Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to what the hon. member had to say. Of course, he has been here for more than 1,000 days and during that period of time he has witnessed quite a few things occur, like gun crime in the city of Toronto, which has expanded greatly, and violent youth crime, which expanded greatly under the previous government. The Liberals did not act. They did not do anything about it.
The hon. member talked about allowing the courts the ability to make decisions to give them lots of room, so that they could look at each individual case on its merits, but he knows full well that the issue of precedence weighs large in courts. Lawyers stand up and say, “Yes, but here is a case that was exactly the same where the person only got house arrest for this violent crime”, and the court's hands are tied.
What our government is saying, a government that is standing up for safety, safe streets and communities, is that we will not allow these issues of precedence, these of issues of soft on crime decisions, to affect justice in the future. We will give them some guidelines. We will say that this is the minimum that Canadians should expect.
I do not understand why the member would have a problem with that, with supporting this comprehensive legislation and protecting communities, ones, quite frankly, very close to his own.