Mr. Speaker, it is a relatively simple analysis here that I think has been made by the government's strategists: create a bad guy, create the devil, create the demon, and use that as a way of avoiding other issues. Appeal directly to a relatively small percentage of the population, but then spread that message throughout society.
On a short-term basis, and we have seen this any number of times in our history, it works. However, as people begin to recognize what the major issues are that are confronting Canada, whether it is within the criminal justice system or in any number of other sectors of our society, they begin to say, “What are you doing?” And that is what has happened. I think the breaking point for them occurred during the summer when, as my friend already indicated, we had the Conservatives saying, “We are building prisons. We are going to need to prisons because we have all this unreported crime”. That was absolutely so shallow that the average Canadian, even a number of the hard-core supporters of the Reform-Alliance-Conservatives, identified it. That was probably the breaking point. When $9.5 billion is spent on prisons when we have declining crime rates, the average Canadian says, “Enough is enough”.
However, it has worked for them up until this point. That was their strategy. It is going to fail on an ongoing basis now if they pursue this.