Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of comments and then a very specific question for the hon. member.
First, he said in his speech that we were very selective, that we showed all the flaws in the plan but did not mention the good stuff, so I am going to correct that. It has a great title. It was a good point to start from and that is where they quit. The government had the title right but there is absolutely no meat in the sandwich. That is what the government has to go back to.
This has to be retroactive from the time it is put in or it is never going to be put in. If this thing passes without retroactivity, somewhere later it will be 10 times as hard. If a bunch of vacillating, fence-sitting, blow in the wind Liberals do not have the guts to do it now, then it is better that there is absolutely nothing and that they just get out of the way and let some new party come in that is going to do the kinds of things Canadians want and will put in this kind of law.
Second, he talked about getting it to committee so we could have expert witnesses. I saw that process already in the justice committee. I saw it with statutory release. I saw where there was unanimity that we would put in a recommendation to get rid of statutory release. What happened? The whip's office or the PMO or someone up there said, “We do not like this. Get back there and fix that”. What did the Liberals do? They selectively called more expert witnesses to come in and say that this was bad and that was bad. They reversed themselves and they reversed the arrangements we had already made.
The question I have is this. During his speech, the hon. member said that the bill is in response to the request of police agencies. There are at least a dozen police agencies in my riding alone and there are hundreds, if not thousands, across the country. I would ask him this: Can he name just one police agency, just one of all the thousands in this country, just one police agency that came to him or anybody in his party and said, “Please bring in a bill that has no retroactivity and a big loophole for anybody in the future”? Just one.