Mr. Speaker, I am certainly glad I got over my recent illness in time to come back and listen to the speech of the member for Winnipeg Centre this morning.
While I would like to congratulate him and his colleagues for supporting this bill, in his presentation he is being a little unfair to the vast numbers of people who are accountants, lawyers, financial advisers and people who work in banks. The aspersion that he is casting in his presentation is that they are all crooks. That is most unfair. In any sector, we will find a small percentage of people who in fact like to work outside the law, which is a nice way of putting it, but we cannot paint everybody with the same brush, so I think he was unfair there.
I have a huge question though. The member for Winnipeg Centre and his colleagues have stood in this House and opposed mandatory sentences for crimes such as child molestation, murder and other heinous crimes such as those. They have opposed mandatory sentences when we have brought them forward, and they have filibustered bills that we have had in committee to get tough and impose mandatory sentences on those who commit crimes such as these, yet they stand today and appear to unanimously support mandatory sentences for white-collar crimes.
While we thank them for their support in this bill, there is a strange contrast between them supporting mandatory sentences for white-collar crimes but resisting and opposing so strongly mandatory sentences for people in our society who molest children, who commit sexual assaults against women, who murder people, who rape people, or who injure people severely through aggravated assault.
I wonder if the member could just stand and tell us why he would support mandatory sentences for white-collars crimes but not for these other heinous crimes that I have just mentioned. His party has opposed mandatory sentences at every single turn.