Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise on behalf of the people of Timmins—James Bay to discuss Bill C-2.
What we are called to do in Parliament, as parliamentarians and despite everything else, is to make laws of the land that will hold up and reflect a sense of jurisprudence and also a belief that the laws will establish a way we should be as a nation. This is the forum in which that happens.
Unfortunately, we have seen over the last number of years, particularly with the Conservative government and its crime agenda, the debasement of debate. There are 308 members to reflect judiciously on serious issues. Then when they stand up and speak, they are ridiculed. We have the cheap cat call gallery in the Conservatives, which is always looking to twist and take words out of context. What we end up having is the notion of debate passing through some kind of spinmeister's message box in search of a wedge issue.
At the end of the day it serves a certain political group very well. It creates a legitimation crisis. It creates a sense that Parliament is not there to get something done, that parliamentarians are sitting on their rear ends doing nothing because they are not responding.
I will speak in particular about the Conservatives' crime agenda. They government has accused basically everyone in the House of stalling on crime and being soft of crime. Conservative members have said at times in the House that members somehow support child pornography. These claims are outrageous, and it is debasement of our role, which is to bring forward reflection on bills that deal with crime.
Nowhere is this clearer than on Bill C-2. A number of the sections of this bill were brought through the House, voted on, discussed and brought forward with good amendments, to the point of being law, particularly the age of consent bill, which at the point of being law. The issue of gun crime sentencing, which all parties worked on, and provisions with regard to bail would all be law now. Yet the Conservatives prorogued the House and allowed those bills to die.
The government then started the whole process over again and began to accuse our friends in the upper chamber of not doing their job. If we even stood and asked questions, we were told we were being soft on crime and delaying the issue. It is a total obfuscation of fact. It really raises question as to why are these laws not already law, if the government were serious on a crime agenda and having laws that would work for people. The bills were ready to go.
What we have is this continual cheapening of political discourse. That leads me to the shenanigans we saw today during statements and question period. My good friend from Nepean—Carleton, who is often a favourite partisan ankle-biter, stood and tried to take the words I said yesterday and spin them into a little wedge issue for the Conservative Party and make it seems that I somehow refused to support the age of consent from 14 to 16, that I tried to block the bill and that we were soft on crime.
I will not respond to the member's comments. I admire his partisan glee, but if he is going to do a hatchet job, he might as well do the job properly. This is unfortunately the problem we see, the debasement of debate. These discussions have become so absurd and silly. I do not know exactly to whom he thinks he is appealing.
I spoke about this yesterday, about how the Conservatives would try to twist facts. The Conservatives will misrepresent what was said. Then the spin doctors will take the ten percenters—