Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for London West addressed the issue of mandatory orders to provincial prosecutors, which may well be constitutionally ultra vires. She laid it out in a most articulate fashion. I will not repeat that.
The key issue of our position is that subsection 11(d) and section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are very much at play. Any lawyer could actually make the application to strike this legislation as being unconstitutional. On this side, if this law were to pass, as the majority of Parliament may wish it to, we have obligations to stand by the law. One would hope that section 11 would be read as not being about denying the presumption of innocence because it is after a conviction. One would hope that we could read section 7 of the charter not to include the fundamental principles of justice with respect to liberty under seven years. That would be a stretch and I think it is the strongest argument.
One would hope as well that we would not have to go to the Supreme Court of Canada five years from now to see in the end that the Conservatives brought in legislation which was hasty and designed for the six o'clock news and really left citizens vulnerable to more dangerous offenders and long term offenders being on their doorsteps.
I think that on Halloween evening it is a pretty important point to make. Five years from now on Halloween, do you, Mr. Speaker, want more dangerous offenders on your doorstep because of a bad law struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada? I do not. Canadians do not either.