Madam Speaker, there is no question that this is a very narrowly focused bill with the way the government is defining fraud.
We never got any satisfactory answer from the government. There were specific suggestions made to the Minister of Justice when he was in front of the committee about areas it was not covering. He admitted that, but gave no explanation as to why the government did not broaden it.
I have my own reasons. I think the government just wanted to run a bill through here as quickly as possible, drag out victims and say it has done something. A more complex bill would have taken longer to draft, although the government had two shots at it, so we would think it could have still done it in that period of time.
On the other point of the whole issue of restitution, the bill addresses the issue of restitution but it really does not expand in any way beyond what we already have.
The point that I made earlier in my speech about going after the people who have received benefit, who are not the perpetrators of the crime but received benefit from it, would be a very good area for getting additional dollars of restitution to all of the victims of the fraud scheme.