Madam Speaker, in answer to the first part of my colleague's question, I would say that the Conservatives are using the justice system for purely partisan purposes. “Tough on crime” is a snappy little sound bite. It is easy to fit into speeches. The Conservative members have been well trained, like sheep, and they all know how to say “tough on crime”. However, actually being tough on crime is something else entirely. My colleague raised some good points about that.
Proclaiming that one is tough on crime is not what it takes to unanimously pass a bill eliminating conditional release, as the Bloc Québécois proposed, to prevent white collar criminals from being put back in the community after serving 16 or 18 months of an eight-year sentence. That is what happened with Vincent Lacroix, who is expected to spend two and a half years of his 15-year criminal sentence in jail. He was sentenced to eight years on civil charges. He will be back on our streets in two and a half years.
It was simple enough. We were not trying to play partisan politics, and we were not getting all dramatic, saying we were tough on crime. We just did not want criminals to be back on the streets after serving one-sixth of their sentence. It was not that hard to understand, but apparently, it was a little too complicated for the Conservatives.