Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to remind the member that over the past 10 years that conditional sentencing has been in place, I and many other members of Parliament have had growing concerns about it.
In fact, it was in March 1998, over eight and a half years ago, that I first brought forward a motion to exclude certain crimes from a judge's discretion in the application of conditional sentencing, basically house arrest. A year later, I took it a step further when I introduced a private member's bill that clearly listed what crimes should be ineligible for conditional sentencing, house arrest. I and many Canadians across the land could see how this system was being abused. When the Liberals brought it forward it was supposed to be for minor property crimes in an attempt to turn some wayward youth who had maybe committed the crime of some graffiti or of shoplifting. However, it was very rapidly abused by the courts and the judges that the hon. member would like to give such great discretion to.
Conditional sentencing was being used for so-called property crimes but it was also being use for crimes of arson, which is what the hon. member mentioned. We just saw in the news a few days ago where an arsonist in California set fires that took the lives of five firefighters. That is a pretty serious crime. If he is found guilty, he will be dealt with severely because arson is a very serious crime in the state of California.
With the amendments that are being proposed to Bill C-9, the Liberals are still soft on crime despite the claims to the contrary from the member. I would remind him that when I put forward private members' legislation to restrict the use of conditional sentencing, his government, which was in power for the last almost 13 years, did nothing to restrict conditional sentencing. It was only with the election of the Conservative government last January that now we are finally seeing this issue addressed.