Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek for his thoughtful comments and commend him on being a strong voice of reason in protecting the safety of his community.
The member is absolutely right that in the last Parliament or in the one before, Bill C-9 was introduced by the government, and at that point it purported to remove violent crimes from consideration for conditional sentences. The reality is that 75% to 85% of crimes for which conditional sentences are given are not violent at all.
That is what I think the problem is here, philosophically. My colleagues on the other side of the House want to take all discretion out of the system. They want to have a sledge hammer approach, a “one size fits all” approach, much like the three strikes and one is out system or mandatory minimum sentences in the United States. The problem is they do not work.
That philosophy might be worth considering if it worked. Over 20 states in the United States have implemented those exact policies for the last 20 years, and 20 out of 20 of those states are going backwards. All they found was that they were bankrupting their state economies and their crime rates were remaining untouched.
The bottom line is we should not make penal or criminal policy in this country based on what is good rhetoric on a street corner. We should make sound policy decisions based on policies that will keep our communities safe.
Once again, I fear this bill does not do that.