Madam Speaker, I listened very attentively to the parliamentary secretary give the reasons for reintroducing a bill that expired years ago. As the member knows, the original provisions were brought into the House but they were not used and Parliament chose not to renew them. Yet the government is choosing at this time to bring this bill forward.
The member has already made the case of those who have been raising a contrary point of view on this, that the recent arrests and some investigations have been done with existing Criminal Code provisions. What is very clear is that the underfunding by the government of our police forces, something that has an impact in a whole variety of areas, and the breaking of promises around funding for RCMP, is something that would do a lot more to address concerns generally than the provisions in the bill that, as has already been noted, were not used and expired.
I can only wonder why the government is bringing the bill forward at this time. It does not seem to make sense except when we look at the summer the government has had. The Conservatives made appalling, inappropriate decisions around the census. They have had boondoggles around the untendered nature of the billion dollar jet fighters, around the fake lake and the billion dollar cost of the summit and the $130 million paid out to Abitibibowater basically because Abitibibowater was upset. All of these boondoogles, moneys paid out, have turned the tide of public opinion against the government.
It seems to me that what we are seeing today is a government that is so desperate that it wants to try to revive fear by throwing together legislation that was not used in the past and was not renewed by Parliament rather than dealing with the real issues about which Canadians are talking. Is that not the real reason why the government is bringing this forward today?