Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comment from my hon. colleague from northern Alberta. His riding is very similar to the riding that I have represented for almost 13 years now. I strongly suspect that his constituents are as concerned as mine are about this issue. Indeed, I would argue that most Canadians are concerned about it.
In my decade long battle against the Liberal legislation and the misuse and abuse of conditional sentencing, I have said that there are times, and I referred to this in my remarks, when conditional sentencing is appropriate. In some cases with youth crime where some young person might for whatever reason undertake some shoplifting, some minor vandalism, property damage and that type of thing, obviously it is not in the best interests of our courts or society to throw those young people in jail among the general prison population of hardened criminals. They would probably come out worse off than when they went in.
When the legislation was originally being debated, I said and all of us agree that there are certain cases where conditional sentencing could be used in those types of minor crimes. The reality is that when it is being used for serious crimes, it contributes to the deterioration of the justice system itself.
My goodness, when lawyers themselves can see the flaw in how it is being implemented by the courts to allow some people who commit horrendous serious crimes to not do one day in jail, how is that justice? How is that fair to the victims and their families when that criminal can go home, put his or her feet up, watch colour television and serve out the time with a bracelet on? It is ridiculous.
It is one big reason why the people of Canada saw fit on January 23 to elect a Conservative government. The reality is that most Canadians believe there should be something in our justice system known as punishment. I know that is a foreign concept for the Liberals. Just before I got up to speak, we heard from a former parliamentary secretary who talked about how there is no evidence that restricting the use of conditional sentencing would actually reduce crime.
We could get into a statistical argument constantly, our statistics versus the Liberals' false statistics. However, there is a principle of punishment that people are actually held accountable and have to be punished if they step outside of the law and commit serious crimes. That is the difference between our government and the past Liberal government. It is something I fought against for 10 years, because they do not believe in the principle of punishment, that people should actually be held accountable.