Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague, who has extensive experience in the issues of criminal justice and rehabilitation. Those are two key elements in developing safe societies. They are two elements that the Conservative government has tried to wedge apart with its devices of dumbed down policies on crime.
I had the great honour to live with a number of people who came out of prison and to work with them on rehabilitation. One of them lived with my family for 17 years and he became like a grandfather to my children. He had been in every prison in Canada. He taught me a great deal about prison and the need to have policies that actually, as he said, were rehabilitation, not re-humiliation.
I have watched the crime agenda for the last five years. I have seen a government that is not interested in facts or in a forward-looking vision of how to deal with the problems. The Conservatives are only interested in frightening people and then going back to those people asking them to give the government money to help continue whatever crazy cause they are running at any given moment.
From his extensive experience in the criminal justice system, what does the member think about the danger of poisoning discourse around criminal justice and basing policy not on fact but on the ideology and on the attack machine of the Conservative Party? What does that do to the legitimacy of the criminal justice system and the ability of a society to develop legislation that protects citizens, that incarcerates criminals and that finds a path for the rehabilitation of those who have been caught up in the prison system?