Madam Speaker, the member certainly took us on a trip to various subjects.
The reality is that we in the NDP have said, over and over again, that we believe that being smart on crime is better than being what she calls tough on crime. We only use the example of minimum sentences. They have been tried in the United States, which now has a lot of rich prison owners because the prisons were turned over to private entrepreneurs.
Governor Schwarzenegger in California must now release thousands of people on early parole because he cannot afford to keep them any more as the state has run out of money. The crime rate in the United States is way higher than it is in Canada. That is an example of ideology trumping smartness. We need to deal with issues that actually work.
Winnipeg actually got some action on auto theft by establishing immobilizer programs for cars. A task force was set up within the police service to chase down car thieves, get them off the streets and put them in jail. Car thefts went down to the point, although we are not there yet, where one day this year there were no car thefts at all. To me, that is smart on crime, I do not know how many times we need to say that but the hon. member for Saint Boniface, obviously, does not get the concept.
The government should be looking around the world to see what works. Why is the incarceration rate in Sweden only 77 per 100,000, 177 per 100,000 in Canada and 700 per 100,000 in the United States? She is looking the wrong way. She should be looking to Sweden and not the United States. It is not that the United States does not have some good features but let us pick some good features of the U.S. system that actually show results and work.
However, those people are blinded. They have their blinders on and they create their crime bills based on what they do for their polling results. When they get great polling results, they bring in more of these types of bills. They do not care whether they work or not, it depends on what they do for their polls.