Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his dissertation but I must entirely disagree with a couple of comments he made. I will address them very quickly before I ask him for some clarity. I want to address what he said about tough on crime not working.
I would propose that being soft on crime never works and never will work. Not only that, he addressed some crime rates and he should be corrected because he is talking about reported crime rates not crime rates. It is a fact that most police officers only deal with a portion of the crime that is going on in our communities. We already know that people do not report crime anymore because they are fed up with the system. They want some tough on crime.
I would like to propose several offences that will be addressed under our new bill and I would like the member to tell me, very clearly, whether he agrees that these should be ineligible for house arrest.
I will list them clearly for the hon. member: street racing causing bodily harm, human trafficking, criminal negligence causing bodily harm, criminal negligence causing death, passport forgery, incest, perjury, arson, counselling or assisting suicide, discharge of a pistol or air pistol causing bodily harm.
I would just like to know whether the member agrees that people who commit these offences should not receive a conditional sentence.