legislators, invoke legislation that has stiff penalties and deterrents in place, but not only on a piece of paper. We have to ensure that our law enforcement officers have the resources, finances and manpower to do the job that we ask them to do.
The House may know that I have a private member's bill in the House of Commons dealing with child Internet pornography. This is a new medium that is luring unsuspecting children to various sites. In terms of Internet pornography, we need to do all that we can to ensure that the most dastardly of dastardly people, these pedophiles, are apprehended and put away so they cannot cause us any more concerns.
It is not just members of Parliament who support this proposed legislation. The great province and the Government of Manitoba, under Gary Doer, support it. In fact I am sure all provincial governments, including territorial representatives and probably aboriginal representatives as well would be very supportive of the bill.
We want the government have the teeth behind the law to ensure the registry does what it is supposed to do. It does no good for me to stand up in the House of Commons and say that these are the great things it will do and then have someone defeat it in a court of law or challenge it. We have to ensure that the law is ironclad. We have to ensure that all those people who have had various concerns with the bill have been heard. We also want to ensure that the bill does not end up on the dead list, as we say, through prorogation. We want to ensure that the Senate has the capability to deal with this and get it passed immediately.
I see the hon. House leader, a gentleman who I respect greatly, although we disagree on many things, nodding his head and telling me to get on with the speech, so I will.
I say quite clearly that we in the NDP support the bill. In two years we will be asking for a review of the legislation to ensure that it has done what it was intended to do, not like the gun registry, Bill C-68. We will not let the government forget that one.
However, we will ensure that this registry does what it is supposed to do, which is to protect children and their families from coast to coast to coast.