Mr. Speaker, I join my colleagues and citizens across the country in a shared frustration over the lack of support from government members of Parliament for this bill which has been so properly and appropriately brought forward by our colleague from Calgary Northeast.
That frustration comes from the fact that we are at a loss to understand why there would be a reluctance to do what practically every citizen I have talked to and my colleagues have talked to think is right when it comes to protecting our children. We are at a loss to understand why there would be a reluctance on the part of the Liberal government to put in place a minimum sentence for somebody who has repeatedly violated the most intimate aspect of a child's life, in many cases committing that child to a lifetime of horrendous difficulty because of those incidents.
We see the same reluctance when we have asked in the past that the age limit of sexual consent between an adult and a minor, and we are not talking about between two adults or between two minors, be raised to the age of 16 as it is in many civilized countries. We cannot get the government to agree with that.
Many times the Canadian Alliance and its members stand to defend those who cannot defend themselves because we believe in the value of every life being protected from those who would try to do harsh and atrocious things to human beings, especially to children. Time and again we hear lame, hollow excuses. Sometimes the public, as it watches the deliberations, wonders why the opposition verbally expresses its frustration or why we moan and groan when we hear the government and its members stand up and talk about the importance of children and their rights. We moan and groan because we know what happens when we propose concrete measures to protect our children. The government refuses to do it.
I said this in the past and I will say it again. When the government of the land refuses to protect the children of the land from the predators of the land, it forfeits the right to govern the land.