Mr. Speaker, I just want to pick up on the justice aspects, the prime aspects.
It is important to have a debate in the House and at committee level about the effectiveness or the efficacy of mandatory sentences, of seemingly wanting to be tougher on crime by imposing longer sentences and putting criminals away longer and all those sorts of things. However, empirical evidence shows, and one of the members referred to this morning, that these mandatory sentences do not work and that our neighbours to the south are the perfect proof of that.
All I am asking, because I know this is not question period and it certainly is not an answer period either, is for some openness from the other side or the other sides that if there is empirical evidence that being tougher on the books on crime does not deter crime, and if there is an openness to suggest that there are other ways, such as, laudably, increasing the number of men and women on the street enforcing those laws, will there be an openness from the hon. member and from the other side to those aspects?