Mr. Speaker, I am a bit surprised that no one wanted to ask the hon. member a question. He has been around here for a long time. He is a member who has taken an active interest in justice issues over the years and has been able to contribute to the justice committee in that time to make better legislation.
I was listening carefully to his remarks and there is much that I agree with in his synopsis of the history of what want on.
My recollection is a little bit different in some aspects. When the bill was originally brought forward, many people warned the justice minister of the time, which I suppose sometimes happens, that the judges would end up giving conditional sentences in respect of crimes that the justice minister and the people on the committee would not have expected them to do, which is exactly what happened. Some of the judges used conditional sentences in a manner that was really not intended by the act and by the committee. This upset justice ministers of the various provinces.
What has ended up happening is kind of like a pendulum. When the pendulum swings one way, namely, with the judges using conditional sentences in what I would consider an inappropriate manner, the Conservative government came in with a bill that was on the other end of the pendulum swing. These amendments have not only brought the pendulum back into the middle to permit conditional sentences in the appropriate crime situations, but also to ensure that judges do not use them for the kinds of crimes for which they were not intended, such as serious personal injury offences, terrorism offences and gang related offences.
I wonder if my hon. friend would care to comment on what I have said.