Mr. Speaker, I was just flipping through my file while my colleague was asking his question. I am sitting here with a letter from the Attorney General of Saskatchewan who is opposed to this section. I am not sure what consultation went on.
One of the problems with the government, as opposed to the pattern and the protocol that has been long established going back 50 years, is that it has not been consulting with a lot of people. It has been going through a very narrow channel of people it consults with, those it fully expects will support its ideology, much as it is now doing with the appointments to the screening committees for judicial appointments. The government thinks that if it can talk to just certain people, it can get enough support for these types of very radical departures from our traditions within the criminal justice system. As a member of an opposition party, I am not prepared to go along with that.
If the government had consulted meaningfully, the opinions that I have expressed today on behalf of a lot of groups would have been given to it and it would have realized that this is not sustainable.
The member talked about a person who has been convicted of this specific offence and that then justifies changing the reverse onus and exposing that person. We are not talking about many cases. It may be as few as 10 or 12 cases. I am not sure where the figures are coming from that it may be 100 or 120. It may be as few as 10 or 15 cases a year that we are talking about.
If the government were really serious about this, it would give the prosecutors the resources they need to present the cases that need to be presented and we would put those people behind bars just using the traditional methodology that has withstood the test of time and that has served us very well as a society.