Mr. Speaker, after 18 years of elected life, I do not think I will ever be afraid of demagoguery, if that is the word. So, no.
The issue is that there have been two offences and perhaps that is two too many. The issue is that the people in Canada, and not just the Conservatives who do not really care about the evidence, and despite the propaganda from the Conservatives, think that a life sentence is a sentence of life imprisonment. It is not. The sentence is really 25 years eligibility and the vast majority of those incarcerated get out at that time. A very small number stay in prison, otherwise the average would not be 28.4 years.
As I said earlier, perhaps it is an issue of how the people perceive it. When people are asked what life in prison means, all of this has to be explained. Maybe this debate will serve the purpose. However, 25 years for first degree murder is the sentence that Parliament settled on. If a person is convicted of first degree murder, the person more than likely will serve 25 years. I do not know how to explain that any better but there is the perception, which the member must feel even in Quebec, that people misunderstand this section.
We are the party of the middle, the party of compromise and we understand that people feel that the section is mis-described. We do not go all the way with the Conservatives in thinking that it is a huge problem. It has been a serious problem for two victims, which is perhaps two too many, but in the history of criminals and criminality in Canada, there is a lot more victimization going on right now in Canada that the government could more about. It could be more effective, more surgical, more co-operative with us, more surgical in giving more funding to police officers, and finally, like the ad about not cooking with cheese, the government could just stop proroguing.