Mr. Speaker, that is such a wide open question, but I will try to stick close to hand to the subject of crime. There are not enough hours in the day for us to go through all the shenanigans of 13 years of Liberal corruption. I am sure the folks back home would love me to do an itemized list.
However, at the end of the day, the problem with what the former government failed to deliver and what it created was a major disconnect between what the Liberals said they would do and what they would actually do. I always take my advice from the best orator in history, the carpenter in Galilee, who said make your “yes” mean yes and your “no” mean no. We do not need spin. We do not need a message. We do not need it to be a wedge issue. We just need to stand and say that we will or we will not do it. The Liberal Party believed it never actually had to do it.
That brings us to the question of crime. We were sent here to enact laws and some of those laws have to do with crime and making sure that gangs are not running wild, that gun violence is being contained and that our police have the resources to deal with that. Our job is to listen to the problem and bring in legislation that actually works, make our “yes” mean yes and our “no” mean no.
Unfortunately, what we have seen here is a political game that has been played out where substantive issues of crime are being reduced to the wedge issues, being reduced to cheap spin and spin-doctoring and sometimes very paltry efforts at attacks by backbench members in the government party against other members who are actually doing their job.
If the government were trying to be different than the old corrupt Liberal Party, it would come forward with a simple plan, make it work and get on with the nation's business. Unfortunately, I have not seen it make that step yet.