Mr. Speaker, I want to address Canadians on this. Why should this concern Canadians? Because the law needs to be constitutionally valid to protect them. Bills on the order paper are not valid laws. At best, they are works in progress, and sometimes they are failures if the proper homework has not been done in advance. Protection of the public should not be dealt with in this disrespectful manner.
This bill, while it is complex, is full of unenforceable and constitutionally suspect provisions. It will have unintended and very costly implications for the justice systems administered by the provinces. It will even impact on the resources of the provincial mental health systems, in which there are delays now for mental health resources required for these assessments.
I submit that the bill should be redone properly from the start. I know that there are many inside the justice department who are very capable of doing this job and who must be very concerned with following a more ideological than legal directive. Canadians do deserve better. So do our hard-working systems of justice in this country. I would remind the Conservatives that they are in a minority government without the authority for this type of action, for changing a legal system and deceiving the public in this way, because what is important is that we have a working dangerous offender system.
Yes, there were cases and it would have been good to codify them, but it would have been better to do it in a manner that potentially does not affect the safety of Canadians by making them less safe, because we do not need a part of or the full dangerous offender provision thrown out. We have the Minister of Justice doing this, but we also have David Paciocco, who knows this stuff inside out, giving interviews to journalists and saying that this is constitutionally suspect.
I am concerned that instead of protecting victims we are setting them up for having long trials from the first offence forward. I am concerned about the impact on legal aid systems. Mostly, though, I am concerned with doing the job properly. If the Conservatives had put a proper bill in here, without some of the things they have done in this bill quite intentionally, I am sure that every party in the House would be supporting it, because there is no one party that has ownership of protection of the public.
In his messaging, we have the minister's office full of communications experts as opposed to legal experts. That is all about messaging. This House is better than that. The members in this House want to do serious work. I find it distressing that we have a Minister of Justice who would deliberately put forward provisions that he knows will be challenged.