Mr. Speaker, I want to respond to a statement that the member made about his party when it was in government and its intention to introduce an amendment to the conditional sentencing legislation that it had previously introduced four years before.
I find it very strange that the member has forgotten that when the conditional sentencing provisions were first introduced by the Liberals, members of our party, when we were in opposition, stood in the House day after day during debate warning and pleading with the government to eliminate the possibility of conditional sentencing for those who committed violent criminal offences. The minister of justice at that time and the member's colleagues stood in the House and said that conditional sentencing legislation would not apply to violent criminal acts and that we should trust them. They had a majority at that time and the legislation went through.
Can anyone guess what happened? We saw people who were committing violent criminal acts being handed conditional sentences time after time. It was only as we were approaching the 2004 election that the Liberals decided that they had better start listening to the citizens of this country who wanted safe streets and communities and said that they would bring in amendments. They could have done all of that in their first introduction of the bill.
Why did the member's government at the time purposely allow that violent criminal acts could be subject to conditional sentencing, which his party put into the initial legislation?