Mr. Speaker, protecting citizens against violent crime is very important in my community as it is to all of us. However, crime rates have actually gone down over the past 10 years, as we all know, but there much more to be done. I think we could all agree with that as well.
We must tackle the problem of violent crime, but we must also do it responsibly. We cannot simply lock people up and throw away the keys, as the government obviously wants to do.
We have worked hard to improve on these bills from the last session, despite the Conservative government's attempt to obstruct its own legislation by not calling the bills forward for debate in the House of Commons.
We proposed to fast track the legislation we supported in order to protect Canadians, but the Conservatives refused to pass their own legislation. I think they are still focused on being in opposition where all they did was obstruct government bills. They continue to do the same with their own government.
I want to talk about how violent crime affects women in the country and also try to get the government to see that we can do more to prevent crime, rather than increase penalties and lock people away forever.
We see that even in U.S., where mandatory minimum sentences are in place, the government is moving away from this method because it simply does not work. It fills up prisons and does not help in rehabilitating the offender.
I believe it is better to prevent the crime in the first place. That way we do not have a criminal and we do not have a victim. It is so much better not to have victim. When prevention fails to stop an individual from committing a crime, we must ensure that the rehabilitation process is in place and is effective.
I want to give an example of the Youth Criminal Justice Act and how it is applied because that is a major area of discussion these days as well. Quebec, for instance, has a much lower recidivism problem with respect to young offenders than other parts of the country. Why? It is because its prevention program is much better, but also the supportive program, the rehabilitation program, is much stronger and much more effective.
In fact a few years back Chile signed an agreement with Quebec to use their model—