First, Mr. Speaker, I am not advocating at all that we should not advise victims of the process. I am saying that we have to look at whether it makes sense in what would oftentimes be a short period of time, and since victims are not going to be allowed representation at that time, there is no need to put them through the pain if in fact the initial application is going to be rejected by a judge as having no merit.
It is very limited. There were 30 cases as of October of last year. In those 30 cases, the families would not have been notified. There would have been no reason to notify them because there was nothing further to do. It is a question of trying to save them pain. It has nothing to do with ideology. That is just humanity.
With regard to whether this is an ideological debate, I want to be very clear that this is not for us an ideological debate. It is for the Conservatives. This is all about their very typical American right-wing agenda of wanting to portray themselves as being tough on crime. This should be a practical debate. What is the proper practice? How do we best protect the victims? This does not do it.
The member used all these buzzwords, such as truth in sentencing. Yes, we want to be truthful about sentencing and tell people that the average time that a person is incarcerated in Canada for first degree murder is not 25 years. That is not what convicts are going to spend in jail. They are going to spend 28.5 years in prison and 80% of them are going to spend even longer than that. That is truth in sentencing.