Madam Speaker, I knocked on a lot of doors during the summer break and I heard the question consistently. People do not trust this government any more. They think the government is adrift and going in the wrong direction.
The criminal justice system protects the criminals but not the victims. It fails to protect our children to the extent that when a motion and a bill was presented in the House recently, all Liberals shamelessly stood to oppose the bill for the age of consent to be raised from 14 to at least 16. They did not do it, so what do I conclude? The government lacks the political will. It is out of focus, tired and has become arrogant. It does not have the steam any more to address some of these issues.
Naturally when Canadians look at these things, they find the government is not credible on this issue. An example is Bill C-49. After 12 years, the government came up with this bill.
We will remember a few years ago when a lot of illegal Chinese immigrants or entrants into the country landed on our shores. What did the government do? It did absolutely nothing. The victims who landed on our shores paid huge amounts of money to snakeheads in two provinces in China. The parliamentary secretary at that time went to China and visited those two provinces. The government wanted to solve the problem over there, but did absolutely nothing within its own power to make effective laws in Canada and provide enough resources to law enforcement agencies.
This is the knee-jerk approach of the government. It is too little too late. It came up with Bill C-49 when it noticed that our allies in other countries, the United States and Great Britain, had came up with legislation. It has done this to catch up with the other countries, but it has not made effective laws in our country to protect Canadians.