Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments made by my colleague from the New Democratic Party, although I must admit I am a bit puzzled by his summation at the end of his remarks. If I heard him correctly, he said that on behalf of his constituents he fully supports serious time for serious crime and that if he could only believe that this legislation would potentially, or even theoretically, I think he said, lead to safer streets, he could find it within himself to support it.
I must admit that I am a bit puzzled by this, because unfortunately we have something in this country called “repeat offenders” and many people in society believe they do not receive an appropriate sentence, an appropriate punishment. He used the term revenge. I do not think it is revenge or vengeance, far from it. I think there is an expectation by law-abiding citizens. The vast majority of Canadians are hard-working, law-abiding citizens. They just want to raise their families in relative peace and tranquility and be good, law-abiding citizens, and they expect that when others deviate from this they are held accountable.
That is what we are trying to do here. As I said in my remarks earlier today, the courts themselves have said that Parliament can exclude certain crimes from conditional sentencing.
Therefore, in all sincerity, I would ask my colleague why he would not see the advantage in supporting this legislation and sending it to committee. He voiced some of his concerns about property crimes, but even then I would state that all too often when people break and enter it leads to assault of the homeowner if the homeowner happens to be at home. We have seen that countless times. Things that might start out on the surface as a somewhat minor crime could end up being quite a horrific crime involving assault and, in some cases, deadly assault.
Why not send this bill off to committee where a lot of the concerns the member has expressed could be dealt with? If the bill can be improved, let us improve it. Let us work together to try to improve the bill, but let us not throw out the bill just because of one or two concerns with it.