Mr. Speaker, I guess I would have to ask what he means by the increase in severity. I have always believed one has to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. That is what we have to do in our society.
We also have to do restorative justice where we can as well and try to rehabilitate people. I have seen many cases of younger people who have gone into a prison or into a youth centre and if there has been no restorative justice, they have come out more hardened criminals. That is an extremely important case to make in this debate as well.
We cannot just have a tough penalty and throw away the key for absolutely everybody. We can restore some people and make them a useful citizen of our country. We can give them training, skills and education, then they start paying taxes and so on. That is a very useful thing to do.
It is not just a simple yes or no answer. As I said, we have to be tough on crime and the cause of crime. Also, we have to do whatever we can to rehabilitate people, to retrain them and ensure that they have skills and training in jobs to make a useful contribution to our society.
I have spent a fair amount of time looking at the criminal justice system and it is not a black and white issue in many cases. In many cases the judge has to have a certain amount of flexibility in terms of the punishment that is handed out.