Mr. Speaker, first of all, for us it is a continuing privilege to have the presence of the member from Quebec City in our caucus. She is like a guiding light which we follow with unflagging inspiration. Our whip, the member from Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, also comes from the Quebec City region. Our caucus is following them with great inspiration and working very hard to ensure that the presence of the Bloc Québecois will be consolidated in the Quebec City region in the next election.
Now, with all due respect for my colleague, I have to say that our enemy as parliamentarians is prejudice in the form of generalizations. Of course, the members of the Bloc Québecois, like all parliamentarians, have fought against crime most vigorously.
I was the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve in 1995 when a car bombing took the life of the young Daniel Desrochers. I was the first member of parliament to introduce a bill on organized crime.
We make the distinction between crime, which is generally down, and legislative measures that we must have as required by the situation, such as when there were confrontations between street gangs around 1995. The reality is that, all offences taken together, crime in Canada is diminishing. Of course, there may be some peaks that we should look at more closely.With the consent of the House, I am prepared to submit the document I received this morning.
Does the House know that last year the rise in offences, or the number of charges laid, was related to the subject of marijuana? That is not surprising. Through you, Mr. Speaker, I will send our colleague the document presented to me this morning. He will see in it that, all trends taken together, crime is not rising in Canada.
In any case, the best way to fight crime is to have generous policies for social programs and those most in need of assistance. Such an approach, of course, requires public funding for social housing, and the Conservative government has been cruelly incapable of providing this.