moved for leave to introduce Bill C-205, an act to amend the Criminal Code (eliminating conditional sentencing for violent offenders).
Mr. Speaker, when former justice minister Allan Rock introduced conditional sentencing, judges started giving it to violent offenders such as people who had committed crimes like rape. The public was outraged andwe raised it in the House. The minister said that he never intended that it should apply to violent offenders, yet the government, after all these years, has still not made that correction. Schedule I and Schedule II offenders should not have access to conditional sentencing.
Surely the government will support this legislation. Its own minister who brought it in said that it was never intended to apply to violent offenders. This is the government's opportunity to correct that mistake.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)