Mr. Speaker, in response to the question on punishment and rehabilitation, certainly what is required is a combination of both, but the member talked about the system in the United States, in states that do have a policy of three strikes and the people are out. Sometimes that third strike is based on petty crime.
In my remarks, I spoke about having the opportunity, as a former solicitor general, to look at our system closely and to see the prisons. The party opposite used to talk about “club fed” in terms of our jail system. When we look at the jails and prisons in this country, we see no club feds in our jail system.
Also, let us look at the work of the John Howard Society and some of those NGOs that are working with people who have fallen on hard times in life and who, not necessarily all through their own fault, did in fact get into crime. These groups work with those individuals. They can rehabilitate them. They can make them productive individuals. They can give them an opportunity in life again.
That is what our criminal justice system should be all about. Let us give them an opportunity. Yes, they have to pay a penalty for the crime, but we need to give them the opportunity to be productive members of society again. That is what our system has, which the American system really does not have to any great extent. I think that is why our system is much better.
However, the party opposite is talking about the latest crime statistics, looking at the latest sensationalized issues and avoiding doing the analysis. It really is playing politics with a system that we should not play politics with.