I hear chirping from the House leader on the other side but that is not unusual in this place. The House leader and the Conservative Party do not like to face constructive criticism and that is what we are offering here.
We have said that the intent is fine, but the government tends to do everything through the criminal justice system whereas social programming works better and prevention works better.
I recognize it is a private member's bill and it will be really interesting when it comes time, whether the government will allow a free vote. The Conservatives talked about free votes, but we have not seen a free vote yet in the House. Maybe this one will entice them because I know for a fact that the justice department cannot be recommending that the government support the bill, but we will see what happens as we go down the road.
The fact of the matter is that the bill, while good in terms of its intent, can be approached differently. The witness protection program is not designed to deal with the problems that the bill is addressing. I believe that at the end of the day it would create more problems than it would solve.
The member has not put a cost on this and that needs to be looked at. What would be the total cost of the program? What would its impact be on policing? What would its impact be on the witness protection program itself? There are better ways to do this through social programming by a government that would have a social agenda rather than the kind of strict justice agenda we see being pursued by the government opposite.