Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy listening to this member. I do not speak his mother tongue, but I get the impression that his speeches are always very fluent and very well delivered, and of course our interpreters do a fine job as well
I, too, would like to ask him about the member's response to this question vis-à-vis the reverse onus. I am exasperated when I hear this member and other members in the House, members from the Liberals and sometimes also from the NDP, decrying this. Somehow they feel it is unfair to people because they are being called guilty instead of being called innocent until proven guilty.
Is it not true that if one has been charged and convicted of serious crimes such as aiming a gun at a person, pulling the trigger and missing, not once but twice or three times, it really has been the accused himself who has proven he is a dangerous offender? The bill the member is talking about merely proposed that at this stage this individual be declared what he has already proven himself to be, that is, a dangerous offender. The reverse onus actually is a way out, whereby this person gets yet another chance in which he can say, “I am not a dangerous offender and here is the proof”. It gives him that opportunity.
Do we not have, as a government and as the enforcers of the law in this country, the obligation to put away people who just cannot learn after one, after two and after three times?