Mr. Speaker, let us deal very briefly with some of the peripheral matters with respect to the former minister of public works.
My party has asked for that individual to come back and explain his conduct. It was the Liberal government and the committee members who refused to allow him to testify in front of that committee. I stand by what I said. He has been implicated in some very shady deals and he should be given the opportunity to come here and clear his name. I would welcome that opportunity. I am sure that the member would also like to see that individual come before the House and be given an opportunity to clear his name if there is nothing that associates him with those shady deals.
In respect of the ethical standards, I will not comment any further on the issue of the former minister of defence. Whether we call it an illegality or a breach of ethical standards, I think we are all bound by a higher standard in this House that we need to comply with and I will not quibble about the words.
In respect of my statements about 69% of Canadians, what I said, I think very clearly, and what the polls said, is that the federal political system is corrupt, and I am part of that political system, and that reflects adversely on all of us as members of Parliament.
In respect of the specific questions on the inadequate resourcing or inadequate laws, in fact there are serious problems with the resourcing of various laws.
One of the most important areas that the Toronto police have stated over and over again is their inability to deal effectively with child pornographers. They are overstretched in terms of dealing with the challenges of technology. In some of the cases, the police have to sift through a half a million pictures, categorize and catalogue the pictures and send them off to defence counsel. It creates all kinds of resource implications.
Certainly the federal government has not been doing its fair share. The chief of police in Toronto has indicated the problem that they simply do not have the resources and has indicated areas and programs from where those resources could be taken. One example is the gun registry which the chief of police again criticized as a colossal waste of money.
There are inadequate resources and there are inadequate laws.
One of the issues that I was very hopeful the present Minister of Justice and the previous minister would address was that preliminary inquiries. With these kinds of trials, preliminary inquiries will last for years. The provincial attorneys general said that there is no need for these preliminary inquiries.
In recent cases that the Supreme Court has come out with, such as the Stinchcombe and other cases, the crown has virtually been told that it has to produce every scrap of material. Preliminary inquiries have become meaningless. They are being used as a delaying process. That aggravates the resource issue.
If the government had real guts to change the law to make the legal system more effective, many of the resource issues would be addressed simply by changing the law to reflect the 21st century technology.
It is a combination of both. Let us change the law to eliminate those anachronisms and increase resources from programs that simply are not meeting a legitimate justice need.