Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Brampton West, who himself was a distinguished lawyer before his election to the House, knows a great deal about criminal justice issues and about justice policy. His voice in our caucus and in Parliament is always one that is listened to attentively when it comes to issues involving justice and public safety.
My colleague identifies a concern we have. The government members last week had a very, very bad week in which they were found, for example, to be presenting at infrastructure announcements Government of Canada cheques with the Conservative logo and fake signatures of members of Parliament pretending somehow that they sign cheques for public funds to hand out for needed infrastructure programs. We have heard allegations of huge partisan interference in the allocation of programs as important as those for access to disability funding. The reason the government decided this week to put such an emphasis on justice issues is precisely as my colleague from Brampton West alluded to, to change the channel on their failure to deal effectively with serious economic concerns or to address issues of unemployment.
The people in my riding do not understand why many justice bills are left on the order paper in the House for over 100 days, are introduced at the end of the session in June, left on the order paper and then at the last minute simply recycled with a whole bunch of old announcements when a news conference is called at a local hotel and for the fourth time they announce that they intend to introduce a bill on white-collar crime. Much of this is a gimmick from the government to mask its failure on much more important matters as well.