Mr. Speaker, I agree with my hon. colleague. The Liberals have a tendency, which we have seen repeated over and over, to respond to public outrage. The public is rightly outraged about carnage on the streets, about property offences and about people who offend against children and most Canadians, from coast to coast, regardless of their province, town or city, when it comes to the protection of children they want that to be a priority.
There is an absolute reluctance on the part of the government to take steps that actually would be effective. However, because it is just politically smart to do so, there is the need to appear to be doing something. I use, for example, the sex offender registry where, in order to appear to do something, the government introduced a registry but when we scratch beneath the surface we realize that it was a blank registry, a blank sheet of paper with no names, so it was absolutely ineffective. The same for our child protection legislation. It has a nice name. We all agree that children should be protected but what is behind the curtain is an empty shell. It does not protect children.
What we need is a government that looks at the needs of Canadians and addresses them, not in a half-measure but goes all the way by adding some teeth to our criminal justice system so that Canadians will be protected.