Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague, the justice critic for the New Democratic Party.
My colleague from Windsor—Tecumseh is entirely right. The bill addresses a very small, teeny-weeny aspect of white collar crime.
Witness after witness came before the committee and said that in order for the government to really tackle white collar crime, it has to work with the provinces in order to establish real, coordinated, integrated teams with proper resources. As long as our court system and our prosecutorial core is overtaxed and overburdened because of a lack of financial resources and human resources, then they will continue to be put in a difficult position, as were the prosecutors in Ontario, in Toronto, with that major fraud case recently where they dropped the criminal charges against alleged fraudster because they said they simply do not have the resources. They had some major rape cases and they had to make the choice, either they prosecute the alleged offender, the perpetrator of the rape, or they go after the alleged fraudster. They had no choice but to put their resources behind the rape case at trial.
That is untenable. We do not hear Conservative members of Parliament speaking up and calling on their government to bring new resources to our court system, to the prosecutorial core. We are not hearing that.
When we look at what the government has done in terms of victims, the government, with the House, adopted a budget. In the budget there was $10 million annually for programs and services to be given directly to victims of crime. The government did not spend all of the money. I believe it was $4.9 million or $5.9 million that the government actually spent in services and programs given to victims. It turned the rest of the money back to the consolidated revenue fund, but then turned around and spent over $6 million, I think it was maybe $10 million or something, more money on advertising that victims matter. How cynical is that?