Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Brome—Mississquoi for his question. I recognize his interest in social justice. I know that he works very hard in his riding in that regard.
What we have here is a dynamic where law and order are advocated. Certainly, we must have laws and also order, but they must be in the context of and have a specific objective for society. That is where I see the potential for a gap or a significant breakdown. This approach to the law leads us away from social justice.
A sense of justice contains elements of sharing, support and acknowledgement of others, of where they are in their life's journey and their actual place in society. My colleague is quite justified in making a comparison to what is happening in the United States. What is happening there is not comparable. The crime rate is much higher. In addition, these types of measures do not give the results expected.
When we examine the changes in our own country—prior to 1996, and over the last ten years, when the possibility of conditional sentences has meant that 55,000 fewer offenders have gone to prison—we see that the rate of recidivism has decreased by 13%.
This is major and my colleague is quite right in putting his question in that way.