Madam Speaker, when I was with the provincial government we appealed a number of cases where individuals who had been involved in the killing of individuals by motor vehicles and otherwise received conditional sentences. The Supreme Court of Canada clearly said that the direction was from Parliament. The direction came as a result of the 1996 law that the Liberals passed giving conditional sentences not only to non-violent offences, but to violent offences.
It was a policy directive of the Liberal government to tell the courts to stop putting people in jail. That is what the courts are doing. Yes, the courts are independent, but the courts function as a result of the policy direction that Parliament gives them. The policy direction that the government has given the courts is to allow even violent criminals out of jail.
When we deal with the issue of crystal meth, and I support the movement from schedule 3 to schedule 1, from 10 years maximum to life imprisonment, the point is there are still conditional sentences available. The meth dealers who are using the labs and burning houses and causing explosions in urban areas which is dangerous to children, women, men and traffic, will still get conditional sentences because the direction from the government is to provide conditional sentences, house arrest.
If the Liberals want a piece of advice on how to stop that, it would be to abolish conditional sentences. It is not necessary to have conditional sentences because in our Criminal Code we already have suspended sentences. In those cases where individuals do not need to go to jail for one reason or another, suspended sentences are already available. They were always available.
Conditional sentencing is simply an accelerated way of getting people out of jail as quickly as possible and perpetrating the fiction that those individuals are actually serving their time in jail. The courts say they cannot make a distinction between people actually serving their time in jail and people serving their time in house arrest on a conditional sentence. In law it is exactly the same thing. As a Parliament, we are perpetrating a fraud on the people of Canada by allowing that to exist.
One step the government has to take is to eliminate conditional sentences. The second step is for drug dealers and gunmen to have mandatory minimum prison sentences to ensure that they are off the streets.
I support rehabilitation. I support businesses creating job opportunities. I support all kinds of educational and other programs. I support all of those, but children cannot go to school when gunmen and drug dealers are on the streets. Businesses cannot create economic opportunities when gunmen and drug dealers are on the streets.
I met with the business people in Whalley, North Surrey just last week. The entire place looks like Los Angeles. There are abandoned buildings and barbed wire on top of fences. There is no business. People are scared.
There are answers and that is to get the drug men and the gunmen off the streets and get rid of conditional sentences.