Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague for speaking to this bill. He spoke with passion because he believes in what is in the bill.
My interest is greatly influenced by victims. My colleague across the floor mentioned his having been a lawyer for 25 years. I worked on another side of this issue. For 30 years, we watched victims. They are always the lost people in this whole thing. My colleague said that this has a devastating impact on victims. Make no mistake, many of these victims are elderly people who have been taken advantage of. They feel almost personally violated physically in the sense that they trusted someone who was close to them as a friend and sometimes even as a relative. They have been taken advantage of and have lost all of their whole being because their money is gone. We talked about the impact on victims. They lose their homes. Some of them even contemplate suicide. It is truly devastating.
I recently had the opportunity to be in Montreal and talk to some of the family members of some victims there and that feeling is so deep.
Is there any reason, in my colleague's wildest dreams, the people of the House would not support this kind of legislation? It tells the perpetrators of those most heinous crimes that they will go to jail for a minimum limited amount of time.