Mr. Speaker, there was a statement earlier by the member's colleague that the only opposition to this bill by the other parties was the argument that they were in need of protecting the rights of the offender. If the members would look at the record, the member for Vancouver Quadra laid out some interesting possibilities which would be a bad outcome for all Canadians, and that is with regard to the constitutionality issues.
The member will know that should this bill pass and get royal assent and be proclaimed to become law, it can be subject to a charter challenge. That could hang up the law for years of very protracted constitutional hearings, which is a problem. The second is the ultra vires argument or the problem whether the federal government can tell the provincial government who to charge and with what to charge the individuals. This was also another constitutional matter.
I raise it for the hon. member that the arguments are not so much about what about the offender, but it could very well turn out that the legislation would never be operable until charter questions were dealt with in the courts, which maybe is an issue we can deal with now before we have the risk of falling into that protracted delay and having good legislation.