That is right. Disguised as decent kind of Liberal people. Disguised with intent. Looks like Hallowe'en is in some difficulty.
If we were simply to go with the bill as it is, a lot of us would ask, what about specific cases in this long list that includes things that have changed and evolved over time? Would it not be more appropriate for us to send the bill to committee, which this side is willing to do, to examine in detail the effects that this surprisingly deceptively short bill has, to make sure that we are not inadvertently doing something quite foolish? It seems to me that is the task of Parliament and that is indeed the task of parliamentary committees.
The whole concept of conditional sentencing itself is rather sophisticated. It has been developed as part of the tool kit of restorative justice. It is basically a good idea to have it. We want to make sure in simply passing the bill that we do not undo the good things that come from conditional sentencing. That would be a very important reason for us not to support the bill in its present form because of these questions, and for us to have a proper sorting out at second reading of all of the implications so that we will not be in a worse situation than we are. We are not denying that in some cases this might make sense, but let us go through all the cases where it might apply.
There is another question that arises out of our examination of Bill C-2. It is the whole question of whether this has been certified as constitutional. We have gone through a certain amount of ambiguity, where certain legal officers in the context of Bill C-2 have said they do not think that bill satisfies the constitutionality test. We heard from the Attorney General in the case of Bill C-2 that it does, but when there is that kind of ambiguity it seems to me that it raises flags about all the legislation that comes before us.
What we ought to do is make absolutely certain that this bill has had that kind of certification from the Attorney General so that we find ourselves in a position of clarity.
This is one of the reasons that we need to give greater examination to the detail, because the detail is not in the bill itself; it is in all that is implied, the whole philosophical background behind conditional sentencing. We know that if we do not get it right, we will undo all of the good work, the advances in thinking on this that have occurred.
I would ask the government to work with us in a cooperative--