Mr. Speaker, I think California has something of a parallel legislation and it is finding that it does not work. It catches a bunch of unintended consequences. My hon. colleague addresses one of the unintended consequences.
The members opposite think this is like three brutal assaults, therefore this person is unable to control himself or herself. This constitutes a danger to society and, therefore, the individual should be put away as a dangerous offender. However, by lowering the standard of the offence, effectively we are opening up the entire Criminal Code, within a certain realm, to people who probably the members opposite do no intend to have convicted as serious offenders. By reversing the onus, for instance two assaults and now a third assault, one may or may not be the worst of the worst. One may have other problems that get one there.
The times when I was in court, which I do not think were nearly as frequent as he was in court, a lot of the people convicted were people who had all kinds of other problems. Something in the order of about 70% of the offender population is functionally illiterate. A lot of them have serious mental health issues. What we are doing is designating a lot of these people as dangerous offenders, putting them away in an indeterminate fashion and letting them rot.
I do not see the argument that they hon. members opposite are making to support the bill. It is literally taking a howitzer to kill a gnat.