Mr. Speaker, clearly in an area where there is a $13 billion plus surplus, to bring in this bill and not bring in any measures to educate the driving public, and the youth public, frankly, about the dangers of street racing, and where clearly resources to the RCMP are being cut for a cutting edge prevention program, it shows that the right hand and the left hand of the government do not know what they are doing. Or worse, if the government members know what they are doing, they are more interested in laws that do not necessarily make sense.
As a member of the last Parliament, the hon. member would know that Bill C-65 did attempt to address these issues, in a more organic, more intelligent and, more important, more efficacious way. I am not talking about the subsequent prohibitions later on, but in terms of sentencing and sending the message out, the mandatory aggravating factor would work. This would give judges the hammer they need in order to fashion the appropriate sentence for a convicted street racer or a person who, in my terminology, does dangerous things with vehicles. That is really what this is about.
I think the government is off the mark here. This bill is hastily drafted. It is sensational in character. It will not get to the root cause. The people of Canada are being lulled into a false sense of security by the nightly news bulletins from the Conservative Party of Canada.